Looks like AI

If you look through their profile, this is a style they've been drawing consistently with (and improving from to get to this point) since before AI was available, and each of the albums has a small drawing process preview attached into it. So, while it is tempting to call anyone's art style "AI" based off of some shiny parts or because AI started coopting certain rendering techniques that real artists were using before it existed, we should not just randomly witchhunt artists for it.

As much as I agree we shouldn't witchhunt randomly, this guy is hundred million percent using AI and it's very obvious despite them trying really hard to hide it. Backgrounds are without a shadow of a doubt generated, look: post #6518478 or post #6818972 . The characters I can't say with 100% centainty. If I had to guess, I'd say probably lineart drawn on top of generated image, then flat colors and colors from the generated image are clipped to seperate flat color layers, then slighly corrected. Step by step process posted on this artist's twitter would never yield the same result as here. Idk if this counts as AI for danbooru or if AI for only backgounds is allowed.

While there is AI-generated background (and as such, those posts remain active as the primary focus/entity of the image is not AI-generated) and screenshot background, there's nothing about those that immediately stands out to me. They have backgrounds that look like this on works uploaded to their Pixiv that predate any large AI model's general availability.

If you're "one hundred million" percent sure, then you need to explain properly, not "look at XYZ". That's the problem with people on Danbooru that are eager to prevent AI here; majority of the time, they never provide a real explanation aside from their hunch.

Look, backgrounds on these 2 posts I mentioned being generated is not questionable, if you can't see obvious AI artifacts, random patterns that no human would ever draw because they would require a ridiculous amount of time to draw and they look shit, then even me explaining it to you probably won't help. If danbooru rules allow ai-generated backgrounds, that's fine, I just wanted to make clear that this artist is definitely using AI, so Time2Hack is right.
And no, this guy doesn't have ai artifacts on backgrounds posted on pixiv before ai models were widely available. They were just very simple, poorly drawn (but hand drawn) backgrounds for a very long time, and since May 27, 2023 they started posting with generated backgrounds consistently. Sometimes he overpaints a lot, sometime very little.

Idontlikeai said:

As much as I agree we shouldn't witchhunt randomly, this guy is hundred million percent using AI and it's very obvious despite them trying really hard to hide it. Backgrounds are without a shadow of a doubt generated, look: post #6518478 or post #6818972 . The characters I can't say with 100% centainty. If I had to guess, I'd say probably lineart drawn on top of generated image, then flat colors and colors from the generated image are clipped to seperate flat color layers, then slighly corrected. Step by step process posted on this artist's twitter would never yield the same result as here. Idk if this counts as AI for danbooru or if AI for only backgounds is allowed.

"We shouldn't witch-hunt."
*Immedately witch-hunts.

Therein lies the problem: a lot of people on and off Danbooru claim that certain things are "not questionable" and then when it turns out to be false then that produces the aforementioned witch hunt that I mentioned trying to steer clear of. Additionally, some things that may be "obvious" to you may not be to others, so explaining actually would help rather than expecting me to see the same things you're seeing and agree with your conclusion.

We have Chinese artists that get flagged for AI all the time simply because of their art style because flaggers declare that they are "unquestionably AI", and have to get proven time and time again that they aren't. It's backwards to say that explaining won't help because I can't recognise the supposed "AI" patterns myself.

Idontlikeai said:

Look, backgrounds on these 2 posts I mentioned being generated is not questionable, if you can't see obvious AI artifacts, random patterns that no human would ever draw because they would require a ridiculous amount of time to draw and they look shit, then even me explaining it to you probably won't help. If danbooru rules allow ai-generated backgrounds, that's fine, I just wanted to make clear that this artist is definitely using AI, so Time2Hack is right.
And no, this guy doesn't have ai artifacts on backgrounds posted on pixiv before ai models were widely available. They were just very simple, poorly drawn (but hand drawn) backgrounds for a very long time, and since May 27, 2023 they started posting with generated backgrounds consistently. Sometimes he overpaints a lot, sometime very little.

WRS's point was that if you just claim something is AI and don't explain why, it just leads to gullible and trigger-happy people assuming you're right. And that may work out if the artist actually is using AI, but what if you're wrong? By providing the explanation from the start, it takes less time and work to falsify the claim in the event it's not true, making damage control for false accusations a lot easier. And if it's true, it gives the AI artist less time to prepare an excuse or otherwise misdirect their viewers.

As for this background, I do see some odd distortion in the upper-left corner, but I typically leave this kind of stuff to people that actually know what they're doing when checking for AI stuff, so I posted it in the AI-generated art check thread (forum #342086). If the backgrounds are AI but not the characters, it should get the AI-assisted tag. So far, none of the three posts you mentioned have the tag, so I think it would be good to get some more opinions on them before we add the tag to those posts.

WRS said:

Additionally, some things that may be "obvious" to you may not be to others, so explaining actually would help rather than expecting me to see the same things you're seeing and agree with your conclusion.

I'll help then.

post #6518478: Blurry smudges around the characters as evidence of the artist painting over the background. The lamp on the left side looks like it belongs in a Salvador Dali painting. Melty and misshapen. If it was hand drawn you would expect it to be at least a little symmetrical, or at least look like there was intent behind its shape. The pattern on it is also a nonsense mess of shapes. The desk(?) in the right corner is similarly an incomprehensible mess. Very typical AI work.

post #6818972: The ceiling above Stelle and Topaz is just a complete mess. What is that bronze-ish thing supposed to be? A chandelier? Everything around it, as well as the molding of the corner to the right, is also a complete mess. You'd have a very hard time convincing me a real person drew that. Comparing it to Salvador Dali doesn't even feel like an exaggeration.

That does indeed help a bit better, thanks for providing a second opinion. I'll wait for what the folks in the AI thread say/how they tag it in response. The ceiling corner in the aforementioned post doesn't look like a natural artist error. That being said, those two were brought up as examples to somehow... prove that this one as potentially assisted or generated. This kind of thing is meant to be reviewed on a case by case basis.

I posted the whole query of similar works in the thread. Generally, I mentioned that if they assisted one background it wouldn't be unreasonable to think the rest of their works from that point were produced the same way, but I'm not confident in making that kind of assumption.

WRS said:

I posted the whole query of similar works in the thread. Generally, I mentioned that if they assisted one background it wouldn't be unreasonable to think the rest of their works from that point were produced the same way, but I'm not confident in making that kind of assumption.

I would also generally agree with this. There's no reason to believe an artist that uses AI once without divulging it wouldn't use it again. That said, the background for this image is too simple, I can't really spot anything that would give it away as AI. The only thing that's off to me is the "cloud" by the tree is identical to the "steam" around Mavuika, but that's probably not AI.

tl;dr I actually bought their PSDs to confirm after getting flagged and everything is layered and looks very clearly human-made.

All-in-all: I reserved my skepticism since all we had to go off of was a cursory glance at the picture, but after getting flagged with a bad reason (only says "AI", no explanation of how or what to look at) and seeing no further progress on this discussion, I just went and brought the works myself to see if I could sleuth it out on my own. It all looks completely normal when you actually have access to the work files. It's safe to say these works are not AI-generated, not even the backgrounds.