I've been noticing posts where people have uploaded art that's very obviously just someone else's OC and was wondering if there was anything in the rules about this, and if not, whether or not a rule will be added regarding this.
I was also wondering if it would be possible to file takedown requests for such artworks.

I reached out to the owner of the character in the posts below and they had not given permission for these pieces and they were very upset upon seeing them. I don't think there's anything wrong with AI generated art, but this kind of stuff is absolutely crossing a line and I hope that this will be addressed.
https://e6ai.net/posts/52473
https://e6ai.net/posts/52366

jaz said:
I've been noticing posts where people have uploaded art that's very obviously just someone else's OC and was wondering if there was anything in the rules about this, and if not, whether or not a rule will be added regarding this.
I was also wondering if it would be possible to file takedown requests for such artworks.

I reached out to the owner of the character in the posts below and they had not given permission for these pieces and they were very upset upon seeing them. I don't think there's anything wrong with AI generated art, but this kind of stuff is absolutely crossing a line and I hope that this will be addressed.
https://e6ai.net/posts/52473
https://e6ai.net/posts/52366

send this to the owner of the character, they can always submit a takedown request if anyone makes AI of their character
https://e6ai.net/takedowns/new

additional note: make a character tag just to be sure to be marked

Oh, that's an interesting one. So people can request their character removed? I didn't even think about it.
So if we get Vivienne "VivziePop" Medrano takedown on all Loona images, we just get 1\50 of the website wiped?
Is this that simple, or are there any limits?

Also, what defines "legal copyright holder of the character(s)"? I'm pretty sure copyrighting a character design properly requires some legal actions?
Or can i just generate (or draw) random designs and "copyright" them all? That sounds... Unhealthy?

ayokeito said:
Oh, that's an interesting one. So people can request their character removed? I didn't even think about it.
So if we get Vivienne "VivziePop" Medrano takedown on all Loona images, we just get 1\50 of the website wiped?
Is this that simple, or are there any limits?

Also, what defines "legal copyright holder of the character(s)"? I'm pretty sure copyrighting a character design properly requires some legal actions?
Or can i just generate (or draw) random designs and "copyright" them all? That sounds... Unhealthy?

My intuition tells me there should be an ethical, and hopefully legal, difference between creating fanart that is unmistakably depicting the intellectual property of some big company or vastly popular independent artist that doesn't need any protection, and stealing the ideas of a widely unknown artist who might, without even giving credit.

If you make pink furred dragon that will be also taked down because it looks too similar? As I could remeber nothing extraordinary I noticed on that character. Looks like generic pink furred dragon.

argon-42 said:
My intuition tells me there should be an ethical, and hopefully legal, difference between creating fanart that is unmistakably depicting the intellectual property of some big company or vastly popular independent artist that doesn't need any protection, and stealing the ideas of a widely unknown artist who might, without even giving credit.

But this is a vector for unethical takedowns not only for people posting on e6ai, but also on e621.

So, for example, SDXL\Pony models often produce fox images that have a black mark on their face\snout.
Literally random examples from the first page of "fox" query: post #55150 post #55538 post #55492 post #55387 post #55343
This is a model's quirk and most of the images generated produce this mark.
So am i allowed to generate (or draw, for that matter) a basic fox character with such a mark, declare it OC and takedown all generated foxes with that mark?

Yes, i understand that no one cares about ai-bros and this is likely not a problem for admins. But i personally think that there should be more clear rules for character takedowns, if we go that route. Instead of simply "tell us this wolf is your character and we'll purge all posts with them". I'm amazed no one tried (i assume) to exploit this system yet.

What I'm saying is: when you post pictures of Loona or some Zootopia character, that doesn't need any explanation. Everyone knows it's not *your* character, but fanart. But if you copy some unknown artist's character 1:1, and we are not talking just general style here, we are talking identical twins, then AT LEAST give credit to the person you stole it from, because nobody knows them and it's dishonest not to credit the "inventor" of your inspiration.

argon-42 said:
What I'm saying is: when you post pictures of Loona or some Zootopia character, that doesn't need any explanation. Everyone knows it's not *your* character, but fanart. But if you copy some unknown artist's character 1:1, and we are not talking just general style here, we are talking identical twins, then AT LEAST give credit to the person you stole it from, because nobody knows them and it's dishonest not to credit the "inventor" of your inspiration.

Yes, that would make sense. This, however, doesn't prevent takedowns. And i believe OP's problem is not really about the lack of credit.

I found no problem at all with that issue. Never tried to generate pink furried dragon, but I think that should be not problem at all to create own inspired version since AI can merge species on different proportions and on different styles. And nothing was extraordinary with Ryzia, so... Just create own version. That should be not too hard anyway. More harder is to generate exact copy.

