True, but the user curates the lineart afterwards before sending it to the client. Generated lineart won’t be able to match an artist line art. And if you have lineart pieces for sale, you are most likely a lineart artist. So you will not use this tool. 
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I am very transparent with my clients, from the sketch to the final coloring I am always in contact with them, of course I would tell them if they are ok with the use of this tool, but there are some things that we must make clear:
1.- This tool is not drawing for me, if not rather cleaning up a sketch that I did, it would be the equivalent of hiring an assistant to do that, at the end of the day is the same because even if this function clean up the sketch I will have to correct things, change things or even redo some parts, practically this saves me time and money which honestly I am missing a lot these days and stresses me because I have to take more commissions and finish the ones I already have, it is ugly to see how your savings only go down.
2.- I love inking and as Takiro said if the commission was an inking I would not use this tool because they are paying precisely for the inking, but in other cases where the lineart only represents a part of the whole work it would serve me very well.
Nobody is despised to do the lineart, but unfortunately many of us can’t afford to spend so much time to clean the sketches we do and in my case I am a person who draws slowly, I have optimized the way I draw but if this can save me a couple of minutes I don’t see it bad, not to mention that as already said this is not generative art.
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Without having hands on it it’s a bit hard to determine the value of this tool exactly,
With my workflow this tool might save me some time during the sketching phase, or otherwise pre-final lineart phase. I don’t think I will be using it for final lineart unless it gets exactly what I want to do right. (Which I have doubts about)
I think it can be an interesting addition anyway.
Currently I’m in favor of this fast line art idea – but I’m saying “currently”, because this is a discussion and in discussions we listen to the other person and possibly change our mind if their arguments are convincing. Right? 
Some of the accusations and sentiment in this thread is baffling, considering the contents of the original post that went to great lengths to explain how this is not an “evil AI”. I think it’s worth remembering too that the Krita team were always careful with their messaging around AI/ML. They never said they will not implement any form of AI-assisted tooling. It was always about the ethics of that solution (i.e. not based on stolen work).
Maybe it’s a case of “we can’t have nice things”, because everything will be twisted and misunderstood, and even developing a feature in good faith will have a strong backlash that will outweigh the positives.
Perhaps it would be more productive if we bring up concerns and address them one by one?
For example, the data set concern – it will be donated by the users in good faith and with the respect of copyright. I can’t imagine anyone maliciously sending tainted data, but if that happens, the data set will be small enough that it will be feasible to remove the bad inputs and retrain the model. I also believe the data will be heavily scrutinized by the developers to avoid this very problem.
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This will be a big post, even though I’ve tried to trim it, due to the big posting gaps rule.
@Takiro Thanks for your response. Just to cover a couple of points first … I’d said ‘something similar’ regarding glaze/nightshade, presuming it would be understood I meant as aligned with right licensing, especially as I also cover keeping licenses clean.
About announcing the ai lineart … it was first referenced on kimageshop in February, and expected to take 3-6 months. July is 5 months on, and the details above say it’s being tested now on intel’s cloud drive etc. I feel full transparency would have been saying that intel had offered money for something ai as soon as that happened. Even if people do openly say things, it still doesn’t make those things right. I could openly say ‘I’m going to steal all the garden gnomes from the garden centre’ … not right or legal, but very transparent.
And, yes, it’s a fact that people will presume any art with the krita tag includes ai. I imagine that’s a real concern … all I can say is that the only solution is very openly banning any ai. It’s not been on my radar regarding if the tool would work well or not, as I’m so against it, and already see ai messes up a lot anyway, but, on thinking about it a bit, yes, I don’t think it’ll work that well … which could easily open the door to saying more ai/training needs to be added, to make it work better.
I don’t do line art either, but deliberately work a lot on getting structural drawing right (portraits right now), to back up the painting. Can understand what you’re saying. I find inking particularly challenging, so I don’t do it, lol … too much wibble, plus I don’t need to ink portraits, and get excited about diving into the painting and enjoy the rendering fun, the same as you’re saying. I think it’s important to not judge yourself … if drawing serves to map out ideas or put in scaffolding, great, it’s served it’s purpose for you. Everyone has stuff they enjoy more than other stuff. But I do love watching people draw eg steven zapata is amazing, and inking eg brian shearer. Having those vids on while painting is a lot of fun.
