Banning AI Art

wild! but i support it

I've been away. When I was uploading new images, I saw the new rule. I then came to the forum and saw this post.

This is the best decision Wallhaven has made in a good while. I applaud you Askumka! The quote "I'd like wallhaven to become a place online that still channels the "old internet." Where content is human made and not the site can just exist for the people who care for it and the content it provides. " really hit home for me.

Is there a way I can send you or wallhaven a monetary gift to show my gratitude? I'm dead serious.

Again, thank you for this decision!

Just saw this thread and thank you, this gives me hope in humanity.

It's been a while since the last time I visited the site hunting for new wallpapers. I fully support this decision. Thank you for taking action and making Wallhaven a better place.

PinecamppleX3 said:

WillyLongRooster33 said:

PinecamppleX3 said:

OrionSDB said:

While I understand & respect your desire to preserve the spirit of the "old internet" & protect a community of human artists, I think banning AI art outright is a short-sighted move that may ultimately limit the richness of creative expression rather than protect it.

First, AI art is not inherently antithetical to human creativity, it is a tool, much like Photoshop, digital brushes or 3D modeling software once were. Behind every AI generated image is a human making choices: about prompts, composition, curation, iteration & intent. To suggest otherwise is to deny the existence of hybrid creativity, which is where the future of art undeniably lies. You say you want to fight "enshittification," but censoring innovation because it challenges a traditional workflow could just as easily be seen as another form of cultural regression.

Second, banning AI art sends an exclusionary message to a growing wave of digital creatives who are embracing new tools not to replace artistry, but to amplify it. Some of these people are artists who can no longer hold a stylus due to disability. Some are storytellers using visual tools to explore new worlds. Others are experimenting in ways traditional tools simply don't allow. You’re shutting the door on them without distinguishing between spam & sincere expression.

Finally, there’s a practical danger in drawing a hard line here: the definition of “AI art” is already murky. Should it include pieces where AI was used in composition but finished by hand? Or where an AI helped conceptualize a sketch later turned into a painting? The line is blurrier than your policy admits, & enforcement risks being both inconsistent & unjust.

Rather than banning a medium, why not foster curation & transparency? Let users tag, filter, and follow what they want. Build tools to spotlight human created content without erasing everything else. Respect your users by giving them choice, don’t make that choice for them.

In the name of preserving the “old internet,” we should be cautious not to revive its worst tendencies: fear of change, knee-jerk gatekeeping, & elitism masquerading as authenticity.

You don't need to like AI art... but banning it altogether risks alienating people who are using it ethically, creatively & with heart.

Literally nobody cares about the middle school rant you just went on about how sad you are about this development. Go back to diddling yourself to the women you make up on ChatGPT.

Added 2 minutes after

Lexobaal said:

iSuzume said:

Why intentionally cripple your site's popularity? Are we fighting windmills? AI is not going anywhere, and it's getting better every month, and I have no idea how you will know if it's AI-made or not. Who decides that?

I have seen so, so much bad art, screenshots of movies, and games. But are they okay because it's human slop? Why should they stay and AI go? Is it about ethics? People copy each other left and right, but nobody cares. A toggle was good enough, but clearly, people can't even tag properly. Create a system where people could vote for AI art to stay or be removed, so the best could stay.

And why look at the teeth of a free horse? Ads are never the problem; the problem is how site owners never know where to put them. Instead of one picture, there could be an ad. You don't need to go crazy with it, but additional money could be good for the site? No? I'm not an engineer regarding this.

you´re 100% right. But the owner choose to run with his head through the wall instead of creating a solution for everyone on this platform. YES AI is most of the times terrible. Its only sad that this decision was made from a personal grudge against AI.

You're a moron who posts AI generated women and thinks he "makes art". You're the actual lowest example of your species.

What a well reasoned critique that doesn't make you look like a child throwing a tantrum over AI

"..a child throwing a tantrum over AI"

The projection is generational. Cope and seethe

Oh, however will I cope with the fact that nobody who has a life cares whether art is made by AI or not. Meanwhile, terminally online people like you will cry in the corner over AI existing, perpetually seething over people liking all kinds of art

I know I'm late but yay!!

Thank you. Anyone who supports AI art is anti-artist. There's zero redeeming quality in AI art. It's awful, looks awful, and needs to be fought against. Also, I'd take bad art made by a person than the best AI image. We need to keep art human. There's no 2 ways around it.

Thankfully the majority of people support stopping AI art. The only people making profit off of AI art are billionaires hoping people will use their data centers to generate more income. AI can be used in other great ways, but art is not one of them.

Since detecting whether the image is AI or not is gonna get harder as time goes, what if site had switch where favorites button is, but for if its AI or not then add it to the AI category like anime general people, but the uploader can initially choose AI, which would be helpful. Value of switch is initially null then AI, not AI. Depends on how many people switch it to AI its category automatically changes to AI.

