What they have in common of course is that they are there specifically to be meta about it, but nonetheless they were utilized in some way. If we were to be impartial about it in general then, even if we had that Speakonia exception, we would have to treat these the same way, and admittedly the first movie specifically is quite well thought and worked on.

While there are no other animations I could find there seems to be art that is also AI assisted like this one:

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@Anamonator I'm concerned that the title of the thread + the fact the movie is still up are misleading people to come in and think that Newgrounds is kind of allowing AI in general now or whatever, could you edit in a disclaimer on the top of the main post to clarify why the movie is still up?

I would edit the post if I could. You can’t edit a post after 30 minutes. It’s really stupid.

meta-commentary is fine, like harrypartridge mocking goanimate, and i think that first video is good and important, but that second video is meh, nothing lost there if it got deleted. And that art example is a bit of a stretch by what degree genAI was involved in its creation. It's nice they disclosed it, but it only really gave them a color palette to work with. If these are the good/decent examples then I'm even more on board with blanket-banning genAI that's used un-satirically

From what I understand Glolo Trees by @Cardbordtoaster doesn't use AI Art in the final product. It was only used as a reference upon which the piece is (quite loosely) inspired, like a redraw. I don't think it really counts as AI-Assisted art by today's standards. Back when it was made, AI Art was still a novelty and it couldn't produce passable output. At least most of the time. Anyhow, It wasn't as big of a hazard to creativity that it is now. Alas.

But regardless, I'd have to MASSIVELY praise the artist for being transparent about their use of GenAI, even when it's not visible in the end result. Professional graphic designers who work in a mixed semi-manual style of workflow don't do that. And I really wish they would be this transparent. You know?

So, to put it simple. I think that today's standards are a bit different and thus NG should be more strict when it comes to using AI-generated imagery and sound in portal submissions, especially art and audio. I agree with TangoStar in the sense that that Newgrounds is a place where people can escape from the trends found on the big platforms. One of those trends being overreliance on AI Art. But also other tiresome trends. Like, I dunno, the retarded short form vertical video style that's all over YT, TikTok and other social media?

Newgrounds should stick to its premise and push high effort over trends, as it always has.

I agree with this.

All the music was AI generated, actually.

He's lying. No one has voice cracks like that. I have used Suno AI before (for fucking around with it, not for actually making music) and I have heard this voice on it before.

The voice is AI.

Honest opinion but if Newgrounds goes the route of banning Ai all together what is that going to mean for submissions that have already been submitted and used a minimal amount of Ai? Will that mean there would be some clause to prevent those submissions from being deleted or would they end up being deleted either way?

Personally I'm not exactly going to be the one to preach what should happen but at the same time I'm not gonna complain if Newgrounds continues to be lenient with Ai or if they decide to ban it all together. From the looks of it, "Dearest Friends" seems to be slowly losing it's rating in the end so it wouldn't pass me if over time it does end up getting blammed at this rate.

you can't get blammed after judgement...

Rules have changed before; usually if something from before the change violates a new rule, it doesn't get penalized ex post facto. The only time people would go back to old submissions is if they're causing some kind of legal issue like with the initial implementation of DMCA. In some utopian future where all generative AI is rightfully legally designated as theft and plagiarism and there's actual resources dedicated to scrubbing the internet of its polluting influence, we'd have some work to do, but uhhhh, it ain't looking good. Unlikely.

I'm not really concerned about future-proofing policy so much as doing what's right for the moment. I lean heavily towards zero tolerance, with exceptions that are so niche they might as well not exist, and as everything else gets more inundated and permissive of it, I think it's all the more important to set ourselves apart from that. I think we're at a good equilibrium right now where whatever isn't explicitly verboten is socially stigmatizing, like you mentioned. Seen games get knocked for having AI generated achievement icons, animations get hit for using AI backgrounds, and so on. If the culture here continues to be vigilant and strongly against its use, we don't really need an over-the-top enforcement mechanism. It's better to have our anti-AI stance supported from the ground-up and have the top-down enforcement step in on more egregious cases.

Not just losing its rating, but also witch hunted and review-bombed, many of which go against the Review Guidelines

Please DO NOT:

• Harass the author to upload specific content.

(ie. to make stuff that uses zero AI, purely out of anger)

• Complain about the entry getting featured or winning an award.

Two reviews literally do that.

• Tell the author their content doesn't belong on Newgrounds. We will determine that.

Tom determined that its original removal wasn't valid and updated the rules, and THEN you spew hate.

No matter how much you think AI shouldn't be on this site, this isn't on either.

