e6ai is a derivative of e621 with the same management and parent company, so why are the rules different?
e6ai has rules against cubs, realistic renders of ferals, and realistic renders of humans.

Are there legal reasons behind this, or is it the moderators/company curating a less controversial community and content pool?

Is there anything stopping anyone else from creating a booru that hosts such content?

e6ai is a derivative of e621 with the same management and parent company, so why are the rules different?

This is true, the way ive seen it and some of the other management has seen it is a case as "It takes (example) a real person to make 1 piece in a hour to days while AI can make 100+ pieces under an hour" It's pretty much boils down to having the ability to make whatever you want in a matter of seconds. We strive and expect the user to have some effort in their work as it CAN be achieved rather then just typing a tiny prompt and thats it.

e6ai has rules against cubs, realistic renders of ferals, and realistic renders of humans.

Are there legal reasons behind this, or is it the moderators/company curating a less controversial community and content pool?

As for Cubs, i couldnt answer this question to you other then what I said up there having the ability to create whatever you want in a matter of seconds. For ferals mega sites like Google. Bing will take action towards realistic ferals as it could be mistaken for Zoophilia by someone of the law such as a investgator. This could lead to an issue that they don't understand how realistic images can get and deem it as real. Now for the people it's basically like the very off chance that someoen uploads a human male doing something and someone just so happens to look like them. In theory they could sue for various of reason while using that images as a "this looks like me doing things id never do!"

Is there anything stopping anyone else from creating a booru that hosts such content?

Other then the legal reasons? No not really it just cost money, power, servers, dev to run.

Do note take this with a grain of salt I'm just a humble Janitor and I don't know the specifics other then what has been passed around from E6 itself and just general legal knowledge.

Hi friend. I think Slop covered it pretty well but I'll fill in some of the gaps.

e6ai is a derivative of e621 with the same management and parent company, so why are the rules different?

Like Slop mentioned above. AI generated images must be treated differently than traditional art due to the low bar for entry and the speed at which they can be produced.

e6ai has rules against cubs, realistic renders of ferals, and realistic renders of humans.
Are there legal reasons behind this, or is it the moderators/company curating a less controversial community and content pool?

• Cub/young rule is a complicated question to answer. It's not currently illegal but that is likely to change in a few years and we are trying to get out ahead of that.
• Realistic renders of ferals rule is to avoid legal complications since you can easily with the tools available today generate images that are indistinguishable from real life images.
• Realistic renders of humans rule is to protect actual individuals. With how good stable diffusion is at generating realistic humans it's near impossible to tell if a photo or deepfake of an actual person was being used.

Is there anything stopping anyone else from creating a booru that hosts such content?

Nope! And there are other boorus out there with basically zero quality control and who allow content we don't allow. If you feel like you'd rather find your fortune elsewhere then that's perfectly fine.

Regards

AI generated images must be treated differently than traditional art due to the low bar for entry and the speed at which they can be produced.

Forgive me for hijacking this thread, but I often think about this perception, especially while I am crunching for days directing my next work. (I am a game dev and I use the term "crunch" deliberately, having experienced that phenomena.)

On the one hand, I agree that AI-generated content—especially AI-generated images—significantly reduces barriers to entry and offers incredible iteration times, arguably making it too easy for someone to direct low-quality slop at little cost. The Unity game engine did this for indie video games, flooding the Steam store with shovelware. Few audiences want slop, and e6ai's curation helps makes the site better than other boorus by fending off that slop. (Thank you janitors, moderators, and admins!)

On the other hand, that perception holds all AI-generated work in low-esteem, dismissing the reality that dozens of hours of effort can still be necessary to direct, touch-up, cut, and mix AI-generated elements together into coherent, compound works. This seemingly has led to the following consequences on e6ai:

• Directors on e6ai cannot seek to monetize their work like artists on e621 can
• At best, we here are only allowed to sheepishly ask, "if you like my work please consider tipping me, but good luck finding out where" regardless of how much effort was spent to direct that work. By neutering the ability to be compensated for that effort, directing AI-generated works can only remain a hobby. (Before anyone asks, yes I think traditional/digital artists should be paid well not only for their work, but also for the models that are trained on their work!. And yes, I do believe directing AI-generated work can evolve to a place of broad public acceptance—more on that later.)
• Compound works (such as a video containing multiple AI-generated clips) are held to the same strict standard and low-esteem as single-element works (such as a single AI-generated image)
• But the effort to direct the two are not the same. To wit: I have had longform audio-video uploads get deleted from e6ai because of imperfections, and I must admit that stings a lot. Due to the nature of AI-generated video, some of these uploads cannot fixed and reuploaded quickly like AI-generated images can. (An imperfection can appear midway through a video for several frames, and the act of trying to fix the imperfection often causes a completely different result to be generated!) Further, the act of assembling multiple elements into a whole inevitably creates its own imperfections. (Temporal discontinuities, mismatched framerates, mixing errors, and so on.)

