Wacom CAUGHT Using AI Art (Is It Adobe's Fault?) || SPEEDPAINT + COMMENTARY 

My thing is that using AI images as promotional material almost feels like false advertising in this case. Maybe I’m naive, but I tend to assume that the promotional materials are drawn with the company’s products. Using AI art in this case makes me lose faith in the product to give me a good result. If they can’t trust their own tech to deliver good results then why should I?

Damn their vetting process must be shit if they didn’t even notice that Godforsaken dragon tail wasn’t connected to the body in a way that makes sense. Like it is not just about a failure detecting ai, but a failure at basic quality control.

I hope this is a learning moment for large companies that humans can tell the difference between human created art and AI generated images.

Why would they even need to do this? Couldn’t they just hire an artist? Are they THAT cheap?

I've worked for a company much smaller than Wacom that employed multiple full-time artists for creating marketing art. Wacom has absolutely no excuse.

Betrayal? Lol no, its not betrayal, its suicide! AI will kill all need to make art with tablets which means their own sales will dry up and they will die like dodos, and since they themselves use it, it even become self inflicted! I dont know if to laugh or cry, its too ironic...

The largest drawing tablet company doesn't even have an artist in their marketing department 😅 dayum.

As someone who aspire to be an artist and work in entertainment I have to say that I am over fed up with ai

I think some good news about AI were the leaked midjourney & stability artist lists which have been included in the lawsuit, and any developments on Glaze and Nightshade (when it comes out). The Nightshade paper on poisoning ai generators' training data is interesting; its ability to effectively let artists lay landmines around that can severely corrupt training data if it reaches a critical mass sounds like great fun.

I’m done with AI too it’s so annoying when im looking for references to understand anatomy and folds and to help me study and get better or understand how hands look or just need ideas when I lack creativity or if im looking for pictures for a school slideshow on animals I find these trashy fake images that are too cute to be true and it’s demoralizing it’s hurtful knowing I will never be able to actually do the job I want and have been practicing to do since I was 4 and seeing these companies doing this hurts me so much more.

It's beyond me how they thought ARTISTS out of any people wouldn't notice AI art. This is just strange

This is a big problem in Book covers too. Specifically self published romance. There are stock book cover sites that don't have any kind of filtering and a single author looking at covers doesn't know as much about art as long as they think it looks good and cheap enough. Readers try to bring it up and make a stink about it but most of these books are being powered through on kindles by moms who don't care if they orc husband on her smut book is AI.

Bruhh their statement is so wild to me. Like, do people who work at Wacom don't have eyes???? I was half awake when I first saw the post and I still noticed that it was AI💀

I would love a video with some tips on how to identify AI generated art, since it has its grubby little hands on everything art related nowadays.

I REMEMBER BEING ON TWITTER WHEN THIS FIRST WENT DOWN! This was honestly an S-tier blunder on their part, a digital art company promoting the use of AI (even accidentally) is like a sick person trying to cure themself using 5 gallons of poison. It's just never going to work. Great job, Dork Blessed Grow Feistier!

I find it crazy that a brand that focus on people making art is using AI images to promote their work of all things

Anyone else thinking big companies like this are prone to self sabotage lately???? Just wondering cause between this and the fails from gaming companies, it sounds ridiculous on how many screw ups keep happenjng.

Me: "Literally every company bad." Normies: "Nooo! It's not all companies you're generalizing too much!!!" Every company:

Thats such a cheap move. Such a low blow for us in the community. I bought a Huion recently and it does really well, but I use Wacom at university. Why should we buy their products from this moment, it seems like they obviously dont care beyond "oh we got caught😢" Also! Im a dragon artist, it wouldve been fun to create something for this. As well as SO MANY OTHERS THAT CAN DRAW DRAGONS

I think another thing that confuses me about them buying from stock is that they dont pay that much to liesense the work on their tablets. I saw a few artist who worked with Wacom in the past talking about this situation that they only were paid about 1,000 dollars, which really isnt that much in comparison to what they earn off of their products, so they really wouldnt be losing out that much if they commissioned an artist!

Wacom to ChatGPT: Write apology letter in the style of a corporate zombie giving half baked apology for using Ai artwork in product advertising.

