ArtStation is finally taking action against AI art, but there's one question it doesn't want to answer

When ArtStation, one of the most popular digital art communities online, recently changed hands, many long-time users of the platform had one big hope: that the new owner would finally take action to stem the swell of AI-generated content on the platform.

They now have some good news. KitBash has turned on 'NoAI' by default for all uploads, marking them as unavailable for AI training. Meanwhile, work is underway to try to make it harder for bots to scrape the site and to stop 'AI art' from burying human artists' work. But some artists are wondering, isn't there an easier potential solution for this?

Last month, Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite and the game development software Unreal Engine, sold ArtStation to KitBash, the company behind the 3D assets platforms KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla.

The new owner says it's been listening to users and read the message about AI clear. Artists want measures to protect their work and to stop it from being buried under the deluge of AI slop.

Regarding the first issue, as of yesterday, the default setting for all work on the platform is 'no AI'. This means that both new and existing uploads are automatically excluded from AI training. Users can turn the setting off if, for some reason, they want their work to be available for AI training.

This opt-in rather than opt-out approach is something many artists had called for. It contrasts with the approaches of many other platforms. Users on some social platforms like Instagram have to navigate settings to find how to prevent their content from being used for AI, if it's even possible in their region.

To try to safeguard users' work more effectively, ArtStation says it's working with Cloudflare to try to prevent art from the site being scraped. It's using bot-management and AI crawler tools to proactively identify and block known AI crawlers and automated scraping activity before they can access content at scale.

While it stresses that no system can make publicly shared work impossible to scrape, it believes it can make unauthorised access harder and intends to keep strengthening safeguards as technology changes. Meanwhile, search engines will continue to index ArtStation so artists' work can still be discovered online.

The platform says it also agrees with complaints about the need to stop AI-generated content from overwhelming discovery. The sheer volume of AI art had been making it harder to find artists and to evaluate portfolios, making ArtStation less useful both for artists and potential recruiters.

ArtStation has recognised that the existing #CreatedWithAI label and filtering tools aren't enough to solve the problem. It says it's working on the development of tools to allow better discovery, more control, and better ways to keep generated content from drowning out professional work.

"AI-assisted workflows are varied, so one simple rule won’t solve discovery. But complexity cannot become an excuse for inaction," it said on the ArtStation blog, adding: "We don’t have every answer yet. We want to get this right, and we want the community involved as we work through it".

Many artists have welcomed the policy shift towards favouring human art over AI. But some have a question that ArtStation doesn't seem to want to answer. Why not just ban AI art from the platform?

"Feels like [trying to] have it both ways," one artist responded to the announcement on X. "Would love to know why you guys are choosing to allow AI content on the platform. Is it for numbers? Subscriptions? Banning AI would solve the Human artist discovery issue and have less logistics on your side. So why?"

ArtStation responded to the question, but it didn't answer it:

"We hear you, and we agree that the current tools are not enough to keep AI-generated content from burying human work. ArtStation is now part of the KitBash family, and we are working through how to handle complex workflows without hurting artists. Better discovery controls are just the beginning of the changes we want to make to put creators first."