I have no issue with non-ai tools, tools that don’t take away doing the manual work yourself, so just a note that your old art teacher was wrong, and needed to stop being so uptight!
@BeARToys Thanks for your response, but I’m a bit bemused how a machine sorting letters relates to someone physically drawing art. And ‘it’s not generative, but it’s a trained model’ … they’re basically the same thing. Learning hand/eye co-ordination is vital to making any progress in art, whether drawing, inking, painting, anything creative. This ai lineart blocks that.
You’ve referenced the tracing features in krita, and I’ll add in photobashing too … this is when I feel things started to take a downturn, as I registered nobody could take art created in krita seriously from that point, krita 5. And, unless you’re 4, tracing isn’t anything to be proud of … again missing out training hand/eye or putting any effort in.
Krita’s becoming not accessible to anyone who doesn’t want ai in their art software … droves just left photoshop for that reason, and there is reference to that earlier in this thread.
“It will not replace the understanding of lineart” … everyone understands this, as we learn it from being tiny, but in an art sense line art is only really understood by doing it yourself, training hand/eye, then lineart improves.
@hecko I think I should have added more about this; I thought it would be understood that I meant GPL and libre. I certainly don’t want glaze/nightshade itself in krita, or any web integration. That’s even worse. I don’t know what ‘something similar’ would look like, but I definitely meant GPL and libre.
@Remember_Navarro Yes, I recall seeing the twitter post against artstation ai, but reading on kimageshop later about this ai lineart. The facts are being minimized, and it is a slippery slope. I too feel more ai will come in. Regarding disparaging lineart, I think it’s those who don’t like or aren’t good at it that do that. Drawing and painting is awesome, approached honestly, making effort, and the boost that brings when seeing little steps of progress, or just enjoying having spent time doing art. Anyone who loves art doesn’t view it as pointless or time consuming, you’re right.
@raghukamath you don’t get more closed source and ai-favouring than intel, and krita is putting intel and ai before users. People aren’t over-reacting, but saying facts. Countless reasons in this thread cover why this ai feature isn’t actually ethical, no matter how much the words ‘open source’ are plastered over it. Much open source software does telemetry, is deviating from GPL, has discord servers, still on github, etc etc etc … and you find big tech employees in all of this, even in the kernel.
I don’t see anyone being uncivilized or not listening. I’ve just carefully read all responses, and made my notes offline first, with consideration for having a sensible dialogue that hopefully can make a positive difference.
@nedow Couldn’t agree more … artists are losing their jobs, having art stolen and sold by others, fighting legal battles … actual careers, whether professional or hobbyist, are being harmed. Big tech such as adobe are openly stealing everything people do in photoshop, at the same time as microsoft install copilot in updates and add recall to take screenshots every 5 minutes … and they’re doing this openly. Ai lineart is in the ai/big-tech ballpark, the thin end of the wedge, and the fact that it’s mentioned when nearly ready, but absolutely nothing taken on board about artists’ concerns, says a lot. I don’t even see how the word ethical can be applied to any of this, with, from the outset, the characteristic of anything ai being to steam-roller anyone who disagrees and say they’re over reacting. Mature conversation and consideration doesn’t behave like that.
@Porridge.Horrendous Totally agree. Rushing in ai, stomping over any concerns, pushes people too far, when already there were deadlines and also online algorithms making daily art posting very challenging. Offline or anywhere that bans ai outright has to be a first port of call, so people get relief from this stuff and space to decide the next steps. People going to anti-ai places also adds the numbers needed for greater momentum. I may well join Cara now, just to add a number, even though I won’t put art online just now, except for promised collage that hopefully uploads below.
You make a good point that real artists will end up even more pressured to produce work quickly … again attempting to taking the pleasure out of art, which seems to be an aim. And it puts people under strong moral pressure; those entirely against using ai are having to be extra resourceful, in both combatting it and deciding the way through as they continue their craft. I personally would never sacrifice values under pressure from outside to do something faster, no matter what, but it is clearly extremely challenging, which seems to be big tech/ai’s intent … clearly they don’t care, so it’s important people find ways through, which I’m confident are there, even if it’s thorny branches we’re all pushing through until things start changing. Answers always do come. Big tech/ai are very bullish in pushing ai … at the very least we all need to be just a bit more bullish.