4:37 *cough* DeviantArt *cough*

i laughed really hard when u called the ai art bro "the person with a keyboard" lmaoooo

So here's the thing. The problem is, this most likely was a move by their marketing department. Why this happens so often is the marketing department is usually not made up of artists or even graphic designers sometimes, I know because I've gone for graphic designer positions in companies (both big and small) where who am I reporting to? The marketing department manager. What most likely happened here is, they had a deadline, their graphic designer/department was busy with other stuff and it was left to the marketing team to figure some shit out, at least that is what I'm hoping it was, because if this was done by a graphic designer I will eat my whole ass shoe because they SHOULD know better. Tbh the reality is they ALL should of known better, because how hard is it to set aside some of your hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars you get every year just to commission an artist (which could of maybe at most cost them $500 - $1000 USD) to fucken do the art for the marketing campaign. Either way, it's all very stupid move, and they aren't the only ones, Huion and XP-Pen have been caught out using AI art for marketing campaigns as well, which then we need to look deeper as to WHY are their marketing departments resorting to using AI art rather than hiring an artist or i dunno, having a in-house or freelance artist/graphic designer to do it :|

Who else betrayed us Duchess Celestia?! 😢

i'm not surprised, i was suspecting they could use AI images any moment since i did a search about linux support on their site and found about wacom and microsoft partneship ("partneship" is not the right word probably, but i can't found other better word) microsoft's supporting AI too, it's suspicious a art company and a company that supports AI together on something it's more bizarre they buy the image's license from adobe site, everybody's on art's community know what adobe is doing to artists

the level of copyright law ai art is breaking is absolutely criminal i hope the creators of these tools get held accountable

For me it's gold that there's AI generated images on Adobe stock where you need to buy a licence for usage but AI Images cannot be protected by copyright so what impedes anyone to just download these and use them as they please commercially or not, Like how does that even work?

The whole thing with machine learning tech is sad. I can see the potential it has in other fields such as science, engineering, and programing. And yet greedy irresponsible fools got their hands on it, and instead of introducing it gently and with care, they used it like a sledge hammer to throw artistic creativity in disarray.

Companies will destroy themselves with greed rather than hire workers and pay them fairly, what else is new.

Like you said Wacom using stock images already is bad enought because it shows they have no trust in their own products, but using terrible art, not even going to enter the fact it was made by AI, in their ads makes me wonder if they laid off their marketing team, because these dragons wouldn't even pass as acceptable for a small company

AI vs Humans will start and continue to be more intense.

12:05 OH GOD don't even get me started on that one, I don't even use adobe stock but I have come with similar experience with other services. As a graphic designer with limited budget I have a suscription to Freepik since the resources make things a hell of a lot easier but every single bloody market has been infested with AI, but thats not even the worse part, that one is that even when it has a clearly defined "filter out AI images" it doesnt even work half of the time and still shows them to you since apparently it only covers the one from their own software instead of user submissions, so it becomes absolutely infuriating when trying to filter out manually the human made ones to use, which takes out a lot of time and energy from oneself. Thank god that AI can't vector cuz if it wasn't for that I would have just thrown the towel, I hate it so much.

stop referring to AI art as art. Call it AI imagery. I really don’t like to keep the definition of art but in my opinion it at least has to be more than strung together imagined made by a soulless machine

I am not an artist. And I couldn't tell that the image was AI generated before you pointed out the details that made it obvious. I think the people who vetted the AI art are simply not artists themselves. I am also really worried about the art community, I stopped working in my chosen field because companies preferred to hire unqualified people who used AI tools to do what I do over paying skilled workers like me a fair wage. And I could see that in 15 years of time AI was going to replace the industry I wanted to work in.

Nightshade V1.0 is finally out, now it is time to protect your arts fellow artists!

Even if AI NEVER reaches the a point where it cannot be distinguished from human art, the fact still stands that in the future corporate greed will incentivize artists to become simply the AI cleanup crew. In the future artists will be selected based on how well they can manipulate and photoshop AI art so that it looks just like human art.

stay strong, fellow artists. things will work out for us one way or another 💪 also this video was visually really pretty color-wise, good job celestia :)

The most crazy thing about those companies useing AI (espacially wacom here) is the fact that the main audience IS ARTISTS! So.....i can understand that people that dont pursue art, sometimes can't tell wether it's AI or not. But an artist most definetely can 😂. And they choose THIS AI image for promotion???? That's just a big ol' '🖕' to every artist out there! To me its obvious that those companies just testing boundaries. And they willdo it again and again and again until there is no more backlash. If we don't decide to straight up boycot everything they do.....AI WILL win.

I wouldn't be surprised if companies were to sue Adobe for damages. This hit in trust will cause greater ramifications down the line.