For what it's worth, I've been seeing the uptick as well and it's been bothering me. It's well past simple fan art, and if I were the character owner I'd be pretty pissed. That's going to tickle the fears people have about AI generated art, and lead to problems down the road. Better to figure out how to manage it internally as a community now than let a 3rd party force a solution later. The takedowns are a partial solution. Need better governance overall on the topic.

crashbandit said:
I were the character owner I'd be pretty pissed.

For example no one takedown sergal or synth (vader-san). So just to be safe avoid unknown not popular characters next time and generate similar instead. Similar is not that hard than exact copy.

not reading yall because lazy
but just saying there is a difference to a person owning a character to a large network having characters, disney *can* technically takedown almost everything, takedown requests are there so it's doesn't go to court(yes it can happen for DMCA), they have legal possession of character designs, just think of like having a patent over the designs and the gears start to turn

just so you know in e621 there is an avoid posting on a bear character because company i guess said no explicit artwork or taking this to legal action, i don't remember who it was but it's there
and not everyone is fond of their own characters having been scrapped on AI

mintyflur said:
not reading yall because lazy
but just saying there is a difference to a person owning a character to a large network having characters, disney *can* technically takedown almost everything, takedown requests are there so it's doesn't go to court(yes it can happen for DMCA), they have legal possession of character designs, just think of like having a patent over the designs and the gears start to turn

I think big company not intrested on takedown because their character should be popular at any cost to bring profit. The only way trigger takedowns - you profit from that NSFW content using their characters.

yetanotheraiuser said:
I think big company not intrested on takedown because their character should be popular at any cost to bring profit. The only way trigger takedowns - you profit from that NSFW content using their characters.

No, if they don't protect it aggressively it could become public domain thus losing the rights. It's a bit counter-intuitive but that's why you see some of the weirdness. Patent and copyright law are not straight forward. There are also some that care about how their characters are portrayed for various reasons. It has an impact on their characters reputation, and on the owner's. If they are smart they are after the big picture and managing everything accordingly. For individual owners it's a lot of the same, though may be MUCH for personal for them.

Probably worth noting that for some folks their characters are like their kids. So they care a lot. They've put a lot of love and care into defining and developing them.

crashbandit said:
Probably worth noting that for some folks their characters are like their kids. So they care a lot. They've put a lot of love and care into defining and developing them.

exactly why most people aren't fond of their characters being scraped and generated out of AI

crashbandit said:
No, if they don't protect it aggressively it could become public domain thus losing the rights.

This is the exact opposite of true. Copyright claimants have a duty to consider fair use. If a claimant fails to consider fair use, they lose the case. Repeatedly doing this can cause you to be barred from bringing cases involving that IP again. At that point, they may have a copyright, but will have no legal ability to act upon it - but it doesn't become "public domain."

You may be thinking about trademark rights.

hello, director of the now deleted posts here.

no idea who tagged the gens as "Ryzia" (whoever that even is). i never intended to mimic or copy someone's OC and have no clue who tagged them as such. i'm asking from permissions even from ppl who have loras for theirs...
if anyone is in contact with the "owner" of this "Ryzia" please say that i am sorry their OC is so generic i accidentally hit on it's likeness. twice.

polar said:
hello, director of the now deleted posts here.

no idea who tagged the gens as "Ryzia" (whoever that even is). i never intended to mimic or copy someone's OC and have no clue who tagged them as such. i'm asking from permissions even from ppl who have loras for theirs...
if anyone is in contact with the "owner" of this "Ryzia" please say that i am sorry their OC is so generic i accidentally hit on it's likeness. twice.

It was MintyFlur.
If you click on Tags/Description under history in the sidebar:
https://e6ai.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=52473

polar said:
please say that i am sorry their OC is so generic i accidentally hit on it's likeness. twice.

first
that sounds
so disrespectful

polar said:
no idea who tagged the gens as "Ryzia" (whoever that even is).

second
that was me, i went to check and double check for the ai generated and the oc
it had very similarities
tagged at to mark it, right now i already forgor how the pics looked like but trust me in the past

even more because i went to search who it was similar, i went to e621 to search for similar tags, found the character, checked for similarities and i contacted the artist for a checkout to do a takedown request

third
those are tags for the post
not gens, just a reminder to not mix these ups
i sometimes add extra tags for undertagged posts, like this time i overtagged a big

from what i know tags for generating something aren't equal for the TWYS Tag What You See
i have seen people on inkbunny posting their prompts and thats where my knowledge goes

mintyflur said:
first
that sounds
so disrespectful

only if you think "generic = bad". i don't. i like generic. it's easy to replicate and keep consistency.