Collage as promised …
[Moderator note: The author of this post has stated that the artwork displayed above is their own work.]
Because of the AI-Plugins out there, made from authors that in no way are connected with Krita and the Krita foundation, this can already be suspected since the day these plugins are in the wild.
In my eyes, we have to wait how all this will develop, perhaps it can not even be developed into a usable state. Although, I believe, it can be developed into that state.
But this wave of indignation seems to be distended, deliberately blown out of all proportions by a few people on the internet that have nothing better to do as to throw fuel on every little glowing spark they find hoping to create waves tsunamis¹ of indignation. And then they sit in front of their browsers and having a fun time.
The developers, especially those who have been accompanying and leading Krita for years, have always shown that the Krita project and its credibility are their top priority, not all of those writing here have realized this, and some posts here were nothing more then a blunt “Attack, here I go”. That is so hurtful.
Michelist
¹I believe that is the better word, because those behind these waves of indignation strive for superlatives.
Hi there!
It is not sorting letters… it is pattern recognition. Writen letters to machine letters. And you know how unique the human lettering is…
Everything we use is a trained model, how else would we be able to use technology? Let’s take procreate’s pattern recognition for another example. You draw a circle hold, and wow its a perfect circle. Is that a tool or a trained model? I don’t know, you tell me.
You are still training your coordination, or how would you be able to sketch? You don’t skip those learning steps, just because there is a tool for lineart. You still have to draw the lines, learn perspective, proportions, composition etc.
You said, you are not doing lineart yourself, why? Because it does not look that good. Does that mean you do not have the hand eye coordination to make art? I don’t think so, as your collage looks fantastic.
Let me make this clear: Photobashing and tracing is not wrong, and it when used to study it is even helpful. The problem arises, when someone traces and publishes this copy as their own. In my humble opinion is this comment is on the same level as: “do not use references, or you aren’t an artist” or “digital painting is not real art”.
Sorry if this sounds salty or aggressive. I am trying to be sarcastic the whole time, but I don’t know if it reads that way. I just can not take this answer seriously, because I know it will not change your mind at this point.
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The amount of fury on a feature which will run locally and be trained on your own data / donated data just because AI is in the name. Wow!
Out of all the AI art systems, this seems like the best use case scenario. Without plagiarising other artists work. There are lots of tedious tasks which I imagined lots of artist would either like to outsource it or make it automated.
This AI system is just that, ethical use of AI to help the artists, not the wannabe prompt artist.
Even 3D software can generate line art using algorithms, should it be disregarded too?
What people fear is this is the start of Krita to go AI way and selling their souls. Let us not forget krita is an open source project, that is the most morally correct way of programing a software, it can be forked, it can be compiled by user, so many ways people can avoid a specific feature. but it will require donation and money to be afloat.
and of course krita has to embrace some sort of AI system otherwise it will fall too behind. Let krita make way for ethical AI which should be an example for others.
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To even call this feature AI is stupid. I’ve been using livetrace in illustrator for over a decade and this tool is closer to that than anything else. Anyone coming in here and virtue signalling like their life depends on it as if people are going to take turns patting them on the back needs to go outside and touch grass.
And for those who are on the opposite side of the spectrum and are staunchly pro-livetrace, because line art is ‘tedious’ and ‘boring’, good lord are y’all even artists? If lineart is boring it’s because your art is boring. Get better. Lineart can be one of the major backbones of an art style so all I see is user error in that excuse.
Lineart is an empty canvas to allow you to better express motion, shading, surface details, style, the feeling of a object. If your Lineart isn’t detailed enough to do that then no wonder it’s boring for you.
You know what’s actually tedious and boring? Having to go back in after flat coloring with the paint bucket and fill in the spots it couldn’t reach because there’s no (working) crevice bleed option. Having to sit around and wait for the liquify tool to process, or the colorize mask. Having to clean up my now blurry lines after multiple minor transformations in an animation because there’s no vector brush.