Everything you said is valid except maybe the witch hunting accusation. If you are referring to me finding Abdragon26's YouTube channel, I only did that out of curiosity about his work. Not to encourage harassment or witch hunting which I clearly state.

If there is any witch hunting going on, I'm not aware of or condone. This guy fucked up but he does not deserve harassment.

And in my review, I told Abdragon26 about the various resources on newgrounds so he wont make the same mistake again.

In fairness, even before I was aware of Tom's Verdict on the video I did rate it zero hid my rating, but eventually I opted to make my rating visible and explain how I felt the animation based on what I saw was low quality and point out that was a glaring issue based on what I saw with or without the Ai where I felt the rating was deserved.

I felt that I shouldn't pull my punches if I was gonna rate it that low and at least explain why.

Thats about as constructive as I could have been because Abdragon could have at least taken the time to do the lip syncing over at the very least but even if that was fixed I don't think I would have rated it any higher than two stars tops. It's not that impressive of an animation.

I still stand by my stance that the Ai use should have been disclosed in the description because at the very least it would have avoided this whole situation. If I'm not mistaken that is a ruke for the art portal so I am confused to why it is not the case for the animation portal rules.

So basically, the exceptions are:

1) You are using obvious cases of AI in your visuals, either ironically or to specifically to highlight how sloppy it is (ie. an anti-AI viewpoint that could easily use "spoof" AI visuals drawn by hand to imitate AI flaws).

Otherwise, you are not allowed ANY AI in your visuals in serious works (eg. backgrounds), even if it's really subtle, even if it's not a majority

2) You are using TTS programs like Speakonia, in which case, you could express any Pro-AI or Anti-AI viewpoint you want. More realistic sounding AI voices that specifically imitate celebrities / YouTubers are prohibited over consent issues (even if Speakonia + itself was built off unconsenting training datat)

No mention of using Suno/Udio music in the soundtrack.

3) You are using AI images as a reference to draw something original, whether it be drawn from scratch, designs copied off the AI, traced, or colour-picked, even if the source image is buried away and never cited.

(Art Portal specifically mentions tracing, but you could trace backgrounds in Movies)

Got it! Don't you think if things are too strict, we'll start witch-hunting people for using the slightest hint of AI? Even falsely target legit artists that don't use AI, going purely off of vibes?

Just an aside, but I don't know why speakonia keeps getting brought up in the same sentence as AI gen stuff

Because Speakonia and other TTS programs are fundamentally built off the same LLM technology, even if it's a primitive version of it, as later AI voice programs like ElevenLabs, or whatever auto-dubbing Abdragon used to translate a normal voice performance of 4 people, from Arabic, into English.

So think maybe the Head approach should be taken then? A machine must be made obvious that it's a machine and really far from being or barely human like in terms of TTS and voice? As for visuals restrict machine usage to shit like filters, resolution, fps and other small technical shit? Basically keep it primitive and early/old fashioned Amish style.

If it gets too human or somebody is using the machine to generate pieces and not just technical shit like stated above, send in the claw after them.

Or the skoops approach and just send the claw if any AI were used.

That kinda comes with the territory when you're in a community that includes people that want the rules to be followed. Like literally every other rule on the site, there's gonna be people that are overzealous and start backseat modding or taking matters into their own hands in a very un-chill way.

The point that some people will be idiots is not a good case against having rules.

Even if said rules are either too lax or too draconian? As the rules currently stand, the site allows minority use and rarely goes after TTS movies, which seems like a decent compromise that should cover most "valid" use cases where AI is used honestly as a tool (eg. references, colours, upscaling, interpolation of existing roughs that a human can clean up later), even if the result sucks, whilst also banning obvious AI prompt slop.

I just don't think a movie where one random asset is AI-generated out of 20 otherwise human-made assets and animations, should be removed when a movie that uses a bit more AI (albeit not over 50%), is allowed to stay and be frontpaged (regardless of the movie's viewpoint). Otherwise, this would be hypocritical.

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And I also don't think we should be caving to an overzealous mob who's critiques are not constructive in the slightest.

Yes, you could v0te, but the problem comes when most of the "regulars" who vote and complain about low effort, probably don't know about it until after it's passed judgement, or won an award in DF's case.

And this is with the rules currently allowing minor use and after they've been updated to better reflect the site's stance.

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Point being, either you think the rules are good and you want people to follow them, or they suck and you request the site improves them, something I have done in the past with things like comic dubs and M-rated softcore.

In the case of AI, it's an ongoing debate with a ton of misrepresentation and bad faith arguments on both ends that take forever to resolve.

They could have just redrawn the AI backgrounds and traced over them to make them look real. They probably would've gotten away with it.

