Don't fall for this AI Art Book SCAM!!!

good day everyone I have a story to tell it's a really simple one but uh it's it's a bummer and it illustrates a few kind of uh dystopian points that I think is just worthy of a conversation and a vlog so I kind of I'm not kind of I got scammed uh and I wanted to sort of share the experience uh obviously obvious to like inform and warn some of you to be wary of this some some of this stuff but also just to discuss what is at play here cuz it's really interesting so for

context I am working on a book many of you know I'm gearing up to working on this epic Anatomy book that has been sort of brewing in the um in the digestive early stages so far there's been a lot of research I've bought a whole bunch of like reference books and other things to sort of learn from and get ideas um and we had our first official we had a 2-hour meeting today to sort of block out the mapping of like what the content of the book is and I'm really quite excited about that but

uh a couple of weeks back uh obviously me searching all this stuff has meant that my data is available to advertisers uh and I got I got served this ad for a book on like drawing and I bought it I I went to the website I'm like uh first of all the ad struck me as really like it just caught my attention went to the website I upsold myself um and bought the bundle of four cuz I thought hey that book looks good they sell it for four of them for 20% off and I'm looking

for I want more references for this how to draw like process so I just got the bundle of four spent $95 which isn't nothing it's a good amount of money uh and I left the link cuz like I downloaded it a week or so later but I was so struck by how effective that process was on me at the time that I actually went back I just screen recorded the ad because I was like that's really interesting I should learn from that if I spent $100 on resources because this ad serve to me what did

it communicate to me how was it presented I filmed that cuz I thought you know I might want to do the same thing in a year from now like to share the book that I'm going to be working hard on with a team um you know there's there's a lesson there they advertise effectively and I'm going to need to do that once I have a product anyways I'm going to start off by showing you the ad that I was served that's by this group comic pencil this is the ad this was my screen recording uh

and it just I'm scrolling through Facebook this immediately shows up and I'm just like immediately I'm attracted to the the illustrations like I'm immediately for me personally I like these sort of really exaggerated Styles it seems just on a surface level you sort of think okay yeah there's like there's there seems to be guidance and instructions and some clarity in terms of like creating distinctions so like just on a surface level and then it's was like you get that impression and then you the next impression is look at all the material right so uh it's

a digital only book they present it as a physical book in the ad I'm not fussed with that like in my impression like on the website it's very clear that it's digital download uh in all the pages and and having uh digital downloads shop myself I can understand sort of presenting it in a way that people will understand more but obviously there's some people have frion there but actually the issue I had is when I downloaded the content to check out my new books and I want to take you through that experience because that is

an interesting experience so I'm going to start with uh first of all it arrives like this you get four PDFs and I'm just going to open the first one I opened which was guide book 4 here it is female illustration comic by guide book series okay so we got some some females here there is page one female and then we have a bunch of Eyes eye front female I'm like this is the first time I'm flicking through this I'm like oh okay I front I side I side and then by this stage I'm like four

pages in and then I'm like uhoh I think I know what's happened here uh then I go back and I realize okay well there's no name there's no person attached to this so then before looking further the next thing I do is go to the website this is the website this is where they sell it this is the homepage and the first thing I do in going here is like I need a name I need to see who put this together so homepage what have we got okay there's it's advertising its series through Anatomy learn

to draw blah blah blah okay fine Step by Step we'll take you we produce blah blah blah about comic pencil so this is the stuff I'm looking for we produce content of books about portrait blah blah blah all products are created by artists who have studied portrait painting for many years who who has started where is the name right we will do our best to help you improve your drawing skills would you like to draw a wonderful portrait with us right and then they show some reviews and whatever okay and I'm like looking like where

is this artist like if someone spent years working on this where is this artist right and and surprise surprise it's nowhere to be seen and aside from being able to purchase the products and presenting the best of their material to sort of make it as sellable as possible there's actually no information and there's barely any information on what's in the contents of the books because like this female illustration one all they do is like you know really surface level reference but they don't give you enough time to actually soak in because when you look closer

when you go through here you start to notice the artifacts you start to recognize that these eyes aren't handrawn because this one on the left like just the the way that the pupils are proportioned or the way that like just little rendering artifacts that make it clear that this is artificial intelligence this is not uh handdrawn these are either piled from other people but much more likely AI so this is just a compilation of like renders from AI stuff that have been cropped presented nicely and marketed effectively and are selling for far more value than

they actually offer um and obviously based on very specific artist Styles but there's no name you know so like I'll go all the way to the end of the book oops I went to I hate these um iPad interfaces um go away just want to turn the page good I want this one there you go so if I go to the very end there you go nothing that's a ends with like a final example so it's chalk of chalk full of just stuff right but that's it there's there's actually no credit given at all which

is the biggest giveaway that this is AI so uh that's like the these compilation books the male female ones are the clearest indicators that was Ai and they're the ones that I opened up first but these ones these comic guide books are purported to be uh more uh tutorial ised so if I go to the start of this we have the same we have the same sort of thing where there's no uh credit and there's no like you know table of contents or anything really thoughtful and as soon as you looking at with a view