I could list tedious things about the program all day. The entirety of the lineart process isn’t one of them just like shading isn’t one of them. And sketching isn’t one of them.
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@elevate You posted a collage type image earlier.
If that is your artwork then please say so immediately after the image.
If it is not your artwork but you have the owner’s permission to post it here then please say who owns it and that you have their permission.
If not then it must be removed to comply with the Code of Conduct.
https://krita-artists.org/guidelines
8. Post Only Your Own Stuff
You may not post anything that belongs to someone else without permission. The exception is reference images, in which case every attempt should be made to credit the artist or photographer by name. In all cases a link to the image owner’s website must be included.
You can provide a plain link to an image if you want to.
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I do not know what to tell you. You seem to be made up your mind. That anything AI is bad. So much so that you do not understand that you and anyone here are free to rip this feature off from krita and have a clean version like you want. Nobody is stopping you from removing this feature in krita. You can also inspect Krita’s source code to see what they are doing. So I do not see how you can say krita is closed source. It is not getting anywhere near to closed source. And you seem to be not trusting the krita team and assuming malice from the beginning. Oh there is a word AI so krita team is bad. You have no issue in trusting closed source programs like nightshade and glaze but you have issues in trusting a team which puts its code in the open for everyone to see. Also this feature is not developed in wraps and it is not like they added this without telling anyone. This thread and the thread in mailing list and also the meetings conducted on IRC are proof of that. If the krita team was malicious like you accuse them they would have made closed source version of krita and added this feature. You argument make no sense.
“Oh they should and must do what I will say otherwise I will not listen and tell others to brigade this post and put lots of opinions.” See how easy it is to assume bad faith. The feature is not even implemented and you are already in accusatory mode.
I do not have anything to tell you. You can take krita’s source code and make it clean and republish it for people who share your opinion. Your energy will be better served in that direction.
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Hi
Too much to read, too much to answer to, and a lot of people here write better than me to argue about this functionality 
I just wanted to react about the Intel point because I read in the topic people are pointing out that is “Intel evil project that want to kill artists” or something like this…
Intel provides:
- Computation time on a cloud (not even their best stuff if I understood)
- Money to let a developer work on it
- Maybe some help about how to use the AI library (?)
Consider:
- Intel itself doesn’t implement anything in Krita
- Intel already in the past acted as a sponsor for Krita, if Intel wasn’t here may be Krita will not be what it currently is
- Intel is sponsorship of a lot of open source projects, like some other big companies: if each open source project sponsored by a big company should be untrusted and then considered as evil, then you can be sure everyone will currently be using Microsoft products only…
- Krita also got sponsor from Google; not directly, but through Google Summer of Code (then Google funds students to let them having time to work on open source projects) - so should this also be considered as a problem?
Finally, keep in mind:
- Krita is under GPL v3 license, this means that you just can’t have closed source code, developers must use open source AI engine and provide everything to everyone; you can fork and compile Krita by yourself if you want…
- Developers does everything with transparency, you can follow weekly meeting reports and discussion where everything is discussed, talking about AI or everything else, nothing is made in secret…
I see a lot of “new comer” taking voice here to complain, the forum is open for everyone and it is hopefully a place where users concerns can be expressed.
But what it is hurting me is how developers, developer’s team and Krita foundation are considered…
Developers wrote on long post, to explain what they’re doing and how they work about this project, but it’s like people didn’t read it and only wants to understand something like “Krita will do like Adobe, implement generative AI and will stole our artworks”
I’m not sure people have any idea about who’s working in dev team, neither what open source or ethical development means.
Take time to understand what open source is, what Krita is, who are the people working on Krita, rather than just using the software as a free alternative to PS and consider a minor function as a things that will open a road to scammer or whatever you want; scammers don’t need and probably won’t use this functionality for which use case is too limited:
- they will use ChatGPT, Stable Diffussion or other online AI service to made their stuff
- they will use open source ML and train them themselves directly with stolen data instead, it will be faster and more efficient than anything implemented in Krita…
Note
I read someone talking about the possibility for donators to retracting their donation…There’s ~120k unique visitors and ~100k download per week on krita.org, but there’s currently only 257 donators for ~3000.00EUR per months… From these 257 donators, 37 provides around 46% of the 3000.00EUR amount
I’m pretty sure most of these 257 donators won’t stop to donate
Grum999
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Just curious, do you think technically there’s any way to use AI technology and not be unethical? Or do you think the AI technology(neural network) is just fundamentally evil that it should be avoided?
