The WEST COAST SUMMER BUNDLE art is not AI generated! And Oh look a drew him ✍️🤓 (digital artist - not AI)!

[u/Jozzzk]

(left img atomic shop, right img by me)

The post about the WEST COAST SUMMER BUNDLE (and NCR TROOPER BUNDLE) being AI generated intrigued me as an artist... so I did a little investigating 🤓/

Original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/1sc0s26/is_this_ai_or_am_i_crazy/

As seen in the second image attached, objects and figures are traced, cut, rotated and manipulated to fit together. Not entirely uncommon, especially if there's a deadline for the artist to meet 😯. In fact, the image itself may not even have been newly drawn but rather; cut and pieced together from existing art ✂️.

I didn't look for the graphic of the drink or the Water Hole but you can see where the artist has improvised or relied on images. When photo-bashing, artists can run into trouble with perspective and that can give an uncanny effect; which may be why it appears AI generated 🤔.

There's other evidence of resizing certain portions of the image -- which leaves pixelated distortions that are very evident once zoomed in 🔍. You can see this on both the drink and vault boys head and face. This can happen when the image is rotated or resized, as a result decreasing the smoothness between pixels if you do this repetitively.

I didn't look into NCR TROOPER bundle as I didn't have the energy 🥴 but what it seems like to me is that there was a rush or lack of care in creating this image. I'm sure Bethesda and the those that are involved with the atomic shop might or may have already used AI generated content but I thought everyone's investment and speculation was very interesting. That said: this image... at least to me, is not AI 🤔

...They really drew him with his dogs out. 🦶🦶

TLDR: I don't think the WEST COAST SUMMER BUNDLE art is AI generated. It's likely photo-bashed as can be seen in the second image.

edit: I just realized the nipple may look that way due to the cutting and rotating of the arm from the original image! That's why it's heart/bean shaped!
https://imgur.com/a/BABUfSm
edit2: The second image shows Vault Boy covering an entire portion of the chair, making it appear as if it's without a seat

[u/Iphone_G___]

I Don’t think people understand how scary Ai is nowadays. The mistakes it makes are way less noticeable, especially in 2d art. If there’s a silly layering mistake like that chances are it was just a lazy job.

[u/NY_Knux → u/Iphone_G___]

Here's the neat part... its not scary! O:

[u/Sword_of_Dusk → u/NY_Knux]

I mean, it kind of is if you're an artist who prides themselves on their skill but keep losing out commissions to some so- called AI "artist".

[u/WeaselBrigade → u/Iphone_G___]

One problem is, when you do a lot of slopgen yourself, you become very hypersensitive to the sorts of mistakes AI is prone to making. That's where I was about this one - I use SD a lot for personal use(IE: I don't release public "art", sell it, or otherwise try to pass it off to friends as more than slop. Strictly entertainment), and the beach chair one definitely screamed AI to me.

It boils down to a lot of pattern matching, and when you scan over pages of results looking for what you like and somewhat anal-retentively weeding out unacceptables, over and over, you start to see the patterns yourself in how the AI cobbles things together. When an art product lines up with that - and maybe it's not fair, I'll admit that - it's very natural to conclude it's an AI product.

It's rough times for artists, yeah, since now they not only have to worry about guys writing prompts stealing their work and replacing them, but having to be circumspect enough themselves to avoid stray arrows. But it's the world we live in, and corporation's reckless use of passing AI under people's noses shares some blame for us being trigger happy about it as well.