I bet you Adobe doesn’t have human reviewers since they’re so far up tech bro’s a*ses. Probably other ai bots.

Yall,,, someone i know ran wacom’s apology through an ai checker(specifically hive moderation) and it came back with a 90.8% likelihood of containing ai generated text. We love to see it.

Trust me , the news like that will getting worse and more.... Why? *Money.* + Big company didn't real take any action.....

not wacom saying they MAY have used AI in their statement @_@ absolute shit situation all around

I regret buying my Wacom in 2020. When I buy a new tablet, I am selling my old one or throwing it away. Update: There is a XP-Pen's blog about AI on their website and it comes off as biased for AI. It was posted 3 months after their apology. Their blog doesn't mentions the actual problems and art theft from AI meaning I don't trust buying their products either.

Kinda off topic but can we call people who make AI generated images “little word fella”? I like that idea.

the biggest art company has a lot of mouths to feed and made a mistake...big whoop its called human nature

Can't say I'm terribly surprised with Adobe's behavior. They did try to automatically opt everyone into just giving up the work they did with Adobe products to be used to train their own AI models for use on Adobe Stock. Adobe is an evil company.

Does it really matter at this point? How about we just keep making good art that's just flat out better than what AI comes out.

AI has pushed me back to analog. I do all my art on paper / canvas again. Clients are also frustrated with AI so knowing what I deliver is a physical piece of art has given me a little edge.

The response they gave actually seemed pretty good for a "buisness" responce... I think the real issue is people are expecting marketing people to be artists and are giving them way too much credit for their "artistic eye" You could argue that everyone in the company should be artists but thats not realistic and kinda cruel to hire an artist to not do art. I work at an small tech company and our sales team makes mistakes on tech the same cringe rate that our phone tech people make sales procedure mistakes. Aaaalll that being said, i still root for human artists🎉

Also the fact that these AI detection tools use AI to detect AI

did they just not bother to LOOK at the final edited picture?? cuz anyone could see it was AI if they just looked at it they either didn't care enough to even check its quality or didn't care it was AI

The video is amazing and all... but all I can focus on is the speedpaint and how relatable it is 😭😭😭 (trying to get the symmetry and circles right... UGHHH, the struggle is real)

Me: what have componies done now? Celestia: ranting while drawing Me: oh what amazing art Celestia: still angry Me: oh wait, i zoned out, egh, i can rewatch it, i need to see the art being drawn first Also me: oh it's 5:32 am

Thanks for your level-headed approach to this situation. After the backlash is over, Wacom should definitely go back to commissioning artists to create promotional art with their products. It's both fair to artists AND accurate advertising!

prompt : We got caught using AI art. Please generate a boilerplate nonpology that we can excrete steaming hot onto our dismayed community.

I definitely know this thing was AI generated because whenever I see a AI generated art I just feel creeped out and I start getting a tingly feeling and that happened the second I saw the image

It’s not even good ai art, the tail isn’t connected, the fur grows randomly from the neck and the right foot gas a hole in it. You’re not even trying to trick non-artists, they’re trying to trick train artists?!

It's very funny that they used an automated tool to detect AI art. It's literally blind leading the blind, isn't it? If an AI could find those mistakes then an AI could be built which would not have made those mistakes. If god is all powerful can he build a wall he can't jump over?

Iam going to be real and maybe you know this but ever since adobe created this tool called firefly, software meant to help create AI art, Adobe has endorsed AI hard. They are kinda in thier own hot water for that. I dunno how apologetic they will be but agree they should hire artists for this stuff.

I don't understand why Wacom doesn't get a artist to volunteer so they cant give money to a artist if that's there goal they could give that artist a free tablet in exstange of some art to use as promotion not AI to do it its just lazy

I’ve completely given up talking about ai. I’ve already deleted all my art accounts. Thankfully I don’t use my art to make money. I feel bad for other artists who do. I don’t post anything anymore no tattoos paintings or sculptures. Nothing. They need to wipe the databases of every single ai art product created. It’s in all kinds of RU-vid channels. I let thumbnails go but people using ai generated content in the video I unsub and block from showing up. I’ve seen science channels glorifying ai and six months later they are on a campaign trying to erase it from RU-vid completely. It was fine until it hit their bottom line. Ai is coming for everyone that doesn’t do manual labor. The robots will be around shortly. Meanwhile people are just making it smarter and faster oblivious to their own impending demise. I haven’t even mentioned the poor people having to catalog all the images scrapped from the internet. Someone has to first “teach” the ai what an image actually is… it’s the same labor practices Nike employs the sweatshop variety.

