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picklemage.bsky.social
PIXEL MAGE
@picklemage.bsky.social
51 followers 59 following 65 posts
Artist, designer, wizard. Uncovering A I grifts in my spare time
https://pixelmage.substack.com
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picklemage.bsky.social
PIXEL MAGE @picklemage.bsky.social · Oct 18
This artist 'Manocki' currently has over 150k followers on Instagram. Her recent paintings receive an overwhelmingly positive response. However the image below is AI generated.

How do I know?

I found their secret Midjourney profile.

#art #artist #ai #midjourney #manocki #pixelmage
A screenshot of the instagram profile for artist Manon Biernacki AKA Manocki. It shows a beautifully rendered illustration of a young black person sitting on and surrounded by giant green leaves. There are strong blues in the shadows an a blue to orange gradient in the background. The comments from other users are visible and they are all praising the art and artist. It has over 62 thousand likes A screenshot of the Midjourney website. It shows the username 'Nahalana' and a generated image that is almost identical to the one shared on Manocki's instagram page. There are some subtle differences but the majority of the image is the same
picklemage.bsky.social
The concept art for this contest, all of the promotional imagery, artwork and even a large number of the 'products' for sale on thetoyrat.com, are AI generated. This isn't stated anywhere that I can find.
A clearly AI generated image of a bunch of cartoon mice, holding nightmarish, garbled clones of toys, such as "ASAITERS" in their unconvincing hands. The whole scene has the familiar yellow stain of current ChatGPT/AI imagery A clearly AI generated image of a cartoon mouse stood at a display of hallucinated products and merch. The implication is that they are at a convention, however their nametag states it is a "COMIC COB". As well as the garbled, nonsensical words and imagery on the products, the company (on whose website this resides) have left their own logo looking like a half-chewed lollipop, found in a urinal. Another clearly AI generated illustration featuring a cartoon mouse, watching various other versions of themselves on a series of screens and in an inconsistent style of hat. In some they are holding what could generously be described as 'toys'. In others, they have lost an ear. And in one, they are holding a cursed object which has somehow swapped their left and right hand Another clearly AI generated image, which shows a cartoon mouse character, holding every child's favorite toy, 'ULLPON'. From the 'PON' range. Behind him are an array other other figures, and I assume set up hot pipes, which are causing them to melt.
November 14, 2025 at 1:46 PM
picklemage.bsky.social
An incredible deep-dive thread into the plagiarism of James C Mulligan.
gawki.bsky.social Ki @gawki.bsky.social · Oct 6
James C Mulligan is going after vids and people who call him out for selling AI images. He’s using copyright as an excuse to get them removed, which is so baffling considering he’s a serial tracer. He has claimed official Bambi background art as his own, but there’s so much more.

A long 🧵
October 7, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
megzavala.bsky.social
Remember, these were all done by the same artist and definitely used zero ai-enhancements or tracing tools! Why would we believe otherwise? It’s not like people actually LIE on the internet?
September 9, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
megzavala.bsky.social
this guy has been high off his own farts for so long, he’s become allergic to real air

what an embarrassment
James C Mulligan: Hi all... It looks like I became very famous pretty much overnight (yipee!) due to certain unfounded "your art is Al!" accusations that seemingly came out of nowhere from a young person that attended an anime show I was at. That grew legs. I've been trying to lay low, but I figured it's about time this needed to be addressed, out of respect for all of my clients and friends that have supported me through the decades. Long before Al was ever a word on the scene. As the artist in question, I will state, definitively, that multiple statements made are patently and provably false. First and foremost, that Al was used to create my multiple Lorcana cards. Not remotely true. Nor have I been blacklisted from working with Disney. The "employee" that stated these things deleted their tweet and took their account private almost immediately after making these false statements. I've been awaiting communication from the team at Ravensburger to be given permission to publicly share the layered hand drawn files of my Lorcana cards, as, unfortunately, it would be in violation of certain agreements to do so without explicit written permission. So, my hands are tied. All I can say is that I have worked in some capacity with Disney for decades, and my years of work will stand up to these accusations. (Though, not strangely, an Al detector, which came back showing one of my D23 releases from 2014, was 99.9% Al, a rather humorous but absurd discovery) I understand completely, the hatred for artists using generative Al, and passing it along as their hand painted created work. Al has its uses, but Al, in my estimation, ultimately will be an incredibly destructive force for society and humanity as a whole. I did NOT use it, nor have I received any communication from my Ravensburger/Lorcana team accusing me of such. This came from one person speaking on behalf of Lorcana, issuing a tweet (again, that was deleted very quickly) with no backup or even naming the art director that they spoke to. To conclude, I've kept on the downlow to protect my family (while attempting to ignore countless threats against myself and my family) but I felt if I didn't say something, I was going to burst. If anyone would care to reach out to me with questions, I'm happy to answer anything privately, as to do so publicly at the moment, is something l've been advised against. My Instagram is open. My Facebook DMs are open. I welcome professional and thoughtful communication. Looking forward to the moment these accusations can be easily dispelled. Thank you, Jimmy PS FEEL FREE TO SHARE! James C Mulligan Oct 10, 2024 Al's vision of Florida... [ an AI generated image of what seems to be venice with cars driving directly on a river ] James C Mulligan Nov 3, 2024 • Happiest of birthdays to my ol' pal @JimJCummings! Everyone go wish one of our favorites a h... See more [ a hybrid AI generated image with hand drawn details of winnie the pooh, piglet, tigger and Eyore ]
September 6, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
inkwell.bsky.social
This guy not only took credit from my fellow Lorcana colleagues but also claimed to be an official Disney artist to inflate sales. In reality he has been black listed from the company for years after sketchy behavior.

