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Alex Hallatt's avatar

I agree with your key point which is that though the projects won’t fund it does impact discoverability which is the hardest thing about making it as a cartoonist these days.

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blackManic's avatar

Regardless of the new "statement" about use of AI, I think every comic creator on the platform should complain to kickstarter, the policy says that use of AI must be transparent and disclosed when they create the project, not after others complain - https://updates.kickstarter.com/introducing-our-new-ai-policy/

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Emilio Diaz's avatar

It's become a real problem for many artists. I totally agree Tyler.

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M Sorcier's avatar

What exactly is the point of those AI projects flooding Kickstarter? What's their end game? Do they really think it's easy money and they can just make 20k from doing nothing? If that's the case it's nice to see that they got the rude awakening that they deserve.

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blackManic's avatar

OK, so time traveller's diary and witch hunter are suspended now, hopefully we won't see more of this fake garbage.

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blackManic's avatar

Well, we managed to get the fake witch hunter project suspended, go team!

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Melissa J Massey's avatar

Wow these campaigns are really a choice. I hope as the AI craze dies down these fraudulent projects will also die out. I just can't figure out what the point is if these projects won't fund - it's not like these "creators" will make any of that money. Are they just doing it to be in the way on the platform? Or do they really thing they can hit these high goals?

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Tyler James's avatar

My current theory is that it's one bored programmer treating it like a cool generative ai computer engineering project to auto-generate fake projects that look real enough to fool Kickstarter.

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Michael Dolce's avatar

Are we saying that these are bots or real people using AI generated templates (including AI creators) to fake Kickstarter projects. Ultimately, I would assume either way the funds are all going back to "a person" but that they have created a bot to generate these campaigns, yes?

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Tyler James's avatar

It's hard to say for certain. But based on the similarity of the campaigns, I'd guess it's a single actor (or group) that has written some Kickstarter project generating scripts that can generate an entire fake project from scratch, including whatever is required to create a prolife, submit identifying info, such as bank account and stripe connection, and do it well-enough to beat the Kickstarter screening process.

Because the goals are so outlandish, I'd even say it's probably more likely that this is a computer programming exercise more than a here's an easy way to make money scam.

But who knows... this might just be iteration one of a larger plan/scam.

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Manny AK's avatar

The Time-Traveler’s Diary has a cute note now saying, “In the development of "The Time-Traveler’s Diary," we have utilized artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with certain aspects of the project. Specifically, AI has been employed for "creating illustrations, analyzing and organizing content to ensure quality and consistency.”

It was probably written directly in response to you and others' claims that they’re fake. They look super sketchy.

I’ve seen actual creators ask for less and do horribly, even though they had a fantastic project with much better art. :(

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Tyler James's avatar

Yeah, just noticed this as well. I'm guessing that UI statement was also AI generated!

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