Why DeviantArt Will Soon Be Dead And How The Platform Is Killing Itself
Today I want to talk about DeviantArt. If you are an artist like myself, you most likely already know what DeviantArt is. Because DeviantArt is one of the largest online art sharing sites — and, founded in 2000, also one of the oldest ones.
deviantART is free to join for any creative. Members are generally known as “deviants” and can upload and showcase almost all forms of art (“deviations”), including digital art, traditional drawings, photography, literature, animations, and more.
Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? And it really was.
DeviantArt used to be the go-to place for creatives of all fields. However, it’s continuously slipping into decline.
DeviantArt used to be a really great place for artists to share their work, connect with like-minded people, build a community, and find new inspiration. I’ve been on the platform for 15 years and — if I remember well — it was the first art site I joined when I started creating digital art in 2010.
I really used to love DeviantArt. Once you uploaded a piece, you would get immediate feedback from other members. You could see how your work resonated with your audience, and you could grow as an artist getting new input and learning from other members.
In fact, “Lemon” was my first lip artwork and one of the earliest works that I uploaded to the platform.
As you can see in the bottom line, “Lemon” got 195 Favorites, 40 Comments, and 2.8 Views — and then the first problem already starts…
What Is The AI Controversy On DeviantArt?
Now, what is actually this “DeviantArt Protect” button and why is it off?
Well, this has to do with the AI controversy that’s been going on on the platform for several years — and is ultimately one of the major reasons of the downfall of DeviantArt.
Everything started in 2023 when DeviantArt introduced “DreamUp,” an AI-based image generation tool developed in collaboration with Stability AI, the same company behind the popular Stable Diffusion model.
Very much like Midjourney and DALL-E, DreamUp allowed users to generate images based on text prompts. While some users embraced DreamUp as a tool “to enhance their creativity,” the majority of deviants raised ethical questions about the role of AI in art. And rightly so.
Because DreamUp’s underlying AI model was trained on vast amounts of publicly available images, many of which came from DeviantArt itself. This meant that the AI was fed data that included the works of DeviantArt members — mind you, without the creators’ knowledge and consent.
Nevertheless, all works uploaded to the site were essentially opted into the AI model by default.
Seems like DeviantArt turned out to be an art site that doesn’t value the worth of art and doesn’t respect the copyright of artists…
As it was bound to happen, artists got outraged, left the platform in droves, and some artists even initiated a lawsuit against DeviantArt.
In response, DeviantArt introduced a label to prevent works from being used for AI training. That’s the “DeviantArt Protect” button I talked about above — but the damage already was done.
And the damage is still being done, because, as you can see in the screenshot of “Lemon” above, that “DeviantArt Protect” is not automatically switched on for the works you’ve already uploaded to the platform.
By default, it is switched off and if you want your “deviations” protected, you’ll have to go through all your old works and switch it on manually.
What creative has the time to manually switch on dozens of buttons, while we cannot even be sure that they actually do what they promise — protect our art?
Many creatives are actually not happy about how the platforms handles artists’ copyright and that’s one reason why DeviantArt is dying.
But I don’t want to talk so much about AI art stealing from artists and why artists are against it. I’ve already written an entire series of articles on AI art that you can view on my website.
Today, I want to talk about another thing that’s going wrong on the platform and that I believe significantly contributes to DeviantArt being soon dead — at least for real artists…
Why DeviantArt Will Soon Be Dead And How The Platform Is Killing Itself
The lawsuit against DeviantArt has been settled in 2023. There’s a beautiful “DeviantArt Protect” button that every creative can switch on who doesn’t want their work exploited.
Additionally, the “NoAI” or “Created using AI tools” options that real artists and promptors can tick accordingly informs viewers whether they are looking at an artwork or an artificially generated image.
Things should be fine now on DeviantArt.
But they are not. Here’s why I believe that artists and art lovers will keep leaving DeviantArt and how the platform does its bit to push this trend:
Most of the time, finding new artists and new art you love is all about discovering works that are related to the pieces you already showed an interest in.
That’s also how I used to discover new art and artists on DeviantArt. I would just pull up one of the images I had created yourself and browse through the “Suggested Deviants” section. Chances were you would discover new artwork that would amaze and inspire you.
