PIXEL MAGE

bsky.app/profile/pick...

The concept art for this contest, all of the promotional imagery, artwork and even a large number of the 'products' for sale on thetoyrat.com, are AI generated. This isn't stated anywhere that I can find.

An incredible deep-dive thread into the plagiarism of James C Mulligan.

mulliganjimmy's instagram page showing his NFT series "Mulligan's Space Monsters". The image demonstrates a deft understanding of not only color and form, but also a clear master of typographic design

Crazy to think he didn't retire from the sales of his (I assume wildly successful) N F Ts?

Remember, these were all done by the same artist and definitely used zero ai-enhancements or tracing tools! Why would we believe otherwise? It’s not like people actually LIE on the internet?

The backgrounds are *screaming* AI. Either a machine made those choices or he painted these as he fell down a flight of stairs.

James C Mulligan: Hi all... It looks like I became very famous pretty much overnight (yipee!) due to certain unfounded "your art is Al!" accusations that seemingly came out of nowhere from a young person that attended an anime show I was at. That grew legs. I've been trying to lay low, but I figured it's about time this needed to be addressed, out of respect for all of my clients and friends that have supported me through the decades. Long before Al was ever a word on the scene. As the artist in question, I will state, definitively, that multiple statements made are patently and provably false. First and foremost, that Al was used to create my multiple Lorcana cards. Not remotely true. Nor have I been blacklisted from working with Disney. The "employee" that stated these things deleted their tweet and took their account private almost immediately after making these false statements. I've been awaiting communication from the team at Ravensburger to be given permission to publicly share the layered hand drawn files of my Lorcana cards, as, unfortunately, it would be in violation of certain agreements to do so without explicit written permission. So, my hands are tied. All I can say is that I have worked in some capacity with Disney for decades, and my years of work will stand up to these accusations. (Though, not strangely, an Al detector, which came back showing one of my D23 releases from 2014, was 99.9% Al, a rather humorous but absurd discovery)

I understand completely, the hatred for artists using generative Al, and passing it along as their hand painted created work. Al has its uses, but Al, in my estimation, ultimately will be an incredibly destructive force for society and humanity as a whole. I did NOT use it, nor have I received any communication from my Ravensburger/Lorcana team accusing me of such. This came from one person speaking on behalf of Lorcana, issuing a tweet (again, that was deleted very quickly) with no backup or even naming the art director that they spoke to. To conclude, I've kept on the downlow to protect my family (while attempting to ignore countless threats against myself and my family) but I felt if I didn't say something, I was going to burst. If anyone would care to reach out to me with questions, I'm happy to answer anything privately, as to do so publicly at the moment, is something l've been advised against. My Instagram is open. My Facebook DMs are open. I welcome professional and thoughtful communication. Looking forward to the moment these accusations can be easily dispelled. Thank you, Jimmy PS FEEL FREE TO SHARE!

James C Mulligan Oct 10, 2024 Al's vision of Florida... [ an AI generated image of what seems to be venice with cars driving directly on a river ]

James C Mulligan Nov 3, 2024 • Happiest of birthdays to my ol' pal @JimJCummings! Everyone go wish one of our favorites a h... See more [ a hybrid AI generated image with hand drawn details of winnie the pooh, piglet, tigger and Eyore ]

this guy has been high off his own farts for so long, he’s become allergic to real air

what an embarrassment

YouTube video by Inkwell DragonCon AI "Artist" Removed by Police

This guy not only took credit from my fellow Lorcana colleagues but also claimed to be an official Disney artist to inflate sales. In reality he has been black listed from the company for years after sketchy behavior.

youtu.be/EqmvqrdHaSc?...