Wacom uses stock art? Eh…yea still better than AI art *sr but wtf Wacom*

I honestly found the irony of this situation hilarious because of how much they shoot themselves in the foot by using ai images for promotional material. As you've said, it would only hurt their bottom line. I personally will still be recommending the Wacom Intuos whenever new digital artists ask what tablet is good for their first tablet. Because the low costs, long lifespan and ease of use are things that would be very good for digital artists getting their first tablet. And while the whole ai situation definitely doesn't make them look good, I tend to let the product speak for itself with these things. I bought my tablet 3-5 years ago (yes, Wacom Intuos) and even after being rough on it for a decent amount of that time, it still works great. Though I do tend to put a mousepad on top of it to shield the poor surface from my tendency to push too hard with the pen 😅 Seriously, that thing is a trooper. So with all those things in mind, it is definitely the model I would still recommend to newer digital artists when they ask me. Only difference is that now I will combine that advice with a comment about the ai dragon fiasco.

And they quoted me 14 hundred for a repair on my tablet 😒 Wacom im ashamed. Been using their products since 2013

Can't say I'm surprised...

At least Huion is safe! (There were some accusations of AI, but they fell apart under scrutiny)

It's getting less and less fun being an artist tbh...

You can ignore the invention of gun powder, but not the consequences of others leveraging it.

I just wanted to say quickly how much I enjoyed the speedpaint of the potion bottles. It was a nice, calming counterpoint to such a depressing news item.

It doesn't matter where it came from, what wacom uses is THEIR responsibility, not to mention they refused to hire an illustrator, imagine wacom having any trouble finding one😂!! F them

I’m in a position to see what kinds of things even smaller companies spend money on, and honestly it baffles me how a major company wouldn’t be willing to pay for 1-2 commissioned images for a major ad campaign (or whatever this was?) There’s so much inessential stuff that gets bought that can easily go over the amount of a few commissioned pieces in a year I’m not really against them using stock art or anything, it’s just wild how companies are willing to wave several $100 amounts paid in error, or do a lot of gifting practices for employees etc (very nice of them to do), but something like this is a no?

Someone help me understand, do traditional artists just hope Ai Art is going to get worse and people / companies will stop using it? I won't be surprised when Wacom and all the other art tablets incorporate Ai in to the product, much like Krea or Leonardo realtime canvas. That's really going to set the traditional art purists off.

Thank you for addressing this "drama". I got to see the moment everyone was talking about Wacom, but I never would've known that Adobe was responsible also for that... thing (because it's more of a poorly-made cheap store plushie that has a terrible design to begin with) Seeing that some ppl are even going to stop doing art because of how backstabbed they feel is insane, but I respect their decisions. I'm going to continue, but using my tablet still kinda leaves a bittersweet aftertaste now

This has been recent news to me, but I do own a wacom tablet I got for Christmas a year ago and this is honestly sad to see that they didn’t hire a real artist to market their own art company that has been consistently stated as an advocate for human artists

I don't believe it was a matter of negligence, I think they thought it was not going to be detected and they would be deceptive. Now that they are caught, they're trying to come with some sort of bs explanation

From my experience, the non-artist people working in the marketing department, and managing social networks don't care about art or quality, only about quantity and speed. Many times they don't even know how to use Photoshop or other image editing software beyond the most basic tools. From my pov it's unprofessional AF, but there is also a lot of consumers who don't care about the quality so they can get away with this crap. In case of Wacom... I can imagine how this all went down, but in the end it really is the company's fault for not setting stricter qualifications for their marketing team and NOT CARING ENOUGH. The company is likely run by people who don't care or respect their target audience beyond the money they milk out of them. Their biggest consumers are actually other (larger) companies that likely don't even follow the social media and order their products for their offices etc through their IT department. Hope they enjoy getting shitty quarterly review thanks to AI taking jobs in the industry they are part of. :)

Ai generated pictures have one forever problem - they are product, not art. colors? - random, positions? - random, designes? - random, light and shadow? - random. nothing have a meaning, everything is a product without anything more. indie companies and good games cant use such desighes and images, because they need meaning in it, what is this character, why he have this weapon, this clothes and details. storyboards? - too, whats the point of the same scenes? Do Ai have enough good examples to learn? - no, tarantino and anderson have they own stile, and we can remember like 10 more good storyboarders, but... thats all, it have 15-20 people from it can learn but its not enough. same with texts. same with arts. same with everything./ I cant imagine how Ai need to draw textures - with random colors? random patterns? it cant even draw clothes.

