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The story
An illustrator’s post reading, “Because of AI, this country is seriously finished — now people are stuck wiping old folks’ poop,” drew criticism for looking down on caregiving work. The remark kicked off a 5ch thread debate over whether AI-generated art or human illustrators hold more value. Few defended the original poster; many pointed out their ignorance of what caregiving actually involves, while harsh opinions about the illustration profession itself piled up. At the same time, pushback from posters skeptical of AI use remained strong, and the thread carried on with opinions split.
What people said
I'm not anti-AI, but companies are using AI art so much now that I've started thinking it just makes for boring artwork.
Them being a bunch of unhinged lunatics is just a fact though.
Protect illustrators! 😡
Tying a character's identity to one specific artist only ever brings misery to the users in the end.
KanColle, Azur Lane, and Blue Archive have all had cases where the character designer and the operator had a falling-out or cut ties completely. But KanColle, which never separated character design from implementation, ended up with characters who can never get updates or new art again,
while Azur Lane and Blue Archive, which kept those separate, kept getting new art for their characters even after severing ties with the original artist.
Something similar happened with a certain GungHo game.
The first game ended service, and a sequel was announced.
↓
The original illustrator was supposed to continue, but apparently something went wrong and someone else took over.
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Players/sleuths discovered the credited art was basically the previous artist's style with just extra clothing bolted on — a heavily doctored piece.
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The sequel shut down in under a year.
Well, of course caregiving gets looked down on.
And the people doing this kind of harassment can't even do that much.
Funny, right?
there were tons of garbage ones — turning in trash art, blowing deadlines, ignoring instructions,
yet still mouthing off with opinions like they were hot stuff
— illustrators like that were everywhere,
so yeah, you end up thinking AI is better.
You forgot to fly your plane (5ch slang implying you're using sockpuppet accounts to agree with yourself).
What I'm saying is correct, so I don't even need to pretend to be a majority, do I?
The Yomiuri Giants' manager position,
for one.
then playing 'creator' with AI
is just a waste of time.
It's all ripped off anyway, and you can blame every mistake on the AI
— there's no way you'll ever grow from that.
That's exactly why you lost to AI — because you never grew.
So are illustrators who can't produce a hit worthless, then?
X's (Twitter's) monetization rules got stricter, so farming this level of impressions doesn't get you much anymore.
ranking even below the caregiving work it supposedly looked down on, lol.
The point is how childish it is that someone who can't even do that much
is having AI do everything for them while playing pretend 'creator.'
Anyone can do it if they use AI, you know?
It's because people hate it that they pay others to do it for them. No point pretending otherwise.
Nobody's asking for your personal artistic vision, and nobody sees you as a 'creator,'
but the annoying part is that you see yourself as one.
With AI you don't need talent, so even you could do it — that old chestnut again.
And honestly, even before AI, anyone could use tools
and churn out something decent enough.
AI didn't change anything all that special.
Well then, sounds like even bottom-tier illustrators can keep making a living.
The manga industry's just wrong about this — the job of cheaply doing the grunt work for other people is still around just like before, so good for you.
I mean, most things in life are just 'anyone could do it, but it's a hassle,' aren't they?
Background and Key Points of This Topic
This post went viral against a backdrop of social tension: the spread of generative AI is rapidly displacing illustrators’ work. The thread also brought up rights disputes over artists and character design (such as contract troubles seen with KanColle and Azur Lane), showing that the question of AI’s use is too complex to reduce to simple right-or-wrong. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the original post was just the opinion of one anonymous individual, not a consensus view of illustrators as a whole. In the thread, criticism wasn’t aimed only at the original poster — comments belittling caregiving work and the illustration profession itself were also prominent, and this mutual dismissiveness between the two sides reflects a conflict even deeper-rooted than the reaction the original post provoked.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread 「[Sad News] Illustrator: “Because of AI, this country where people end up wiping old folks’ poop is truly finished” → Massive backlash as discrimination against caregivers」.
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