#like without fail

i only found out about this person because they frequently popped up in the megastar / decepticons tag. i think the first post i saw from them is this one

a couple of things popped out as red flags

basically asking for writing requests on every post (not uncommon for people to take art or writing requests but i think most artists would stop after recieving so many or just wouldn't take them at all)

every post has an image accompanying it. weirdly enough they never seem to acknowledge it (aside from this post) or ever imply they drew it themselves. usually ai posters try to at least mask themselves as the one drawing it, but this person doesn't. i still believe this is disingenuous either way because there is no clear indication, leading to people assuming it's their art.

the art itself looked off, specifically the fingers. however i didnt want to jump the gun immediately and did some digging

before i get into the rest of the posts, i also want to mention that this person doesn't seem to brand themselves as a visual artist, but rather a writer. i didn't read anything they posted (cuz i lowkey didnt gaf) but considering they also post a lot of writing based off of people's requests, i have a theory that theyre using people's requests as prompts and running it through an ai writing generator. but this is a theory and i have no proof of this, so dont take my word for it. im mainly going to be talking about the pictures

but for those curious, here's their ao3. im not reading their stuff but if anybody else wants to run it through an ai checker then be my guest

https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiani25

https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiani25

EVIDENCE OF AI ART

i compiled some images to prove my point but i will also make a bulleted list to further describe my reasoning

the fingers are always just messed up in some way. drawing robot hands is very hard, but i think most people who take the time to draw robot designs frequently usually have some grasp on how they should look. not only do the fingers tend to melt together (which is another frequent tell of something being ai) but the individual digits and indents on the joints are also messed up everytime.

every picture is drawn in a different style. many artists are able to draw in different styles and mediums, but this looks less like an artist who knows different artstyles and more like a different person drew each of them. the proportions, facial expressions and coloring techniques change everytime and don't look like it comes from the same person. this leads me to believe this person is using an ai programs that is feeding off of multiple transformers artists, possibly even from tumblr as well.

the designs for the characters themselves are inconsistent in every picture. i don't mean that the person is creating new designs each time, but rather whatever program they're using is making small errors and different errors each time. another image which proves this:

starscream's design is just wrong here LOL. he has a white collar and a blue chest plate alongside the cockpit. his shoulder pads are also red with a stripe. usually you could rationalize this as a fan redesign, but this version of his design never shows up in any of the other pictures ive seen. meanwhile megatron looks similar enough to his g1 design (dont worry, he also has design inconsistencies in this picture and throughout every picture too. also he's crossed eyed in this one)

several of these images have areas where they're noticeably more low-res/compressed/fragmented. if you look closely on the images with more detailed rendering, you'll see it in the smaller areas like in between fingers or joints.

before i move on, i actually wanna bring attention to this picture, because it was the one that confirmed my suspicions without a shadow of a doubt.

this one is interesting because on first glance, some person would probably never assume this is ai.

but if you take into account what i've layed out, you can probably identify the issues with this already. (lighting is wrong, weird fingers, design inconsistencies like the miscolored torso, the inside of his chest turbine things being fully grey, wings don't match, legs look weird if you rlly look at it)

but here's the kicker. if you look at the top right in between the moon and his wing, you'll see a watermark. let's see what name it says.

NOTHING! it says absolutely nothing. it's just scribbled nonsense. definitely the result of an ai gen program stealing art from other people, which may have taken artworks from people who put watermarks on their art (it looks like it badly tried to recreate the @ symbol, so it may be stealing work from twitter as well)

CONCLUSION

full disclaimer: im not an advocate for wrongfully accusing people of ai, or insinuating actual artist's work looks like ai. but i am also not an advocate for the usage of ai art, nor do i condone posting ai art and not disclosing that it's ai to people. i also want to acknowledge a lot of the things i use to identify if something is ai (in isolation) may not definitively determine if something is ai.

however, i do feel confident in accusing this person because of the constant errors in all of their works, the nonsense watermark, and lack of acknowledgment of ai usage. i've seen way too many people on multiple platforms (including tumblr) that are blatantly posting ai generated images under the guise of being an artist without clearly disclosing their ai use, or will straight up lie about creating these images themselves.