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It has been ages since I posted about so-called-AI! Anyway, there was a recent ruling confirming again that bot made work is not copyrightable and idiots are yelling that since you can't tell if something is bot, the ruling is meaningless. This is BS for a number of reasons from protecting writers to a huge over-estimation of bot writing. But, let's ignore all that for a second and just treat it like every other bit of plagiarism. You can't look at a single piece in isolation and see if it's plagiarized, but if you look at a creator's portfolio.
A big mid-year project at the con I used to work for was screening all the entries for the various contests for stolen art because, woo boy, man, did people try some shit. 'We know Brazil exists!' used to be a running joke because some South American and North American fandom spaces aren't very integrated, One Neat Trick a lot of them used want to steal specifically from Brazilian artists. For context, one of our prizes was not only a guaranteed spot in the Artist Alley, it was the primo spot. This wasn't just prestige, I know for a fact some of our artists cleared 10-15K on con weekends. Not all of them did, but the established artists who treated art and shows as a part time a job? Yeah, they did. It wasn't a stable income, but if you could get into 3 or 4 of the juicy shows a year it was a very good income. A lot of why there is so much good fan art on tumblr is that those same artists are making their money at direct sales at cons. This is part of why getting into our show or not was so high drama. But anyway, story for a different day.
We quickly figured out that looking how highlights were done in the same medium made it easy mode to spot stolen art. A single artist might do highlights differently in digital versus watercolor, but typically artists don't vary that part of their process. Do the highlights blend? Have hard edges? Look shiny? Pure white or a light color wash? Is the highlight itself shaded or flat? You can also look for a highly varied understanding of human anatomy, but work with janky shoulders could just be old. A drawing with really good hands might just have had a custom-made reference picture done for it. But also, to spot tracers look to the noses. Honestly, it was the highlights that made it easy to pick out which of these things were not like the others and then check that piece to see if it was by someone else.
So, if a writer's grammar, moral POV, ideas about gender, etc are varying wildly between each bit of 'writing', yeah, it's going to be a pile of red flags. Don't look at the art, look at the artists. A lot of people are acting like being able to tell is impossible, but again this is not a new problem. Just don't look at the works in isolation.
Also, since this is a key point in how TV and Movie writing works, it's worth pointing out that shows use writer's rooms that expects people to be able to talk about and vary their scripts and also movie writing/hiring doesn't work like people think. Studios don't just read everything from every rando, especially not now!
Now, the story bit. There is another local con which I wont name, but anyone from the area will be able to logically deduce which I mean. They had a rampant art theft problem in their art show. If you are used to spotting signs of art theft it was painful, and then I did a more thorough look through and spotted art I recognized. So much was stolen from Tumblr and Teefury.
For context, the old school sci fi / fantasy cons use a juried system. If you are every juried into an art show, you can send pieces forever. So, some artists travel to jury into various cons and then those cons will show their art and sell their prints forever. It's a good set up, travel to each big con with a juried system once and then have them be your store front and do all the work for literally decades. One of the thieves in question had been sending art for over three decades.
I saw some art by an artist who I know is local and it was on a display from some guy from Ohio. I'd been trying to talk to the con about their art theft problem for ages, but they didn't want to listen. As a con with fewer members each year and feels like they are becoming irrelevant, their art show having amazing stuff was a huge point of pride and art of their advertising. They did not want to hear it, but I... I kinda snapped.
Because I am about to sound like a raging asshole, I want to make a few things very clear. I knew I was being a raging asshole, but I'd tried everything else. I'd talked to staff, concom, the board that runs that and other area cons, etc. Two years of running into walls, people blowing off the problem or being all offended. 'how dare you say our community can't create such a fine show!' Seeing even a local artist having her work stolen from a guy in Ohio made me go nuclear.
I was bad and sneakily took pictures of some of the displays and then went home sourced the originals. One guy was literally selling slight recolors of the most popular Teefury designs, and yes each was by a different artist. I loaded up the actual source for dozens of pieces on my tablet and pulled the con chair into the art show. I was all 'omg, have to show you, come here, it's so cool' to drag here in and then ambushed by publicly calling out stolen piece and stolen piece after stolen piece. She starting yelling at me to shut up. I told her I also had the contact info of each artists and pictures of the art being sold here to send to them. She said I didn't need to, she'd clean up the problem.
So, I guess that worked because she started a new staff position to screen art. All of the people I called out lost juried status at that con and other cons. However, she was also very upset with me. I contacted her a few times, wanting to know who had been hired so myself and other people could pass along useful programs, best practices, etc. She would not tell me, she said my help was not needed. I told her that yeah it was, and that I'd be checking the show next year.
Anyway, my point: I think even if bot writing becomes a lot better it will be easier to spot plagiarism just because writers can't help but put the finer points of their likes, dislikes, politics, morality, takes on gender, etc in their work. Even on shows with a very strong show runner, it's clear when so-and-so was the primary writer on an ep. I was actually confused that John Rogers hadn't written a specific L:R episode, then I found out that the episode had a large section that had been cut from his 2-part series opener. I was like okay yeah, now that makes sense. I was sure that scene was by him, and I was right.
