The fierce debate over generative AI art recently flared up in a Facebook group, when a user shared several AI art images depicting a character from the video game Baldur’s Gate 3 — and then got banned from the group after they ran afoul of anti-AI art moderators and other users. The user then retreated to a subreddit called Defending AI Art to elicit sympathy from fellow AI art enthusiasts and lick their metaphorical wounds. “I’m disheartened by the amount of hate,” posted Reddit user marilynjayna, who had generated AI fan art images of Astarion, an elf-vampire character with flamboyant white hair and a devilish smirk from the hit game Baldur’s Gate 3. They posted the images, generated with the AI art platform Midjourney, into an unnamed Facebook group that didn’t explicitly ban AI art. At first, they said, they got a positive reaction from other people — but then got flamed by AI art haters. “I got probably 5 or 6 positive comments and 50 likes, then negative comments started rolling in,” they whined. “Some comments were quite nasty.” Even though they had spent “6 hours to get 5 images that resembled the character,” marilynjayna said the moderators took the view that AI art is “theft” and then explicitly banned AI art in the Facebook group. Other Redditors came to marilynjayna’s defense, saying that anti-AI art people are “jealous” and “crazy and bitter.” “I feel like a lot of the anti-AI people just… want there to be less beautiful…Redditors Vent and Complain When People Mock Their "AI Art"