Artist: deerwalker (locked)

Staff members involved: spe
While going through the approval queue on 2026-02-17, spe encountered post #6199409 and recognized certain stylistic cues reminiscent of artwork traced from AI-generated sources which prompted an investigation into this artist's history. The investigation uncovered a distinct shift in the artist's style, quality, and rate of output beginning around October of 2023, suggesting a sudden change in workflow consistent with introducing AI assistance. Several posts within this time frame were found to contain particularly unusual elements that would not normally be done by unassisted artists. He concluded that the artist likely began utilizing AI assistance at this point, but no official action was taken at the time.

On 2026-03-07, spe received an anonymous tip from another artist who believed that Deerwalker was using AI assistance after conducting their own, independent investigation with a group of other artists. After reviewing the conclusions of the third-party investigation, on 2026-03-08, spe processed the deletion of all of Deerwalker's gallery from November 2023 onward.

On 2026-03-09, Deerwalker opened an appeal on the e621 Discord server. The investigation began with the artist providing a few .PSD project files from two of her most recent posts and one work in progress that had not yet been posted anywhere. The artist also provided several very old traditional artworks, allegedly from as far back as 1998, a few of which can be found on her Fur Affinity gallery with an upload date in 2013. These artworks, however, completely lacked any of the suspicious elements that prompted the investigation and were thus not accepted as proof of innocence. After this, spe requested the project files of four of her older posts from 2024 which were provided without issue.

Rather than proving the innocence of the artist, both the older and newer project files revealed even more suspicious details about her workflow that are not indicative of unassisted artwork. Three of the files lacked construction or sketch layers entirely, to which the artist noted that "I was at that time still in the unfortunate habit of deleting layers I no longer needed."

Since the project files were inadmissible as evidence and only raised more concerns, spe told the artist that the only solid evidence she could provide would be a full screen recording of her art process. The artist agreed to provide a recording. However, on 2026-03-11, the artist left the Discord server without a word and cleared her e621 profile text. This was taken as an admission of guilt and inability to provide an honest recording of her process without AI assistance, and consequently the case was marked as closed.