mintyflur said:
second
that was me, i went to check and double check for the ai generated and the oc
it had very similarities

horns are different, eyebrows are different. the OC has very distinct glasses in every piece they are in. countershading (more so white countershading) is a very common thing. feathered wings fit a furred dragon. green eyes look nice on pink character. tail is also different.
i'm not even the only one who doesn't really see any "defining" similarities... just you

mintyflur said:
even more because i went to search who it was similar, i went to e621 to search for similar tags, found the character, checked for similarities and i contacted the artist for a checkout to do a takedown request

and all you achieved was creation of unnecessary drama. made one person slightly mad (me) and one person possibly hurt (Ryzia) by wrongly making them believe their OC was used in AI generation without their knowledge.
bravo!

just... ease off with the character tags in the future, please? those have the highest potential to generate drama.. or at least ask the creator whatever they intended to create XY character or not before playing inspector clouseau?
i'd obviously take the piece down myself and make enough changes to not damage anyone... last thing i'm interested in is hurting someone with my hobby.

draco18s said:
It was MintyFlur.
If you click on Tags/Description under history in the sidebar:
https://e6ai.net/post_versions?search%5Bpost_id%5D=52473

0_o
Really didn’t expect such thing from you, MintyFlur.
You just frame a man

mintyflur said:
it had very similarities

As I said above

yetanotheraiuser said:
If you make pink furred dragon that will be also taked down because it looks too similar? As I could remeber nothing extraordinary I noticed on that character. Looks like generic pink furred dragon.

Just WOW 0_o how situation is silly. Someone really owned generic pink furred dragon. Frame a man by suddenly adding character tag that author never considered to copy it and complain that someone stealed your character.
So we found the new possible dirty way to takedown images. By using such scheme you can take down any picture just for fun. Like someone draw crap original character sketch. Another one suddenly adds original character tag without warning you. Then cooperate both and strike it.

The final verdict on the discord server discussion

so, Ryzia gave the go ahead to get those two posts undeleted (even unaltered) if the "Ryzia" tag is removed. which i am obviously okay with.

So, MintyFlur, your "good" move was entirely wrong. Really didn’t expect such thing from you, I still surprised with such move 0_o. Suddenly add original character tag without warning, never considered to contant the author of that image and ask why it looks similar. Even your first answer on that thread was how to delete it. You deciced that it should be Ryzia by your opinion and you hided that fact, so I think Polar really copied that character and Ryzia looks weird for me taking down generic pink furred dragon. You created a silly situation with a lot of misunderstanding.

yetanotheraiuser said:
So, MintyFlur, your "good" move was entirely wrong

what

i see this thread
i investigate
i check and recheck for the AI pieces to be sure it looks similar
looks similar
tells the oc owner
adding the tag wouldn't even change anything, the oc owner made a journal on FA talking about it before i added it
right now i can't find the journal but it was surely made before i even added the tag
can't prove it so it's alright if you all don't believe
all i did really was, find journal, tell oc owner how to do a takedown, put the tag in pieces for to them be easier to find

yetanotheraiuser said:
Frame a man by suddenly adding character tag that author never considered to copy it and complain that someone stealed your character.

i didn't framed it
Jaz was the one to make this thread
The oc owner already knew about the said AI pieces having similarities with their character
if it was by Jaz or another person, i do not know

again i had to research myself who the oc owner was by literally researching for similarities
and i found their FA and their journal talking about their beloved character being scrapped by AI
i didn't meant harm
i barely added anything
just the tag ryzia because in my vision, the owner would have a better time have those pieces marked down for them, i even said it under the journal that i intentionally added the tag to be better for them to make the takedown
thought that specially because some people just don't like AI and don't want to browse here
even tho if searching dragon pink_body, there is just 2 that look alike ryzia

imma just
don't
get involved in anything

better off myself to just overtag undertagged posts then get to try do something
i'm sorry

While AI is notorious for being a plagiarism machine, this kind of tagging would be nightmarish if everyone engaged in it, especially if applied to the real art space where there are often dozens or hundreds of OCs with very overlapping traits. Many OCs are defined only by 1 or 2 key differences: glasses, marking color, horn color, ear type, etc., and to tag any unnamed character as the most-visibly-similar character you can find would create quite the drama.

But hey this is a lesson in communication and best practices. Don't be too hard on yourself; realistically this is just minor annoyance that won't affect anyone's life and will be forgotten in due time. ❤️

weeml said:
While AI is notorious for being a plagiarism machine, this kind of tagging would be nightmarish if everyone engaged in it, especially if applied to the real art space where there are often dozens or hundreds of OCs with very overlapping traits. Many OCs are defined only by 1 or 2 key differences: glasses, marking color, horn color, ear type, etc., and to tag any unnamed character as the most-visibly-similar character you can find would create quite the drama.

