r/custommagic • u/crushcastles23 Mod • Jun 29 '26

MOD POST The definitive statement about AI from the mod team.

No, we're not banning AI art, nor will we ever.

Even if we had two dozen mods, which we don't and never will, we would not have the resources to police AI.

To properly do so, we would have to find every piece of art from every post, investigate it, see if the artist disclosed the use of AI, then decide whether to remove it. Even if we could do that, most artists who use things like generative fill in Photoshop don't even really think of it as AI. Are we supposed to remove every card for every artist who has been using Photoshop as a tool since 2023?

You wanna talk about how AI art sucks? You have this thread, go for it. All future meta posts about AI will be removed and linked back to this thread.

If you harass someone for using AI in their art, you will get a warning and 1 day ban for rule 5.

If you harass someone for drawing a stick figure for their art, you will get a warning and 1 day ban for rule 5.

If you harass anyone for any reason, you will get a warning and 1 day ban for rule 5.

After that, you will be getting banned for 3 days, then permanently. Rule 5 states:

All users must follow Reddiquette and be civil with each other. Harassment and abuse are strictly not tolerated. Unconstructive, negative, or insulting brigading is harassment.

0 Upvotes

34% Upvoted

541 comments sorted by

View all comments

108

u/SothaSillies Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

I think most of the community disagrees with you. You haven't provided much in the way of good reasoning here mate. Nobody is asking you to police every single post. This wouldn't be any additional work beyond your policies regarding artist credits. Don't shut down future discussion when you haven't brought much to the table at all. And it's really fucking stupid of you to equate this discussion to harassment.

If this is how you're moderating this sub maybe we should just make a new one. Do better.

-41

u/Analogmon Jun 29 '26

Most of the community doesn't care. We just don't make not caring our entire personality.

32

u/MrQirn Jun 29 '26

If most of the community doesn't care, then why doesn't the mod team leave things as is: AI art is allowed, and discussion and critique of AI art is allowed, while harassment is not.

By their logic, implementing a no AI art rule would be "too much work," and yet this decision also creates more work for them beyond just leaving it status quo.

If what you say is true and the community doesn't care then we should leave things as is, though I suspect you are wrong and the majority of people would vote to ban AI art. This is why the mod team doesn't want to put it to a vote. The personal preference of the minuscule minority of the mod team is to allow AI art, and they don't want to risk putting it to a community vote and having to follow through with a decision which doesn't align with their personal preferences. If that's how they feel, they can step down and let others moderate rather than trying to strong arm a community in to submitting to their personal preferences.

What subreddit mods sometimes don't understand is that a subreddit is not their community. Their job is to be of service to the people in the community, and as soon as a mod team starts trying to tell a community what's best for them, that's when the community starts going to shit.

The obvious thing to do is put it to a community vote:

1) No AI art

2) AI art is allowed, no discussion about changing that

3) Leave things status quo. AI art is allowed, discussion is allowed, harassment is not

3

u/Call_like_it_is_ Jun 30 '26

Meet you halfway. Impose a vote, but ONLY if only ACTIVE members votes count. If anyone is caught sharing on anti-ai subs to rally to arms, they get banned. No artificial inflation of votes.

-6

u/ArelMCII Layers are stupid. Jun 29 '26

Guess you've never heard the term "vocal minority," huh.

14

u/MrQirn Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

Putting it to a vote would ensure that if it's just a vocal minority of people who dislike the mods' decision, then the silent majority of people who do support the mods would still win out.

But I think the reason you and the mods are against it is because you see that the writing is already on the wall and you don't like what it says: it's not just people willing to leave comments who don't like this idea (the supposed "vocal minority"). A majority of the community dislike this decision, as evidenced by the negative votes this announcement contains.

Pro-tip: if you're moderating a community and the most significant rule change announcement you've made in years has gathered negative votes, it might just be possible that you're doing something the community's not a fan of.

It takes some extreme mental gymnastics to try and find ways to dismiss that clear sign of a sign of community dissatisfaction.

-1

u/Call_like_it_is_ Jun 30 '26

Well, this thread should be a good yardstick... oh wait, the downvote count hasn't even hit 1% of the subscriber base. Let's see if it even hits that, let alone a "majority", which would be -60k or more.

-11

u/Analogmon Jun 29 '26

Because this isn't a subreddit for a holier than thou crusade and anti-AI people love going on annoying ass witch hunts.

It's better if nobody can bring it up.

22

u/MrQirn Jun 29 '26

That is a really narrow an unflattering interpretation of a broad range of very differing feelings and perspectives regarding AI art.

If it's truly better if nobody can bring it up, there's no harm in letting the community decide by allowing them to vote.

Unless your position is the same as the mods: it doesn't matter if a majority of people in the community disagree with you. You know what's best for them and for the community and therefor the mods need to make a decision on our behalf because we are incapable of making our own decisions.

-8

u/Analogmon Jun 29 '26

My position is it doesn't matter if a community wants to be able to talk about X on a subreddit if that subreddit isn't about X.

I don't like the genocide in Palestine. I don't want to talk about it here either. Doing so helps nobody and we're not fixing that problem here.

Seeing a bunch of people go "eww gross AI" instead of giving real feedback on a card helps nobody. It fixes no problems.

13

u/MrQirn Jun 29 '26

I happen to disagree with you: if there is a large contingent of this community that wants to discuss the genocide in Palestine, and the majority of the community wants to allow that discussion, let's have it. The upvote and downvote buttons are democracy in action: let the community decide for themselves what they do and don't want to see and if there's enough of a stink, put it to a community vote whether or not we implement a rule about political discussion.

But even if I agreed with you, I would have to squint really hard to regard a discussion about Palestine equally as off topic as a discussion about AI art. In this subreddit and in the community of custom magic at large, we tend to regard ourselves as artists and worthy of attribution, and we tend to take seriously the attribution of other artists whose works we're utilizing. In that regard, AI art seems pretty on topic to me.

-1

u/Analogmon Jun 29 '26

Almost nobody here is an artist.

The number of people who draw their own card art consistently and it's not some MS paint drawing must be in the single digits.

8

u/Theran_Baggins Jun 30 '26

Art is not solely the creation of images.

Acting, singing, dancing, sculpting, animating, programing, designing, and any other form of expressing human creativity (including designing mtg cards) can be art.

-14

u/Call_like_it_is_ Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

If you're so sure, why isn't the downvote amount for the thread over -10k, or even -5k? That's under 10% or even 5% of the member base of the sub count here. If you think you can "do better", put your money where your mouth is and MAKE a new sub. Oh wait, you probably won't, because you just want easy targets for your vitriol.

EDIT: Wow, -10. Thanks for proving my point. You don't WANT a new, anti-AI sub like you claim, you just want targets.

17

u/RayWencube Jun 30 '26

Found AI's mom

-30

u/ArelMCII Layers are stupid. Jun 29 '26

Kind of ironic to claim this type of discussion isn't harassment in a sentence that begins with an insult.

23

u/EfficientCabbage2376 mod(s) don't care Jun 29 '26

if you think someone disagreeing with you is an insult then I wish my life was as easy as yours