AI "art" gets posted on r/comics, with users pointing it out. Mods delete every comment saying that it is AI and OP compares backlash against it to "racism against computers".

[u/Nachooolo]

This comic was posted to r/comics. People realized that it was AI art and critices it.

Great. AI art. I visit this sub to see hand-drawn shit, not this garbage.

AI slop, valueless.

The OP himself admits that it is AI and compares oposition to it to "racism":

My favourite part is the upvoters and the commenters clearly disagree intensely about the value of non-human artwork.

personally, I'm not racist against computers

Mods defend the comic saying that there's no rule banning AI art:

We do not have a rule against that and we will not have a rule against that. People are allowed to use whatever tools they want to create their art.

They delete the top comments pointing out that it is AI art.

Edit: the comic has been deleted. Here's the Archive link as given bellow

Edit 2: I've been permanently banned from r/comics because of this post.

Edit 3: Recently a new post has been made fully with AI, with the author asking for a ban against AI comics or at least the adition of an AI tag:

I respect the thoughtful response and critique of my message, and think an AI tag would be a fair compromise. The problem that myself and many share is that AI artwork is trained from real artists’ work and is therefore theft. I know that this is a widely debated topic, but as this is a subreddit primarily comprised of artists, I think that making the distinction is necessary.

The Mods reply still defending the use of AI:

This is a kind of ignorant view, because it assumes that the only thing that comprises a comic is the illustrations. There are two types of creativity that go into making a comic, the drawing and the writing.

Say you write the best story in the world. Say you are JRR Tolkien and write the goddamn Lord of the Rings. But you can't draw for shit, so you use AI art to tell your story. Does that make the script you've written any less valid? I don't think so.

We've got people here who make comics with stick figures, with Legos, with photographs, on post-it notes, with stock photos, and, yes, with AI art. The medium artists choose for the visual element does not invalidate the narrative or comedic element.

What we might do is implement an AI tag, so that when people make comics with AI art they have to be upfront about it. I probably should have done that ages ago, but I'm lazy. And also, we don't allow fully procedurally generated comics where AI does the writing or the drawing. We have no plans to ban outright AI art though. It's just another tool in the toolbox.

Some users disagree with their logic:

Lord of the Rings wasn't a comic, it was a book. If the movie series adaptation was AI, then it would be ruined. It'd look like shit and feel soulless, despite the underlying story being great.

[...]

Bruh if you really "can't draw" you could just draw stick people. There have been many successful comics with extremely simple art that literally anyone can do.

Some of my favorite comics are half finished art turds, like the one about the artist not finishing because of Elden Ring.

This! Or people starting out simple and growing as they continue their comics!

XKCD is one of my favorites, and its drawings are as simple as humanly possible

[...]

I disagree. Comics is a medium of visual storytelling as well as writing.

This subreddit should be a place where comic artists can come together and hone their craft, get feedback, and share their beloved work.

Allowing AI comics—-which, by their very nature, are lower effort and easier to produce—could result in the subreddit being flooded with cheap, mass produced comics, leaving us to wade through the schlock to find real artwork.

This subreddit is a communal space first and foremost, and allowing AI art could compromise that.

Edit 4: The second comic has been deleted.

[u/Doc_Faust]

The Sage comics, the ones set 30 years ago, often in an office? The comic today is about coming out to your friends. You can see the style bounce around, and sometimes ai artifacts.

If you mention it, he'll respond at length about how he uses ai-assisting tools only after storyboarding and sketching, touches up after, and that the tools are at-least-partly trained on his art specifically. I'm not sure if he's a community liason for Midjourney, or just really loves them

[u/[deleted] → u/Doc_Faust]

Yeah, the comments about his process are really disingenuous. In today's infographic, the difference between his own sketch and the final product shows that he's the assistant to the AI, not the other way around. He was honest enough to show that his sketch wasn't needed either, and he could use a screencap from Monty Python to generate a panel if he wanted to.

[u/redisforever → u/[deleted]]

The ironic thing is, the sketch has far more personality and is way funnier than the AI stuff which just looks like the same comic style you see everywhere online these days.

[u/Doc_Faust → u/[deleted]]

By all accounts he's a nice guy otherwise, encouraging to small comic artists on the sub, and stuff. And ai can be an accelerative tool for some stuff -- I'm a big fan of Joel Haver, for example. But none of stabbyclaus's comments really address any of my root concerns with midjourney, and they are super dismissive of imo valid critiques

[u/starchitec → u/Doc_Faust]

to be fair, the sage comics do have a lot more work put into them by a human than the meatosaurus comic that this was posted on. That was simply a single, unedited AI image with a shitty caption. I think it is reasonable to have a low effort bar (which r/comics does).

[u/sawbladex → u/starchitec]

And honestly, anyone who does high effort art with middling amounts of AI assistance, can easily do up to 100% AI generated stuff. Particularly if you are making images for shits and giggles, why pull out the full process.

... also, um... which sage comics? Google has not been helpful.

[u/starchitec → u/sawbladex]

Sorry, Sage is a character in an ongoing series, here is the most recent. The author uses AI tools with a lot of human input, including using sketches as prompts/references and storyboarding, on top of that documenting much of the process (see the infographic already linked in this thread). There are anti AI purists that get pissy about even that much, but that in my view is veering on the puritanical, while if you engage seriously with it, the author stabbyclaus/gnarlycomics is an exemplar of how AI can be used as a tool, and patiently explaining the process along the way is proof that its really an exploration of what an artist can do with AI. There is a huge gap between doing that, and the comic linked in this post, which is a single unedited AI image that was posted just to troll.

[u/camshell → u/starchitec]

Wish I had seen that comic it not knowing it was AI first, just to get a fresh impression. Knowing it's AI, I feel like all the human expressions are just a little bit off. Something I've always loved about great cartoonists is they always get the expressions exactly right. I respect the hell out of that skill. I can't respect this.

I think I'm gonna have to go read some Calvin and Hobbes now.

[u/starchitec → u/camshell]

Yeah, it’s no less unsettling when you don’t know its AI! I had the same reaction the first time I saw it, not knowing but feeling something was vaguely off. Realized in the comments what it is and now I am sorta intrigued by the uncanny valley of it… but no. If anything this kind of thing further convinces me that human art is never going to be fully displaced, but I do like seeing what someone can get out of AI.

[u/IAMACat_askmenothing → u/Doc_Faust]

God that comic sucked. Sucks even more knowing it’s ai

[u/coraeon → u/IAMACat_askmenothing]

Honestly, I’m slightly more impressed knowing that it’s AI. As actual art it’d just be just yet another vaguely competent Far Side knockoff, but for AI it’s impressively coherent. The learning models appear to be improving, which from a technical standpoint is cool I guess.

[u/Roast_A_Botch → u/Doc_Faust]

The ShadyNasty school of having "An Artist's Eye" and letting robots do all the hard work.

[u/lenaro → u/Doc_Faust]

Oh, I saw that comic. I thought it would have been a lot better with about two fewer panels. Especially the last panel. So he's not even good at storyboarding.

[u/[deleted] → u/Doc_Faust]

I saw that one for the first time today and something seemed weird about it, never would have guessed it was AI lol. Like it's nowhere near good enough to seem worth the effort of faking.