But hey this is a lesson in communication and best practices. Don't be too hard on yourself; realistically this is just minor annoyance that won't affect anyone's life and will be forgotten in due time. ❤️

I agree. I'd also say some people are adding these tags just to create drama. Not everyone wants a happy community, or even for AI to succeed at all for that matter.

weeml said:
Don't be too hard on yourself;

Agree. I remember MintyFlur as friendly, that's why I was too surprised with such move. But the overall situation is big silly misunderstand, not because it was intented. It's over now and picture has been restored.

Another weird interesting thing that I also got into silly misunderstand situation, where Polar made 69 first person scene, but I identified it as dragon transformation and starting to change tags. Аfter Polar's description why he applied such weird tags for me I suddenly starting to feel scene as 69 first person as it was intended and felt guilty for tag changes.
https://e6ai.net/posts/50190

Without explicit permission to the owner of an IP or their characters making art of them and selling said art is illegal due to copyrights.

Non-profit is a non-issue... but it's in good manners to respect a take down request if the owner isn't comfortable of using their creations for lewd images once they're aware of them.

From what I can understand, this is my take on the matter, If we were to generate AI art of fanart such as Loona, Judy Hopps, Lola Bunny and the like people KNOW it's fanart.

But when we cross the line and start generating AI Art of OTHER PEOPLE's CHARACTER without credit to the original OC's creator then the line gets a little dicey here. You're clearly taking a character that you don't own and running it through AI.
Though I would say that it's alright to generate art of other people's character, we should do the bare minimum of crediting the original owner of the AI OC generated, nobody will claim it as their own if the OC is known to people.

For instance, if I made a character through AI and the character was consistent and people like the character and start generating more art of the character, who is to say that THAT is not fanart or tribute to the original creator?

From MY Perspective, I would welcome people generating art of my character, but I WANT to be known as the original source of the character's creation.

beerwolf said:
Without explicit permission to the owner of an IP or their characters making art of them and selling said art is illegal due to copyrights.

Non-profit is a non-issue... but it's in good manners to respect a take down request if the owner isn't comfortable of using their creations for lewd images once they're aware of them.

agreed

choombah said:
I would welcome people generating art of my character

People love fanart of any sort, but the fear of one line be crossing as making images of their characters in let's say
farting with hyperscat accompanied with raping a cub girl with her their uterus be prolapsed out of their body with human raceplay involved(this is an reference to an actual art piece that exists)

it's all shits and giggles until someone giggles and shits
there is a line for everyone and there will be a time that people will start to cross your line
that's way people ask for permission to do fanart, so owner of said oc don't get their line crossed

generally don't mind people making AI of my characters however, i wouldn't mind if it comes from my own traditional art, if it's from someone's else art then i have a problem because very unlikely that they would agree to it and if they do then i couldn't care less
so
from MY perspective(see what i did there?), i don't have a problem but to other people they have different opinions

I see blame being thrown around, at the director, the OC owner, the tagger, but none of them did anything wrong. The only one that should be blamed is the mod that deleted the images originally. I say this as a hypocrite because I was a mod of a booru and tried to delete some mean "fan"art. However actually doing this causes so many problems that are so abusable that it's never worth doing. People don't own their characters the way they think they do, and legally speaking there is nothing protecting them. People making Pokemon OCs or Pony OCs or using anything that is clearly someone elses property should make it obvious, but people really think they own the trademark on their characters. You don't. Anyone can make a pink furred dragon or a robot faced wolf thing. And if you get angry about this, that's your own choice. But you cannot ever be in the right if you get art taken down that you did not make, and call it theft. You don't get to do to draw pikachu without permission, and then be shocked when someone draws your OC without permission. It's the same rule for everyone.

If they did not get permission, then maybe it's not your character. Consider it, and do not then try to claim that similar means stolen because you think you're the only one to come up with such a basic design. Or it IS your character and it's simply fanart, but it's non-canon so who cares what it depicts? In the end the only problem is you and your reactions. So the solution is only with you and your reactions. Do not take a page out of Nintendo's book and be the bad guy. We all benefit from this being the way this works. You don't get special treatment.

I hope this whole thing was a learning lesson for the mod team and that they never delete artwork for looking similar to an OC again. Not even in the rare case that it's hate art, or else you're justifying every company that sent a C&D to a YouTuber that reviewed a game poorly. Fanart is not theft. A similar character is not theft. A pose is not theft. A color of dragon is not theft.

I have personally dealt with someone drawing my character and then trying to sell it as an adoptable to get revenge on me after I called them out for trying to claim ownership of a pose. Thank goodness I had these experiences before this happened and I could laugh it off. If it had sold, there is nothing I could have done, because adoptables are not a legal thing in the first place. It didn't sell and I just got free fanart out of it. But I can imagine this would have been terrifying for most. I wish art and OC ownership was talked about more. This situation with Polar's art being deleted should never have happened.