of like okay well this must be AI you realize okay well this could have been copied pasted from somewhere given to chat GPT and said reword this in different words or whatever like half the time the text barely correlates with what's being shown and there's no clear uh demonstration of like like what is this like combine the ball with other basic forms like that okay how what are we I don't understand right this is in this one we see the final outcome and then we see the step by step on the right in later examples

we have the final outcome and we're going backwards step by step to like nothing like it just makes no sense as a guy why are we doing our construction without the chin why are we like I I don't understand it's it's just so poorly thought out because it was only thought out enough to be uh convincing on a surface level to be purchased that is the entire purpose of this and it's really disappointing and I wasted my money and I tried to contact them to get my money back uh obviously haven't heard back from them

but like look at this variety and spacing creates types um in order to create different types differences in typ and character you may decide not to follow the basic measurements or divisions too meticulously by varying the proportions of the blah blah blah I'm like these are the examples it gives these are the proportions I guess there's no variance these like foundational things that these different illustrations are supposed to be based on as examples are almost identical there's no Clarity how you get from that to that because there's not meant to be the other thing I

find really interesting is the drawing of these examples are is a different caliber of drawing it's really interesting cuz I think whoever compiled this drew the portions leading up to the outcome you know what I mean so in order to make it look like a step-by-step guide I think they got final renderings from Ai and I think they uh whoever it is sort of sketched over it to create the the reduced sort of detail versions to make it look like it's a step-by-step guide but this the skill that is represented through this AI generated image

which is frankly what I would bet good money it is is still a very different level of skill to this which I believe is handrawn and traced on top of that just sort of poorly cuz you can see the line control and the quality of the drawing in these is far worse than that so we've been compiled this book of how to draw see look that's a great example like these heads what is that compared to that it's the level of like yeah anyways I think I made my point clear I don't recommend checking it

out in more detail or getting those books I'm not going to get my money back it's a real shame uh and just to confirm my suspicions not not that it's a confirmation but just to show that this can be done quite easily I just went into mid Journey uh just to sort of reverse engineer it so we've got uh I just gave the prompt uh how to draw a book in head profile blah blah blah blah in the style of J Scott Campbell you know just with sketches and basic lines and just like that bam

you know that comes up in like a second easily any of these could have been in that book and all you have to do is add a few scribbly sketch lines underneath same sort of thing here with a male um you know with that sketchy aesthetic very easily you know there it is so it's really interesting and it's quite a quite conflicting and it just goes to show the moral ethical ambiguity of AI now uh and how it's how it's impacting artist I could have paid that $95 to the people who whose style that was

based on or or it was used you know I might have bought J Scott Campbell how to draw book you know which I and I've bought some of those um and it's interesting many of you will have noticed I haven't made an AI video in over a year now I've been quite into technology all my life I've always made AI videos and I was very vehemently for the technology very excited about it and I use it I use AI art in a generative brainstorming developmental way all the time we use it here in the studio

in bits and pieces but never in a way that pushes anything out or or reallocates resources that should go to people to to gain more profit or to anything like that but it does like this experience is another experience that sort of shows that misleading people are can be empowered in ways that it's really unfortunate you know it's a shame you know there's not there's no winner here because I don't have a better reference for how to how to draw or how to even make a how to draw book they're terrible guyses I'm not following

those at all um but they marketed well and I'm sure they've made a lot of money money from that which is a which is a real bummer so please don't support them if anything please feel free to blast comic pencil what's it called Comic pencil like with negative reviews and stuff because they're not responding to criticism they're not crediting crediting artists there are it's very unethical and there's no Clarity or transparency uh and it's a real shame and there's no I don't know there's not much to add to that I think I've I've blabbed enough

um but I think we'll see more and more of this stuff over time which is a real shame and I think I am conflicted cuz at the end of the day and this is a whole separate conversation and video I'm not anti- Ai and that's the that's the weird thing to feel is like I'm you know it feels like I'm not anti-nuclear energy or nuclear fusion but clearly there are technologies that can be used very harmfully so AI art is one of those things where like it's incredible and really valuable but there's dangers there both

in terms of How It's produced and where it gets its information needs to be more ethically thought out and needs to be more transparent and then how it's used on the other end people need to be educated and and understand you know that everyone has access access to the store and can use it in whatever way they want excuse me I'm going to wrap up with the question of the day this one is from cobster Pro who says any further plans on experimenting with procreate dreams uh it's funny that that's the one that we ask

because I have my iPad Pro and I have procreate and I have there it is procreate dreams which I've never used before I've bought it I haven't used it yet but I it looks cool so uh I don't have plans but it's it's there it's floating around it looks really cool I'm interested in it's it's it's a conflict though cuz much like how my alarm went off and stopped the recording I hope I hasn't ruined it all anyways I'll just Stitch these two clips together that's the the answer to the question is I don't have

plans to play with procreate dreams but I have procreate dreams and I would like to play with it one day uh let's see what happens let me know what you'd like to see it let me know your questions of the question of the day down in the description otherwise it's a Friday so uh I'm going to go have a weekend so I hope hope you guys have a great weekend too bye don't get scammed