youtu.be/EqmvqrdHaSc?...
DragonCon AI "Artist" Removed by Police
YouTube video by Inkwell
youtu.be
September 6, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
merrittk.com
"what were the 2000s like?" they were just this. nintendo sold a tribal tattoo game console and it came with a winamp skin
June 17, 2025 at 9:03 PM
picklemage.bsky.social
Excellent work on a definite grift
hypoautonomic.bsky.social Hypoautonomic, BS @hypoautonomic.bsky.social · Jun 17
The Alt National Park Service account calls itself the official "resistance" team of the US National Park Service. With 887k followers, is one of the biggest accounts on Bluesky. It is the 11 most followed account according to some trackers.

This thread will dive into its activity.
🧵 1/x.
The Alt National Park Service account. 887 thousand followers. "The officla 'Resistance' team of the U.S. National Park Service. Our Website: www.ourparks.org
June 18, 2025 at 8:21 AM
picklemage.bsky.social
As everyone is, correctly, pointing out, this image is almost certainly AI generated. All of these tell-tale signs, along with the artist's history of using AI in their work. Another thing that leapt out to me was the perspective of the character (angle of his shoulders and face) being waaaay off.
fangirljeanne.bsky.social Jeanne (she/they) @fangirljeanne.bsky.social · May 19
🚨 AI Art Alert 🚨

The artist allegedly credited with creating the cover, Manon Biernacki, is known for using AI along with other mediums.

Suspect elements:

- Building architecture, disappearing window molding, and roofline.
- Warped shape of glasses.
- Extra window at the wrong angle.
May 26, 2025 at 8:34 AM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
edzitron.com
I'm so sorry I can't stop laughing. OpenAI, the company built on stealing literally the entire internet, is crying because DeepSeek may have trained on the outputs from ChatGPT. They're crying their eyes out. What a bunch of hypocritical little babies. Cry more, freaks.

www.ft.com/content/a0df...
OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property. The San-Francisco-based ChatGPT maker told the Financial Times it had seen some evidence of ‘distillation’, a technique used by developers to obtain better performance on smaller models by using outputs from larger, more capable models. This allows them to achieve similar results on specific tasks at a much lower cost. OpenAI declined to comment further on details of its evidence. Its terms of service state users cannot “copy” any of its services or “use output to develop models that compete with OpenAI”.
January 29, 2025 at 6:01 AM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
coreybrickley.bsky.social
i decided im not deleting this lol i genuinely just think it sucks this artist was going in a cool direction, gave up and started tracing the pinterest plagiarism blender
coreybrickley.bsky.social Corey They Them Brickley @coreybrickley.bsky.social · Jan 28
lol fuckin called it this person uses ai their style changed overnight. weeeeee instagram
_etara_ • Follow painting process of all my works! #tattoos #paintingoftheday #tatuaje #painting #tattoogirl For you v daria_galliamova2024 1d Hi! I'd like to ask, sorry if I'm wrong, but do you use Al for your artworks as preliminary stage? 1 like Reply — Hide all replies _etara_ 1d @daria_galliamova2024 l use several programs to create the references I need Reply .. •
January 29, 2025 at 5:36 AM
picklemage.bsky.social
I criticized an artist for not crediting the source photo for a painting yesterday. I did so on the understanding that no version I found posted had a credit, however I also made assumptions on their process without doing the due diligence of looking into their work. This was reductive & derogatory.
December 17, 2024 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
yoshiyoshitani.bsky.social
ART THEFT LABELER
@arttheft.bsky.social