"what were the 2000s like?" they were just this. nintendo sold a tribal tattoo game console and it came with a winamp skin

Excellent work on a definite grift

A screenshot from manocki.com. The text reads : Why do I use AI in some of my creative process? While I understand that this may be disappointing for some of you, I've always taken great pleasure in creating or reproducing what has captured my eye. I don't see myself strictly as an artist but rather as a technician with a critical eye for various forms of art. For a long time, I blamed myself for not being among those who can imagine the unimaginable, driven by boundless creativity. However, as I've come to better understand myself, I've realized that my true strength lies in my appreciation for technique and form. Artificial intelligence serves as an additional source of inspiration—a tool that allows me to explore new perspectives without attempting to revolutionize the art world. I've copied certain artists over the years, hoping to find my own style, but that day never quite arrived. Instead, I've embraced the role of a craftsman, someone who knows how to appreciate beauty and translate it into painting and illustration. I understand that AI is a highly sensitive topic within our community, and I deeply respect the concerns and debates surrounding it. It's difficult for me to take a firm stance because my personal creativity or how my work is used isn't what matters most to me. What's important is the joy I find in mastering techniques and bringing images that move me to life.

I've heard nothing but wonderful things about your book. Unfortunately, the artist in question does use AI. This statement is directly from her website that you linked to

Here is some more information : pixelmage.substack.com/p/manon-bier...

As everyone is, correctly, pointing out, this image is almost certainly AI generated. All of these tell-tale signs, along with the artist's history of using AI in their work. Another thing that leapt out to me was the perspective of the character (angle of his shoulders and face) being waaaay off.

OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft

OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property. The San-Francisco-based ChatGPT maker told the Financial Times it had seen some evidence of ‘distillation’, a technique used by developers to obtain better performance on smaller models by using outputs from larger, more capable models. This allows them to achieve similar results on specific tasks at a much lower cost. OpenAI declined to comment further on details of its evidence. Its terms of service state users cannot “copy” any of its services or “use output to develop models that compete with OpenAI”.

I'm so sorry I can't stop laughing. OpenAI, the company built on stealing literally the entire internet, is crying because DeepSeek may have trained on the outputs from ChatGPT. They're crying their eyes out. What a bunch of hypocritical little babies. Cry more, freaks.

www.ft.com/content/a0df...

i decided im not deleting this lol i genuinely just think it sucks this artist was going in a cool direction, gave up and started tracing the pinterest plagiarism blender

It's the irresponsible one, I assure you. I took this single image as an example, couldn't find a single version with credit to the photographer and then, carelessly, made some assumptions about their process. Happy to admit this was the wrong thing to do and have deleted my posts.

I apologize for my poor choice of words and, what I see now, was a needlessly confrontational approach. I will delete the comparison and take the time to study an artist's work more fully before making any claims.

I criticized an artist for not crediting the source photo for a painting yesterday. I did so on the understanding that no version I found posted had a credit, however I also made assumptions on their process without doing the due diligence of looking into their work. This was reductive & derogatory.

That is completely fair. I can't apologize as Elicia has, understandably, blocked me but I approached this poorly.

I should, you're right. My apologies.

FWIW I don't have any credibility but I am willing to accept I approached this poorly & delete the post.

You're right, I didn't do enough research. I couldn't find any version of this single image shared with credit to the photographer but I should have chosen my words and approach more carefully. I will delete the post.

This is all completely fair criticism. I used this image as a single jumping off point & couldn't find the photographer's credit in any instance where it was shared. But I appreciate my commentary is needlessly dismissive. I'll delete my posts and look into Elicia's work more.

Getting a lot of comments that I haven't done my due diligence with Elicia's process and I think that's completely valid and fair. I found a number of posts with this specific image & the photographer wasn't credited, in alt text or otherwise BUT I am willing to accept I approached this poorly.

Agreed. In this instance, when the end result matches the source by 99% you have to yield that the source is doing the heavy lifting. They end result looks beautiful but it couldn't exist without the other person's photograph.

Willing to accept I may be wrong about their process, my point was that, when the result is so closely 1:1 with a source image, the source should be credited.

Thank you Tristan

Ahh thank you!

My thoughts exactly. I assume they took her on because they liked her work but now they know that work was AI.

You know that she's going to keep doing what she's been doing and hoping that no one notices. I guess as long as there's money to be made then people dont care how. Pretty depressing.

I don't know how I didn't spot this sooner but you are both represented by the same agent!
www.debutart.com/artists