People are yelling that we need to give in to the bots because we are powerless... who can even tell? But honestly, it's not that complicated. Just look at the work in context like we do with all writers already. It's really not that hard. People just want to make it sound impossible for reasons.
Anyway, me being correct on my little DW blog isn't even a fart in the wind, but still, yeah...
A big mid-year project at the con I used to work for was screening all the entries for the various contests for stolen art because, woo boy, man, did people try some shit. 'We know Brazil exists!' used to be a running joke because some South American and North American fandom spaces aren't very integrated, One Neat Trick a lot of them used want to steal specifically from Brazilian artists. For context, one of our prizes was not only a guaranteed spot in the Artist Alley, it was the primo spot. This wasn't just prestige, I know for a fact some of our artists cleared 10-15K on con weekends. Not all of them did, but the established artists who treated art and shows as a part time a job? Yeah, they did. It wasn't a stable income, but if you could get into 3 or 4 of the juicy shows a year it was a very good income. A lot of why there is so much good fan art on tumblr is that those same artists are making their money at direct sales at cons. This is part of why getting into our show or not was so high drama. But anyway, story for a different day.
We quickly figured out that looking how highlights were done in the same medium made it easy mode to spot stolen art. A single artist might do highlights differently in digital versus watercolor, but typically artists don't vary that part of their process. Do the highlights blend? Have hard edges? Look shiny? Pure white or a light color wash? Is the highlight itself shaded or flat? You can also look for a highly varied understanding of human anatomy, but work with janky shoulders could just be old. A drawing with really good hands might just have had a custom-made reference picture done for it. But also, to spot tracers look to the noses. Honestly, it was the highlights that made it easy to pick out which of these things were not like the others and then check that piece to see if it was by someone else.
So, if a writer's grammar, moral POV, ideas about gender, etc are varying wildly between each bit of 'writing', yeah, it's going to be a pile of red flags. Don't look at the art, look at the artists. A lot of people are acting like being able to tell is impossible, but again this is not a new problem. Just don't look at the works in isolation.
Also, since this is a key point in how TV and Movie writing works, it's worth pointing out that shows use writer's rooms that expects people to be able to talk about and vary their scripts and also movie writing/hiring doesn't work like people think. Studios don't just read everything from every rando, especially not now!
Now, the story bit. There is another local con which I wont name, but anyone from the area will be able to logically deduce which I mean. They had a rampant art theft problem in their art show. If you are used to spotting signs of art theft it was painful, and then I did a more thorough look through and spotted art I recognized. So much was stolen from Tumblr and Teefury.
For context, the old school sci fi / fantasy cons use a juried system. If you are every juried into an art show, you can send pieces forever. So, some artists travel to jury into various cons and then those cons will show their art and sell their prints forever. It's a good set up, travel to each big con with a juried system once and then have them be your store front and do all the work for literally decades. One of the thieves in question had been sending art for over three decades.
I saw some art by an artist who I know is local and it was on a display from some guy from Ohio. I'd been trying to talk to the con about their art theft problem for ages, but they didn't want to listen. As a con with fewer members each year and feels like they are becoming irrelevant, their art show having amazing stuff was a huge point of pride and art of their advertising. They did not want to hear it, but I... I kinda snapped.
Because I am about to sound like a raging asshole, I want to make a few things very clear. I knew I was being a raging asshole, but I'd tried everything else. I'd talked to staff, concom, the board that runs that and other area cons, etc. Two years of running into walls, people blowing off the problem or being all offended. 'how dare you say our community can't create such a fine show!' Seeing even a local artist having her work stolen from a guy in Ohio made me go nuclear.
I was bad and sneakily took pictures of some of the displays and then went home sourced the originals. One guy was literally selling slight recolors of the most popular Teefury designs, and yes each was by a different artist. I loaded up the actual source for dozens of pieces on my tablet and pulled the con chair into the art show. I was all 'omg, have to show you, come here, it's so cool' to drag here in and then ambushed by publicly calling out stolen piece and stolen piece after stolen piece. She starting yelling at me to shut up. I told her I also had the contact info of each artists and pictures of the art being sold here to send to them. She said I didn't need to, she'd clean up the problem.
So, I guess that worked because she started a new staff position to screen art. All of the people I called out lost juried status at that con and other cons. However, she was also very upset with me. I contacted her a few times, wanting to know who had been hired so myself and other people could pass along useful programs, best practices, etc. She would not tell me, she said my help was not needed. I told her that yeah it was, and that I'd be checking the show next year.
Anyway, my point: I think even if bot writing becomes a lot better it will be easier to spot plagiarism just because writers can't help but put the finer points of their likes, dislikes, politics, morality, takes on gender, etc in their work. Even on shows with a very strong show runner, it's clear when so-and-so was the primary writer on an ep. I was actually confused that John Rogers hadn't written a specific L:R episode, then I found out that the episode had a large section that had been cut from his 2-part series opener. I was like okay yeah, now that makes sense. I was sure that scene was by him, and I was right.
People are yelling that we need to give in to the bots because we are powerless... who can even tell? But honestly, it's not that complicated. Just look at the work in context like we do with all writers already. It's really not that hard. People just want to make it sound impossible for reasons.
Anyway, me being correct on my little DW blog isn't even a fart in the wind, but still, yeah...