This has the potential to make bsky so much nicer for artists and help eliminate customers from being scammed by fake artists

Let me show you how it works ⬇️⬇️⬇️
November 14, 2024 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
coreybrickley.bsky.social
This gap in quality just sent me to the moon lol
A digital painting by the artist before using ai. Looks a bit like student work, not bad but still working on fundamentals. Just copies and pastes in body parts from a 3D model Well rendered oil painting that copies an ai generated render precisely
November 4, 2024 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
tristanelwell.bsky.social
Incredibly disappointing. Another example of an artist doing the entire image with AI, then faithfully copying it in paint. Also, another example of pivoting from the NFT grift to the AI grift once the NFT bubble burst. And this one seems to be working out great for her. At least, so far.
Manon Biernacki
Can't spell paint without AI...
pixelmage.substack.com
November 4, 2024 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
skaya.bsky.social
Seeing art directors use gen AI is like
Woah!! A talentless hack!!!
October 21, 2024 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
abigaillarson.com
to the bone
digital sketch by Abigail Larson depicting a woman in a long-sleeve gown with the back cut out to reveal her exposed rib cage. Long tendrils of shadow trail behind her.
October 22, 2024 at 1:05 AM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
nicodelort.bsky.social
throwback
little 5x7" pieces inspired by some of my favorite video game locations :)
a black and white scratchboard drawing of Alexandria castle from Final Fantasy IX, in the foreground we can see Vivi sitting on a roof, and far in the distance, Alexandria castle and in the clouds, Alexander the eidolon watching over the city a black and white scratchboard artwork of the Tree of Mana from 'Secret of Mana', in the foreground, three tiny characters stand on top of a large, dark rock, and far in the distance, the great mana tree takes up almost the entire frame, a flock of flamingos passes in front of it a black and white scratchboard artwork of the Kingdom of Zeal from Chrono Trigger - in the foreground we can see a river with a bridge, on the bridge, very small characters, Magus and Schala, look up a the great city. a waxing moon can be seen in the sky a black and white scratchboard artwork of a metropolis inspired by Sim city 2000 architecture. In the foreground, sunlight sparkles on water, leading up to tall skyscrapers, in the distance, looming over the whole scene is the "Launch" archology, a giant futuristic building with a biodome on top.
October 18, 2024 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
fightpunch.bsky.social
Woah where did all the new followers come from? Welcome folks!

This place also finally allows video so I’ll be posting more regularly here for sure!

This is Sanjuro one of the leads of of my Undergrowth project!
October 19, 2024 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
abigaillarson.com
Be sure to keep it lit 🕯️

My piece for the upcoming "Over the Garden Wall" show at Gallery Nucleus 🍂
October 18, 2024 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
jdebbiel.bsky.social
morning due
colorful tropical illustration of a girl sleeping in a bed of flora, surrounded by flying orange birds with marbles on their backs
October 19, 2024 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by PIXEL MAGE
megzavala.bsky.social
good morning bsky

#mazavalathings
a stylized painting of a nude woman bathed in red light, except her face is a furby
October 19, 2024 at 4:46 PM
picklemage.bsky.social
This artist 'Manocki' currently has over 150k followers on Instagram. Her recent paintings receive an overwhelmingly positive response. However the image below is AI generated.

How do I know?

I found their secret Midjourney profile.

#art #artist #ai #midjourney #manocki #pixelmage
A screenshot of the instagram profile for artist Manon Biernacki AKA Manocki. It shows a beautifully rendered illustration of a young black person sitting on and surrounded by giant green leaves. There are strong blues in the shadows an a blue to orange gradient in the background. The comments from other users are visible and they are all praising the art and artist. It has over 62 thousand likes A screenshot of the Midjourney website. It shows the username 'Nahalana' and a generated image that is almost identical to the one shared on Manocki's instagram page. There are some subtle differences but the majority of the image is the same
October 18, 2024 at 11:55 AM
picklemage.bsky.social
hey there! I am a semi-retired toy designer and artist. I keep most of my personal projects private for my own sanity but I *also* investigate artists who use gAI but (crucially) pretend NOT to. I'll share my findings here as well as on my free substack (link in bio) #art #ai #gai #midjourney #grift
October 18, 2024 at 11:40 AM