So we're just talking about what-ifs? Sure, it would be bad if the rules were bad, and bad if good rules are badly enforced. I don't really see a problem like that right now. Like I said before, we have a bottom-up culture that is anti-AI and they're likely to discourage its use enough that there's no need for strict moderation on those edge cases. That seems to be what's happening now: No heavy handed action from the top-down, just a lot of people expressing their displeasure at the poster of material that was partially machine-generated. We're so far away from having draconian rules about it that bringing up the hypothetical seems a bit silly.

What constitutes a mob, and who's caving to what? People are allowed to react negatively to things even if those things are technically allowed. I don't know what the problem is unless you think it should be a rule that nobody should be allowed to be mean. That's all this seems to boil down to.

The way I see it, the hard rules exist to cull the worst offenders, and we as a community can have our preferences that are not enforced, but rather expressed. Not everything needs to be a new rule, especially when a bunch of people saying "hey this sucks, I don't want to see it" is pretty effective.

Anyway:

So far, all of the negative reviews came from after this thread was made, and after Tom repealed an initial removal. By that time, most of the organic traffic would've already dried up and it recieved only one other review. The only way this could've gotten 5 additional pages of reviews was most likely through this thread, which could constitute mob mentality.

A few examples include misrepresenting the rules (minority AI allowed)

Hyperbole (claiming it's almost 100% AI, no clue as to whether this is opinion or fact), as well as ignoring the Review Guiddlines on complaining about awards

Not to mention an additional 1-2 pages I cannot show because they've probably already been removed by a moderator by now.

Does this not constitute mob mentality or a witchhunt / brigade in any way?

And it's not even the worst I've seen online. Outside of Newgrounds, antis have implied slurs, created death threats, and have falsely accused legitimate artists without a hint of nuance or checking when they started uploading, to the point that arguments

How can you tell if what is happening in the reviews represents THE Newgrounds culture, and not just a vocal minority of said culture, while the actual majority might barely make a peep, does not care about the drama, or just wants to watch stuff without second thought. Does me having nuances and doubts about the situation (not to mention having helped push Tom into getting the movie restored in the first place) make me less of a Newgrounder than someone who's more anti-AI and/or has engaged in this review party?

Note that DF stood at 3.4 stars with ~60 votes, before an additional 100+ votes knocked it down to ~2.4 stars. What do we know about those 60 people that did not always vote zero on the submission, the ones that did help it reach Daily 4th in the first place?

So, if there's a consensus among enough people, some of whom aren't being 100% accurate with their criticism, that's a mob. Got it.

As far as what the majority thinks, I'd argue the people explicitly saying what they think is a bigger indicator of what people think than some other type of person that exists in our imagination but isn't making themselves known. It would sure be crazy if our true cultural majority was people that want to have no influence whatsoever over it. They're gonna let the people that say and do things get the run of the place! Oh no!

You're likely overestimating how specially nuanced your views are compared to others. You've got a place within the culture because of how not mob-like people are here and how much of a range of opinions are tolerated. Even if you insist that everyone but you is a mindless freak, screaming in unison, sharing a single brain cell, reality doesn't really bear that out.

Thanks for keeping your last paragraph left-justified, made it less headache inducing to read.

I have to agree with Skoops here. It's not like anyone was compelled to change their mind on AI and join a mob, this thread just called attention to the movie and users who have strong opinions on AI made themselves known.

Disregarding the actual quality of some of these reviews, but you get lots of those on other submissions too.

Ok so after some thought here's what I concluded:

Currently in the guidelines for various portals it says things that can summarized as, for instance, "Don't publish stuff made in Source Filmmaker (art portal)" or "Don't publish stuff with copyrighted characters like Red Plumber or Angry Birds". Surely there might be some source filmmaker compositions out there that are high quality and not really worth deletion and it's obscenely evident how there's copyrighted characters all over this website lol. Thus in my mind clearly these don't exist to be absolute rules that must be applied at risk to every single submission. They are there to:

1. Let it be known to new users what stuff is more prone to be deleted, making them err more to the safe side
2. If something terrible is posted you can delete it without much nuance because the guidelines are straightforward

When such deletions are appealed then the reason for deletion can be elaborated, how some things are allowed to stay in the website when that one doesn't, not that the staff owes any particular explanation, but it's much simpler to have these fewer appeals than if the guidelines provided vague exceptions and would be met with many questions or assumptions that would just make things more difficult to manage. That's my theory!

Thus concerning guidelines I have rethought and I feel that indeed the more "Absolutely no AI" it screams the better. If there are exception submissions that show up as we mentioned before (Specially stuff using Speakonia) truly there is no harm of it just being a silent exception. This is mostly only relevant to the clock crew anyways and I don't think anybody will have an issue with it.