I get it: most AI-generated content is soulless slop, where little effort is put in and low-quality results come out. But that does not mean AI-generated content cannot be assembled with love into something greater—I observe this with my own work, and often find parallels with other mediums that we regard warmly.

Namely, do we look down our noses at digital artists, 3D modelers, and 3D animators because they are not painting with oils, sculpting with clay, or acting on stage? Because a computer blends the simulated pigments, retopologies the simulated sculpts, and lerps the simulated motions? In short, do we hold the leaps in digital efficiency against these artists? Did it make creation too easy? Maybe we pushed back decades ago, but now we celebrate them. The digital evolution allowed these some of these artists to 1) get into the arts at all, and 2) more quickly focus on imbuing their creations with soul. Using a computer does not render their art invalid.

With any artform, we must be vigilant against inauthenticity and slop. The stigma around AI-generated content is understandable. But I believe it is only a matter of time before we come to find AI-generation to be an artistic tool like any other, equally capable of brilliance or mediocrity depending on who wields it. Further, brilliance is often found among the imperfections. Therefore, I would like to see the powers-that-be adopt a more nuanced, less hostile position on AI-generated works, one that does not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Cheers,
Refactor
Not brilliant, but would like to get there some day.

100% agreed. I hope Generative AI will be treated like a great tool to create amazing things and while I agree some form of content moderation is necessary, some deletions on this site are truly baffling.

Following up on Refactor's commentary, and this is a real concern for me artistically within e6ai:

There is, unintentionally or not, very strong pressure created by the quality criteria to pigeonhole most of the creations of e6ai.net towards very specific artistic directions.

Can't enjoy a work with messy painting strokes -- the features won't be distinguishable enough to satisfy the janitors on fingers/toes.

Can't enjoy a work without strong outlines -- janitors again will claim that fingers/toes aren't distinct enough.

Gotta hide them hands and feet -- and yeah, illustrators do this too, I know, but holy shit go browse through the site and count how many pictures hide extremities.

And heaven forbid you might permit a hand to be at an awkward angle where the 'camera' can't capture all the fingers -- if you don't make them all visible, the assumption is that they are erroneously missing.

Because of the expectations for clear, distinct, detailed eyes, you're forced to generate images that have anime-sized eyes or larger. Can't have realistic sized eyes, because they won't be distinct and clear enough for the janitors.

Oh and don't think we haven't noticed that NSFW images often get approved faster than SFW images. Real weird to watch smut I gen get approved in an hour but a SFW art piece sit for two or three days before approval.

I've tried to muster up excitement about e6ai.net with the AI art crew I collaborate with, and unfortunately the reactions amount to "They're picky in ways that aren't just wrong, but boring." Like, I'm working daily with seven or eight other AI artists just as good as I am, all of us interested in furry AI art, and there's maybe just me and one other that bothers with e6ai.net -- and I can fuckin' tell you, I am often wondering WHY.

I've wondered about that before, too and the answers I find never seem very satisfying.

I dont really see cub/young getting literally "illegal" without furry stuff in general getting illegal right alongside it.
And since this is tag city, dealing with it -if- it ever came to pass and miraculously, general bestiality art won't be included in a porn ban (and it will be just that, a broad ban on porn), should be a nonissue.
Same for realistic feral, because the levels of realism required to fall under "indistinguishable from a real photograph" are typically lost once you look into the backgrounds.

It's perfectly fine to not want it on this site because the team doesn't want to moderate for the page with it here, or you don't want to invite angry tumblrinas and twitter hatemobs or something.

I also agree that I'm missing rough styles from the site, and I assume they're missing because people dont wanna waste time on things that will be thrown out for not being typical super polished looking ai style