Psst, ‘boring’ and ‘tedious’ are subjective for each individual 
here is a ladder come down from your high horse and join us. We have cookies.
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Let us keep the discussion on point rather than calling each other out.
I request both of you to keep calm and do not make it more heated.
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No, I don’t think so. Krita’s ambition was always to prioritize features because they make it better for Krita users, not to copy features from other software simply because it might attract new users from other software. And I believe it would work out for the future too.
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both of our beliefs are not matching and that’s how it will be for most people. Krita with its line art is not copying features but setting a trend, which is nice.
@Michelist I don’t see how something positive can come through, if genuine concerns are not understood … countless people are very rationally and understandably putting forward concerns about ai, in so many places.
@BeARToys I think the main point is that it’s something doing the task instead of yourself; that’s the issue with ai. Thank you very much for your kind comment about my collage. Glad you enjoyed it. Is that a mistype ‘I am trying to be sarcastic’, lol?
@AhabGreybeard My first post explained why I’d be posting a collage of my own artwork.
@raghukamath Many people have made their minds up about corrupt big tech; that’s understandable (e.g. many come to linux to get away from windows/copilot/recall and suchlike), and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I need to ask if you realise how unfriendly it is to keep saying ‘just fork it then’ ie ‘get lost, we don’t want to be fair or considerate to all users’? Anyone knows most artists don’t have the technical ability to fork software, or recompile things. I certainly don’t, but have already gone to Paintstorm, as I said in 1st post.
I didn’t say krita is closed source; it’s starting to behave in some similar ways in bringing in ai and not being concerned about users’ concerns.
I never assume malice; I let people show me, and they do. And again you’re putting words in my mouth … I don’t trust glaze/nightshade, have never used them, they don’t even have a linux program, and no way would I download some data set onto my machine. No need either, as I don’t post online, as I said.
I haven’t accused krita of malice. I’ve expressed my concerns, but am seeing there’s no response to anyone expressing concerns in the thread … no krita team anywhere in sight.
My arguments are echoed by millions of others against ai, and make sense. I use my energy as I choose, and would request not making things more heated, and that points are read properly, as I don’t recognise what you’ve fed back that I’m supposed to have said.
@acc4 I don’t believe in ethical ai … the whole way it’s been enforced, pushed, used to data-mine and control, stolen art, lost people their jobs, for example, and that’s just for starters. Also the unpleasant treatment of anyone expressing concerns clearly and reasonably has really confirmed that ai isn’t ethical.
Are you saying that all the artwork displayed is you own artwork?
If so then you need to state that immediately after the artwork itself, as I already explained to you.
To save time, I’ll do that for you now.
Please do that for yourself in future.
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If your issue is about stolen artworks used for training ai models then I agree. I stand with you on that front. But I don’t understand why you do not want to believe when we say that this model will be made using artworks ( not huge amount of it) donated by our own users with their permission. Why are you implying that krita is stealing artwork.
Also why do you not want to acknowledge that this is not like generative AI.
What more I can say to you other than the fact that you or anyone an remove these feature if you are adamant on not listening to others. You implied bad faith in lot of your arguments against the team. I will give you benefit of doubt considering your sentiments against other non ethical AI models but to generalize everyone in a bad light without understanding the nuance and details is not a good thing.
If you do not have the technical know how you can ask someone or pay someone who has the knowledge and skills to compile krita without these features, gather a group of users who believe your cause and you can work on it. With your determination I am sure you can succeed. If it works out who knows your version of krita will be used by many.
All this is hypothetical the feature is not yet completed. It is not even in krita. Moreover no amount of assurance or kind words from us will make you understand so why bother at this point. You have already moved on to other software then I do not see any point in making you understand.
Also you can’t talk for all the artists clearly by seeing the replies here from other forum members ( who are not krita team members) and artists some do think this is a good tool to have.
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