Starting off a good year of 2024 😑 ......I hate this AI crap

In a vacuum I'd blame adobe, however they should just commission an artist for things like this. Just do it holy shit, the lack of doing so is just a lack of artistic integrity. Whether it's AI or not kind of is irrelevant to me in this context. Almost makes me want to switch from my cintiq to an apple tablet or something.

If Wacom trusted the filter system of Adobe, then why use AI checkers? If someone looked at it and thought it looked like AI enough to run a check on it, why did they use the image it at all? Why not hire an artist? They are a 100 billion dollar company.

They vetted them? With what? The stock client they bought it from had hundreds of similar dragons for sale.

Why would they advertise with a result that doesn't require a tool they are advertising?

It not only about betrayal it island absolutely stupid move. It is funny really. Wacom and other art tablet manufacturers should understand that Ai art directly damages their market. I mean if artists stop creating art because of Ai no one would buy their product.

Ironically you need AI to spot another AI.

I saw today a job posting of “Ai Artist” using ai to create look of a video game. Using the same ai softwares that isn’t regulated and steal from artist. Is really sad that companies care so little for people that they want to replace artists with a soulless machines. I refuse to call ai generated images art, it isn’t art. It has no meaning or soul, is as empty as the machine itself.

I'm not even against ai and that response from wacom annoying me lol Disrespectful they are foolishly saying that artists are not reliable enough to detect ai art

*facepalms* that is some serious fail. But, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Fm-QsCUaih8.htmlsi=x0A9fy_v-QPZVASr&t=603 omg... I remember that box art. It was a _huge_ factor in my buying Wacom tablets. It is rather unfortunate that Wacom made use of AI art, whether they were aware or not... especially when Huion, XP-Pen, or Ugee are producing devices using the same technology and makes getting a good brand new tablet very affordable. Last tablet I picked up was a Ugee. Been looking at the one cable screen/tablet devices and Huion and XP-Pen are looking really good.

I expect nothing less from that scammy company, they are just like Apple.

I officially hate everything having to do with art. Now I have to throw away my drawing tablet and never draw again.

what annoys me most is that its so obviously ai, like just how bad are the system detections?

fact that adobe uses ai art in their stock shows ai will fuq up the art world.. im depressed and sad about seeing mre and more artists replaced by prompters

I fully believe that Wacom did not know that it was Ai generated, just because it would be absolutely foolish to do. More so, having experience with making art for a larger company, I know how much goes back and forward even for the smallest piece of art. So my wild guess here is that they had deadline for those posts, no real artist to have it made in time (Especially since art pieces for corporate use can’t just be paid for like people usually do with small commissions through paypal and such), so they just went with stock photo and got screwed over. An honest mistake in a rush. However, it’s still absolutely crazy that no one checked and saw the quality of those pictures.

I am making a declaration against ai art for English leave your issues with ai with me so I may write them.

On top of everything else, that dragon looks awful.

A bit related but id like to make it clear. If anyone IS planning to get rid of an art tablet due to this to get a different one. PLEASE dont just throw it away. Thats extremely wasteful of an item that works juet fine that an aspiring artist would like to use. Plus it was purchased before this occurred, and the tools work still and are good quality. The companies just have made major mistakes here that id HOPE is learned from. If you still want to switch tablets. Donate or resell the old one or give it to someone you know who would use it. Like a younger sibling who wants to get into digital art. Just PLEASE dont throw away perfectly good useable things just because of the company that made it being shit. And this would go for anything not just wacom. Were in an age of wastefulness and overconsumption. So please be resourceful. Thank you.

Corporate doesn't look beyond Adobe stock image catalog and doesn't contact the human artist? Checks out.

Considering wacoms cintique tablets cost a bomb, they are not short on cash, so to use stock images rather than hiring an artist to do three different dragons for them would have been tuppence for them. At the end of the day it's their own fault for being cheap that they ended up using AI images. And the fact that they support artists they should have known that the standards of those stock images were not on par to their brand name. I don't use wacom anymore I use xp pen myself. But my first two tablets I had when I was in school were bamboo tablets (this was back when Photoshop had only just turned to CS or though I still had a copy of photoshop 7 back then) I just think this was ridiculous, and I really do hope this hurts them for a while because even their apology was lacking sincerity

Came for the Wacom drama, stayed for the beautiful potion bottles 💖 (seriously i was watching with my entire attention cause they're just so pretty~)