Also since we're fighting against enshittification what if site had dislike/disfavorite button, if its overwhelmingly more than favorites like 5 or 10 times, then it automatically gets deleted(may need static threshold like at least 10 or 100 dislike kinda). This might even solve some AI problem if its AI slop it gets deleted if not let it stay but with AI generated tag.

Returned to this site after a long hiatus and was positively surprised by this announcement. Kudos to the administration!

That's the most beautiful thing I've ever read. I'm tired of AI pollution

What about AI image upscaling? Is that gonna be banned too? I use it a lot to improve the quality of some specific wallpapers.

viddlenchaire said:

Firstly I respect the decision. I am just a humble user of this site. I don't know my opinion is relevant or not, and i really don't want to complain, but I feel some disturbance in the Force. From 1.2M pics what the site shows, there are only 30k tagged as AI, and i think some of it has real values. At least, not in a less rate than in the non-AI content. It seems to me this is an absolutely minor problem, rather it's not a problem at all, or at least the site is handling it already perfectly. So why it must be banned? AI is just another brush in creators hand, if a picture isnt good, that is always the problem of the creator, not the tool. If you really want lure artists to come here, i think it would be better to deal with the fact, at least 50% of the site content is brainless soft porn, basically most of them are the same picture but with another woman. I use this site to inspire myself. When i browse the precious Random to collect ideas, i see much more nearly identical pornographic content than valuable art. well, it isn't a problem to me, we can hide NSFW content too (well, i will not, i am a man of culture as well :D), but if i dont want to see, i can hide AI too, I don't really understand why it is better if you're simply denying already filterable content, and not let the user decide if they want to see it or not, like how it is works nowadays absolute perfectly. So I feel this decision causeless. Well, it isnt much of a loss, and I can't see what you can see operating the site, so as i said, i don't want to complain, i just really don't understand, why is it necessary. I rather miss a rating system to let the audience to judge and evaluate the content, so that would be my idea instead of this simple censorship. Pls don't ban me, i just want to help to make the site better, well, even if it's perfect already.

AI has made the production of garbage extremely convenient and rapid. You can generate hundreds of AI wallpapers within a minute. However, these wallpapers lack creativity and content. They are merely the assembly of color blocks, the dismemberment and reassembly of existing works on the Internet. 99.99% of the content generated by AI can be said to be meaningless garbage. Although we can block AI content, this rapidly produced garbage will quickly flood our platforms. At first, AI content was only 1%, then 10%, then 50%, 90%, and eventually AI content will completely take over everything. We must raise our voices and use strong measures to stop this.

SevenXMasterXPRO7 said:

What about AI image upscaling? Is that gonna be banned too? I use it a lot to improve the quality of some specific wallpapers.

I don't think the rules say anything about "AI image upscaling," but using image upscaling is against the rules. If that what you are saying?

gsvsg said:

AI has made the production of garbage extremely convenient and rapid. You can generate hundreds of AI wallpapers within a minute. However, these wallpapers lack creativity and content. They are merely the assembly of color blocks, the dismemberment and reassembly of existing works on the Internet. 99.99% of the content generated by AI can be said to be meaningless garbage. Although we can block AI content, this rapidly produced garbage will quickly flood our platforms. At first, AI content was only 1%, then 10%, then 50%, 90%, and eventually AI content will completely take over everything. We must raise our voices and use strong measures to stop this.

I think I agree what you want to say, but it's not just a black and white question as you tell. I will say again: the problem are the users, not the tool. You need some artistic sense to use an AI to make an idea better, and some AI user just doesn't have it, or give effort into it. I agree, most of AI pictures seem like the use of the AI is the idea itself, and that is valueless to me also, and there are hundreds of sites where content became mostly AI product, so I feel some Anti-AI bias was actually a good call. But never forget some of AI produced pic has value, and I think just because most of them don't have any, we cant just throw out the valuable with the garbage. But It looks like to me the site developers made their job with perfect sense, so i cant complain the decision anymore. Even if I see some possible AI use, it clearly used with care, and nowadays latest pictures page really make a better impression. I feel like Wallhaven really became a better place, so I appreciate the result.

Godspeed you, good people. Keep it real. You're the best.

Thank you! The change has most definitely made this website better!

Awsome!

May I suggest to remove/rewrite this part of the upload UI to reflect the change?

content should be judged by its quality, not by the tools used to create it

stupid discrimination that will make no sense in 5 years from now. keep downloading your plain color screens with stupid weeb stencils in them.

Thank you!! The human connection and our creativity is the most important thing we have!

Zwizzor said:

stupid discrimination that will make no sense in 5 years from now. keep downloading your plain color screens with stupid weeb stencils in them.

LMAO get out of here

Strange that a site that embraces porn so much draws the line at AI art.

Awesome! Hopefully most users will follow the rules. I think it would be good to use a bigger, maybe red text, for rule 4. when clicking upload. But then again, this rule is ofc less important then 1. for example, so maybe it should be highlighted in some other way.

YUYU said:

content should be judged by its quality, not by the tools used to create it

That would require actual thinking and not defaulting to tribalism to do the judgments for people But you know...