Every platform knows that suggesting related content helps users find other stuff that is aligned with their interests and makes them stay on the platform longer and more likely to come back.
Every platform knows that… except DeviantArt.
Let’s have a look at the “Suggested Deviants” section the way it is now. Here’s a screenshot of this section as it appears under my lip artwork “Lemon”:
Taking a quick glance at the first two rows, I can already tell that these images have been made using AI. The thumbnails are already telling enough, I don’t even need to visit the user’s gallery to make sue.
As for the last row, I know that the images created by “ftourini” are real art, because I know this artist from a couple of years ago.
With the first two rows being AI generated, how engaging do you find these suggestions? Is that something that is likely to captivate the interest of someone who is viewing a handmade piece of art?
Rather not, if you ask me.
But let’s take the plunge and have a look at the “body of work” of the first “suggested deviant.” What would you expect to see?
I would expect to see a number, or maybe even dozens, of AI-generated images showing lips in different colors and angles.
But way off the mark. What you are being met with when visiting the “suggested deviant’s” gallery is — pardon — hundreds of naked arses.
I scrolled down a mile (just for this article, otherwise I would have taken to my heels immediately), but I wasn’t even able to find those three lip art images that were suggested to me.
What kind of experience does DeviantArt expect users to derive from their platform by suggesting such galleries? An enjoyable user experience that makes people come back for more?
Mmh.
Now, you could think this is an individual case. Something’s gone wrong with the algorithm at this point.
But I’ll have to disappoint you. It’s not an individual algorithmic slip. It’s always like that. You can easily check for yourself.
Let’s have a look at another work of mine. One that I uploaded only recently:
We are actually seeing two things here. First, I’m obviously on a free trial for the DeviantArt Protection and if I don’t buy Core membership soon my free trial will expire and “Ruby Vow” will be used to train AI. That’s how I understand it.
But the actual thing that I wanted you to note here is that the checkbox “NoAI” is ticked. Thus, this image is clearly labeled as “non-AI art,” aka “real art.”
However, when looking at the suggestions, it’s very obvious that only AI-generated images are being promoted through DeviantArt:
Well, RawAccessArt we already checked them out — it’s the one with the arses. So, let’s take a closer look at another suggestion, the AiArtShop… sounds promising 😆
The AiArtShop has altogether 20.8K deviations in their gallery (at the time of writing this article, could be 10K more by the end of next week) and most of them are only viewable if you subscribe for $8 a month.
But even with the blurred images, you can see that the majority of pics don’t feature lip art. I actually wasn’t able to find the three lip pieces that were suggested to me below “Ruby Vow” in the AiArtShop’s gallery — I probably gave up scrolling down too early. 😅
DeviantArt is killing itself and will soon be dead for artists, not only because of its AI controversies and overwhelming promotion of AI-generated images, but simply because of its awful user experience.
Understandably, artists feel that their work and creativity are being overshadowed by artificial images. But that’s not all.
Anyone who is visiting the platform to admire art and find inspiration is driven away from the site because they are simply not able anymore to discover works that are related to their interests.
A sure-fire strategy for virtual suicide.
Who is to blame: AI tools, DeviantArt, or scam accounts? To me, it’s clear.
While scam artists do surely contribute their share to DeviantArt’s downfall by flooding the platform with artificially generated images, the management bears the main responsibility.
AI tools themselves aren’t to blame; it would be ridiculous to fault a tool for how it is used.
However, what keeps the management from making the user experience on their platform great again? 😁
A minor change in the algorithm would make it possible to suggest handmade images along with works that have been labeled “NoAI” and to suggest AI images along with images that have been labeled as being “Created using AI tools.”
I’m not saying that AI art is real art, but at least it would contribute to a more positive user experience. Everyone gets what they want and people are willing to stay on the platform longer and come back for more.
However, considering how things are, I’m personally not coming back for more. I still randomly upload new artwork to DeviantArt, but the platform has lost its appeal for me and for so many other artists.
DeviantArt is dying slowly but steadily and if nothing changes the platform will be dead soon…
That’s my take on the recent developments on DeviantArt. What are you thinking? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you. Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter here so you don’t miss out on new blog posts and other cool stuff. ❤︎
See you on the next post, Angie ✌️
