Diet_Soda said:
post #6877550
Several details don't add up on this one but I don't have full confidence.
Oh my God, I steped into a little rabbit hole with this one, but here's what I found. No, the image is not AI-generated. The real artist is actually tagged in the image, qianduan mozhi, and reading his Wiki, he has a Pixiv profile, here. He's been inactive since almost a year. The description of the profile claims the artist uses Clip Studio Paint, Paint Tool SAI, and Adobe Photoshop as software to create their pictures. It also contains more or less details, like the artist gender (Male), his birthday, and a funny description wrote in chinese. I wasn't entirely satisfied with this information yet, so I checked his Twitter account too, linked in the Pixiv profile.
Created in November, 2019, constantly re-tweeting other artists, and between those re-tweets, he once re-tweeted the tweet of a dakimakura maker; why this last part is so important, tho? Before telling you why, I want to make clear the artist behaviour doesn't fit with an 'AI-artist' at all. Usually, AI artists create their accounts quickly, leaving the description empty, constantly uploading images, and they're too busy doing so to interact with their audience, or with other people in general.
Now, about the dakimakura maker part: Go again to the image in question. The description contains a BOOTH link to purchase a dakimakura with the image. If you read the description of the product, they cited qianduan mozhi as the responsible behind the artwork; of course, it's in japanese. Try to use the Google Translator as guidance here, and you'll eventually find the artist with his Japanese name, which is 末知みち, the same that appears in the Pixiv profile of the real artist. C'mon, check it out by your own. And actually, the artst has another dakimakura image under his tag, here: post #6772205 And the description contains another BOOTH link too, with, you guessed, another dakimakura!
My conclusions? The artist is real, the image is not AI-generated, and seems like the artist found a job as a part of the team behind these dakimakuras, dedicating in the creation of illustrations for a little company. That would explain his inactivity. Unfortunately, the artist style it's too similar to an AI-generated image, and he's one of the many artist who suffered the bitter pill of knowing an AI can replicate their style in an alarmingly similar way. Remember, the art-based AIs feed on external content to create the images, and this is why so many people still despise AI-generated content or anything relationed with AIs.
