Dolcett cover art discussion

Competitions IFComp
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There is no entirely deterministic yes/no process that can prove that an image is AI-generated from the image itself; it definitely looks AI generated to me from a gestalt impression, but like I said it looks like it was traced over by a human artist rather than being the original generated image, which also would mask any really clear “tell”. The facial expressions are generally a bit incongruous and reminiscent of AI images, the use of color is a little odd, etc.

However what makes me fairly certain is the (in this case, quite strong) circumstantial evidence. Your credited artist is a commercial artist and a look through his portfolio shows a lot of pieces that similarly look like they are either AI-generated, or tracings of AI-generated images.

I’m also observing that the cover art is extremely large and detailed, though inconsistently so; one of the background scenes looks like a rendered, AI-generated image while others are more sketched out. But in the foreground we have 10 fully-rendered portraits of different people. Now, I assume this is a commission that you paid for but I also assume you did not pay multiple thousands of dollars for it, which is kind of the floor of how much a piece like this would normally cost. I assume you got a suspiciously good deal on a large and highly-detailed brief that most commercial artists would take multiple weeks to complete. If you did pay multiple thousands of dollars for it… I’m sorry to say but I still think this is traced from AI images, and you got ripped off.

I’d suggest asking your artist for the original process files for the image, including any reference photos as well as any sketches showing how the figures were originally drawn. I strongly suspect the artist won’t be able to produce them.

In Which I Review Exactly One Game: One (More) Week in Dolcett
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I also got that impression when I first looked at it, but I’m assuming the IFComp organizers have their own determination process going on behind the scenes—before the comp went live they asked me about the source of the silhouettes in THE RAT’s cover art, for example, to make sure they weren’t AI-generated.

(They weren’t, as far as I know, but they’re not my own work; they’re from a free stock image collection.)

I ask in full sincerity—SS2087 mentioned that the artist already provided the line art. Is there any specific reference or file they could provide that would distinguish traced AI images from actual art?

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I don’t have a horse in this race, but a lot of art programs provide speedpaints. Real art typically involves some changes and adjustments. Lines are erased or moved over, colors are swapped out. There’s typically a sketch stage, though not always.

AI artists have recently faked speedpaints where they instantly get the lineart right on the first try.

Some famous artists post their speedpaints. Oda’s (the author of one piece) has one that I would say is similar to my process, where you can see the changing thoughts and the hesitations and movements: https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/comments/qxg8mt/timelapse_video_of_odasensei_drawing_the_volume/

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Ty; I’ll keep this in mind for future commissions! (As a bonus, speedpaints look really cool.)

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The process for the creation of the cover art of my story was:

I hired Felipe after running an ad for a cover artist that got 100s of responses, including dozens that were clearly bots/AI responses. Felipe actually responded days after my initial post had cooled down when I had kind of moved on and went back to working on my story. I sent Felipe a (rather long) explanation of what I wanted for each character in a PDF - the explanation was 1-2 paragraphs about who the character is in relation to the story, what I thought they looked like (hair color, muscle tone, outfit) and then 1-2 references from movies/games/etc that inspired me for that character. I told him I didn’t want them drawn exactly like the characters that inspired me, but that I trusted him as an artist to put his own taste on them.

The total turnover time for the cover was one month. 10 days after I made my down payment, he sent me the line art for all 10 characters on the cover. So, yes, I have those, and I sent some to Polaris Storm earlier. I asked Felipe to make adjustments to three of the line drawings and he was able to do that within 24 hours as well. I then waited another 10 days to start to get color drawings of some characters.

What I think happened is - the completion of the cover came down to the wire. I didn’t receive the final color versions of all 10 portraits until the night before the comp deadline. I had explained to him in a separate PDF that I had general scenes in the background that I wanted on the poster that represent scenes in the story - an oven, a forest with a cauldron, a hunting ground, etc. I sent him some stock images of what I thought those scenes looked like when we started our process that I hastily threw together so he could get started and I could get back to writing.

I think he used the stock images and more or less just drew those himself, or even colored over those to some degree, in a rush to complete the cover on our final day. The oven itself is very similar to the example I sent him, which is why the dial settings are so weird - I don’t think he understood I didn’t want exactly that image, and again, it’s my opinion he rushed the background images because he took so long on the portraits. I’m very satisfied with the portraits and some of them (Puma) are actually full sized and show more of her than is used in the cover.

I also chose Felipe as his DeviantArt is over 8 years old, which is way before AI existed. Felipe Poveda is not a connoisseur of this genre and also not a native English speaker, so I think some of what I was going for was lost in translation, both in language and genre. At the end of the day, I am satisfied with the cover even though the background images left me a bit disappointed - if that had been more time, I would’ve had him work more on that part.

So, I hope that answers some of the questions/concerns in this thread. I’d like to reiterate that none of this came together quickly (art was 1 month turnover, story was 200+ hours of writing over four dedicated months) and that on my end, every decision/choice/characterization/sequence was super intentional. Nothing that has happened at any point in my production or commissioning of this didn’t go through the highest vetting process I’m capable of.

Thanks,
Strict-Smile2087

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I don’t see the cover as “obvious” ai, but it could be. One test could be the size. Ai struggles with 2k+ images. And use of ai resize from smaller ai output is fairly recognizable too.

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This reminds me of that freeware game with AI illustrations, which got an updated commercial release with all-new illustrations ostensibly made by a real human illustrator, but which still looked like AI to me. Do you know which one I’m thinking about?

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I’m guessing you mean The Roottrees are Dead?

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Another reason to hate AI is how it seems to derail any conversation it’s mentioned sooner or later until it becomes the topic of the conversation independent of what the original topic was

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Thanks, that’s the one! I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed this.

