this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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Edit: I accept I am wrong here. His style looks like AI slop to me. I see his responses in the screenshots. I'm wrong. I'll keep my statement about slop as-is, though, since it's true.
HELLO THERE!
DID YOU KNOW USING AI SLOP AS A CARTOON IS HARMING THE ENVIRONMENT?
~~Brian Ahearn may make poignant cartoons, but his use of generative AI to illustrate them is sad.~~
Does he though??
I looked into it and found this from not even all that long ago.
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I'm all for calling slop out, but we gotta be sure. It does kinda have that style but I don't see other signs.
Edit: He's posted his art on Instagram since at least 2020, well before AI image models could put out anything nearly passable.
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Its already a thing where random internet users will scream "AI slop" at indie game developers and many of them spend more time arguing that it's not, showing evidence and still losing sales because of it.
The "AI slop" people have quickly gotten as annoying as the "repost" people or "and then Albert Einstein clapped" people IMO.
The wolf spider art is familiar to me. It also is distinctly different from the salamander art to my eyes. I get it, my mistake. I have edited my comment.
I don't get the joke with the beaver.
Vanilla flavoring used to be made from castoreum, which is harvested from beaver anal glands
Something something anal glands
HA! Anal glands....
https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-history-of-flavoring-food-with-beaver-butt-juice/
I, too, lie about not using AI to make money.
How do you know it's AI?
That doesn´t look at all like AI slop
The line weight and huge, perfectly centered round eyes all are hallmarks of AI slop. I accept that I'm wrong about him specifically, but this style looks like like AI to me.
Yeah as someone pointed out to me in another post. AI slop stole from artists like these hence why it looks similar and some of us have this initial negative reaction. Farking waste of air those thieving tech bros!
Is he an AI artist?
No, because such a thing doesn't exist.
But also because (at least as far as I can tell), he doesn't use AI.
Everyone uses AI
Uhhh no that's not true. Unless you're one to say everything a computer does is AI, like the NPCs in video games are "AI"
I refer specifically to generative AI that's taken prominence this decade.
There are few exceptions.
There are topics to debate on concerning AI use, but in the end art itself is always subjective. What's funny is that AI has gotten to a level now where if used carefully it might fly under the radar of AI critics, meanwhile they are attacking artists who aren't using AI but have a style that seems to them to be "fake".
I knew it was harming the environment.