Someone on Discord tried to sell me AI art as a custom sketch

A Discord user attempted to sell AI-generated art as a hand-drawn custom sketch, and when confronted, initially denied it before admitting after the buyer shared AI detection results. The buyer, who reported the incident, warns others to verify artists' processes, noting that legitimate artists should be willing to show time-lapses or layered files.

Someone on Discord tried to sell me AI art as a custom sketch He sent over a file that was so obviously generated by an AI model that it didn't even require a second glance. The anatomy was slightly off, the line work had that weirdly smoothed-out "perfect" texture that Diffusion models love, and the composition was typical of a prompt-to-image output. When I called him out on it, he didn't even blink. He doubled down, insisting, "Nah man, it's not AI, I made it myself," and even went into some long-winded explanation about his process. He actually tried to gaslight me. He kept pushing, asking me to commission more sketches so he could "prove" his skills were legitimate. I decided to pin him down with a specific request: I asked him to record a video of himself actually drawing the same sketch from scratch. He initially agreed, which was a huge red flag in itself, but after a long silence, he suddenly changed his tune. He told me, "I will not make it again, now if there is any real work then tell me and I will get it done." At that point, I realized I was dealing with a complete fraud. I decided to run the image through an AI detector just to have the receipts. Once I took a screenshot of the detection results and sent it to him, his entire persona shifted. He finally admitted it, but with the most pathetic follow-up imaginable: "This time I will not use AI." It’s getting harder to find actual human talent in these freelance corners of the internet. If you are looking for a real AI workflow or hiring artists, please be careful. This guy wasn't even trying to be subtle; he was just hoping to catch people who don't know how to spot the hallmarks of a generative model. If you're building a prompt engineering library or looking for high-quality assets, don't let these "sketch artists" waste your time with low-effort renders. I've seen plenty of people try to pass off Midjourney or Stable Diffusion /en/tags/stable%20diffusion/ outputs as hand-drawn work, but the audacity to refuse a screen recording of the process is a new low. If an artist is legitimate, they should have no problem showing a time-lapse or a layered PSD file. If they start making excuses about "not wanting to redo the work," you already have your answer. How I automated support for my open-source project with AI 24d ago /en/news/4402/ Next Surveillance tech giants are shifting focus as Flock Safety → /en/news/7436/