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This sort of sets off alarm bells. The oven image is probably the main portion that screamed “AI” to me (especially the dial symbols). The characters have that general vibe, but that can be down to the image generator mimicking a (potentially very common) style and as you say Felipe was obviously capable of producing that kind of work before they existed. At the same time, though, I can see a truly obvious AI image in the header of one of his journals and other commissions in his gallery (including this one) that strongly suggest AI use. The baby in that image is in a significantly different style to the adults, and other depictions of that same baby in the other “Children’s Tale” commissions are inconsistent with one another, which is a real AI tell (and seemingly a really weird/inconvenient thing for someone to do on purpose?).

When you say you think he was “in a rush to complete the cover on our final day,” do you have any reason to believe these weren’t started earlier? As in, did you get the coloured character images and have to remind Felipe that you’d asked for backgrounds too? As Bruno says, ten characters is already hundreds of dollars worth of art (though I don’t know what you paid - and I can understand sinking significant money into a 200,000 word piece!). But if Felipe sent over multiple extra complete images on request in the final 24 hours, it’s hard to imagine they were done by hand, even painting over exactly what you sent.

The other thing I wonder is if you explicitly mentioned the IFComp rule against AI to Felipe? It seems entirely possible that nobody was trying to pull one over on anyone here. You’ve written a substantial chunk of interactive fiction and commissioned a cover for it, and I gather that cover mostly matches what you asked for. It seems possible (though I’m not sure how likely) that we’re seeing an AI-generated oven etc. added as a last-minute background to characters that were at least partially drawn by Felipe. I feel as though it might be worth asking him.

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I am not sure how to quote others in my responses, but yes, Edmund, I’d agree. This is the longest discussion about my game so far, and it has nothing to do with my actual game itself, which is frustrating.

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I may not have explained this as clearly last night, but I’ll try again here:

The oven itself on the cover art is clearly based on a random example I grabbed off of google to show Felipe the idea of what kind of oven (large, stainless steel) I wanted. He more or less drew that exact oven (the original has the same dial symbols) and looking at that example I sent him, it may have been AI photo itself. I think his specificity in that image was just a misunderstanding in translation (he’s a native Spanish speaker) or just a lack of time to finish the background art itself to as high a standard as he did the portraits.

Yes, I had colored character images coming in at different intervals in the 1-2 weeks leading up to the deadline, but not all 10 of them until the final day. They are based on the line drawings that I approved weeks before. Felipe was also clearly awake in the middle of the night his timezone (3-4am) trying to finish it the cover art in the final days. I even think personally some of the final portraits I got sooner are better colored than the ones I got later, again, as he probably had to rush a bit to meet the deadline. At the end of the day, I’m happy with all 10 character portraits, which was most important to me.

And yes, I did mention MY rule that I was specifically looking to hire a non AI artist to go with my non AI story. We talked about it, and I trusted him to do his part of the work on his end without micromanaging out of respect for him as an artist. l also frankly had to let go of control of that part of the project for my sanity as I needed every free minute to finish my story.

I appreciate all of the conversation here, but I feel like I’m on trial here and I’d much rather talk about my story, which I still firmly believe is excellent and I stand by. If anyone would like to continue conversation about my game itself, or any parts of this review, I’ll gladly engage with any feedback, positive or negative. If anyone feels they need to report me for a rule violation after all of this, you’re free to proceed with whatever you feel is right, of course.

Thank you,

Strict-Smile2087

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As is usual for AI, it’s not so much that AI causes a certain behavior, but it just makes a human flaw worse. When people don’t like something, and think that they’re seeing the thing they don’t like, but have no actual proof, they’ll tend to go off on wild tangents of speculation and derail everything. The phrase “witch hunt,” which this has kind of turned into, is a good example.

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That’s fair. Edmund made a good point about this topic pretty much sucking the oxygen out of any conversation and even though I strongly suspect there are AI elements in the cover I’m also convinced that your submission as a whole is a good-faith effort and I’m not interested in reporting it.

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I engage artists on Fiverr semi-regularly, but I am no longer convinced they aren’t using AI tools for their work. It makes sense. They can produce high quality results super fast and make more money.

So now the problem isn’t directly using AI, but finding an ethical graphic artist that works under whatever conditions you expect and this requires trust.

It’s all a very slippery slope.

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I’ve got to say this whole thread feels like someone lost out of any kind of due process. They were guilty first and it seems like the takeaway is that they might still be but no-one feels the need to say anything.

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This will be the #1 construct of art going forward.

Everyone: Is it AI? Probably?

Artist: It is not.

Everyone: Prove it. Oh you can’t. Whatever.

Yes - this is very bad and very sad.

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No one’s on trial here, since it seems to have been generally agreed from the beginning that no one wanted to bring the Comp authorities into it. Rather, it seems like several people were concerned that an author might have been scammed by an unscrupulous cover artist, and upon ascertaining that the author was fine with what they got, those people seem largely content to drop it.

In terms of whether it’s possible to avoid an unscrupulous cover artist who traces AI-generated images, I would like to suggest that it may be helpful to understand the amount of time and effort required for the type of image you’re asking for (size, level of detail, number of figures, et cetera) and what a scrupulous artist would be charging for it. If the thing you want would typically cost, say, $2000 if someone were really entirely doing it from scratch and someone offers to do it for you for $200, they are probably up to something unsavory, which may range from “using AI for your commission” to “straight-up just scamming you and not planning to deliver the image.”

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The really sad thing here is that this discussion is neither about interactiveness nor fiction, nor story, or writing. Its about a cover image. That’s like discussing the greatest musicians and rock bands based on album covers. Its stupid nonsense and it will continue as long as everyone nazi-polices anything resembling AI. If this is the future of the IFCOMP, count me out.

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