Now the only reason this thread exists is because an animation that uses it earned a daily pick placing and somebody noticed the usage of AI elements. I can't prove it but I'm confident that the userbase pretty much unanimously dislikes AI, and since it got through with an average score up to daily picks I believe it's a fair assessment that the thing is that people just did not catch up on it using genAI. So, maybe, the issue might not be particularly at the website or the system or guidelines but just that people aren't very well informed in how to catch on these signs yet. I know there are a lot of resources that aid with that around the website but maybe they should be a bit more visible, as many people don't regularly visits the forums or checks on artist news. Of course there is also people that just watches 5 seconds of animation and votes based on what they see, although I'm not sure what can be done about that.

"Active ObjectX" is a real problem. I reported him multiple times for ai use and even messaged Tom Fulp about this. He's known to make parodies on ai use but then he relies on it heavily in his own work. A complete hypocrite. He's trying to blur the lines on what is acceptable on this site. Which is why speaking out is important and spreading awareness is important.

im scared of ban T_T my comment:

WHO? WHO? THEM? WHERE? WHY? WHO'S? WHO?

WHO'S WHO? THEY? THEY THEM?

AI OI Ei Oi AI!

Abdragon26 X Pillow (ChatGPT)

Im Going To Delete It!!! This Hapened to "2 Gay Cats"

I feel like the "mob" were inclined to act on their own accord and already share the same anger mentality and biases towards anything using AI (even stuff with mixed human creation), rather than a deliberate targeted campaign. Anger is known to cloud your judgement, and seeing a previously removed AI-assisted sub (albeit one that doesn't even use a majority and arguably didn't break the rules) does sound like something that would rile those people up.

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Introducing a stricter AI ban so close to this backlash just seems like it would show people that they can get whatever they want if they complain hard enough, even if their problem in question did nothing to hurt them first.

There's this thing I've seen on anti-AI subreddits (IK, Reddit sucks, bite me). Pro-AI and debate subreddits such as r/aiwars and r/DefendingAiArt, although they almost never touch on art-dedicated sites like NG, they discourage brigading. They ban crossposting, and they go as far as make you censor the usernames of non-public figures to avoid such a scenario, while subs like r/antiai does not have such a measure.

Anamonator could've easily not included a link to the movie and started discouraging brigading from the the get-go, but he didn't, and this is a k

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I will note that there do exist pro-AI people that will hate on artists and act just as maliciously as some antis, but there are also many pro-AI people that are just chill. Or people that oppose only pure AI slop (which is banned here anyway), but are otherwise open-minded, Or just hate annoying antis like they would an annoying vegan.

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I believe there's probably a large subset of NG users who don't particularly care much for AI discourse, much less this little social experiment, and aren't as terminally online as our typical forum regulars, nor do they share the same hate-boners. The views of Wegra do not necessarily represent the views of ~5,191 users currently online in this very moment.

There is no way to know whether at least 2,000 of them are strictly anti-AI enough to think the current AI guidelines are unpopular and need pushing down on.

This goes into another point where I think a lot of the people who are totally against Ai are not better than the ones who are for it.

The thing is, most of those people generally do not understand nuance and see things as black and white. While I think it's important to be critical of people who use Ai, it should also be important to be critical of anyone who has an extreme stance for or against it.

Far as the whole "Clanker" term goes I actually find that rather funny. Personally I don't see this as something that's in the same vein as derogatory words that actually relate to someone's physical identity so getting salty over something like that is a bit silly if you ask me.

Want to know something that genuinely wish for that would be helpful?

If the rules weren't buried in the site's wiki and there were actual links that would direct people to them would be helpful because how many of these people actually go out of their way into the wiki to read the rules? Putting aside the one time they read Newgrounds ToS when they register?

The last couple of times I engaged with threads of this nature I literally had to point out the nuances in the rules written for the art portal specifically and people still wanted to put up a shit fit about the grey areas concerning what would be proper use of Ai.

That said, from what I've observed there is a good portion of users who make art that isn't particularly outstanding who just want to get on a pedestal to shout about how they don't use Ai for their work even though the work they produce isn't anything beyond generic, or generally aren't experienced artists and haven't gotten past that beginner level. At that point I'd have to ask are they more focused on actually improving their craft or just here to complain about a trend outside of their control?

And yes yes I'm aware of how it's an evolving technology and we can predict how it will turn out 10 years from now but I really wish a lot of these people stopped fear mongering and kept it to a point where their criticism actually says something, not just saying "Ai Bad"