Lost $200 on a 'custom' AI art commission that was just a stock image

I paid a guy on Fiverr to make a unique character portrait for a project, and he delivered something that felt off. I did a reverse image search and found it was a slightly tweaked version of a free AI-generated image from a public dataset (specifically from the LAION-5B set). The whole thing made me realize how easy it is for 'artists' to just run a prompt and sell the output without any real skill or original work. Has anyone else gotten burned by paying for AI art that wasn't actually original?

4 comments

4 Comments

paige_robinson243mo ago

That's a rough deal, but it's more about the seller being dishonest than AI art itself. A real artist using AI tools would still put in creative work and be upfront about their process. You just found a bad apple who was trying to make a quick buck.

the_alex3mo ago

That LAION-5B detail is the whole problem. It's not just one bad seller, it's that the tool itself is built on a giant pile of scraped images anyone can grab. How do you even check an artist's process when the starting point is a hidden dataset? The honesty part is almost secondary when the work has no real origin to begin with.

jenny_lee5d ago

Honestly, I kind of disagree with paige_robinson24's take about this just being a "bad apple." If someone is selling "custom" art for $200, they're selling the promise of their skill and eye, not just the tool they use. The problem isn't that AI exists, it's that people are paying for the illusion of original work when the seller is basically just a middleman for a machine. It's like paying a chef to cook you a meal and they just microwave a TV dinner and plate it nicely - the effort is the same, the honesty is missing. And yeah, checking their process sounds good in theory, but when the whole market is flooded with people who can run a prompt in 30 seconds, how do you even tell who's legit until you get burned? It just makes me trust the whole "AI artist" thing even less, not more.

nathankim3mo ago

Man that really sucks, sorry you got ripped off. I used to agree with paige_robinson24 about it just being a few bad sellers. But seeing how easy it is to just grab a free AI image and tweak it, I get it now. This whole thing makes me way more careful about who I hire for any kind of art. Gotta check their process or ask for proof of their work.