Hey all.

Scratch Team recently pushed out an email talking about about Scratch's safety.

However, they've seemingly used a brand new design for the Scratch Cat has not been seen anywhere that I'm aware of.

My friends have unanimously agreed that the new “Scratch Cat” looks… artificial-ish.

Some have even speculated that this is the oh so elusive “Scratch 4.0 Cat” (which I highly doubt).

Regardless if any machine learning was used here, or if it was the work of a new designer, I would like to have more context to where exactly this “Scratch Cat” came from, and what it means.

(I was going to put images here–but the filter seems to even hate scratch's own cdn, and cubeupload never gave me a confrimation email, so we're stuck with this until i figure that out).

this is the best i can do for images for now. ST, please fix your filters
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1227692373/

dogmaster25 wrote:

this is the best i can do for images for now. ST, please fix your filters
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1227692373/

If the image really is AI generated, then that is actually next level insane
I wonder what was going on inside the scratch team’s heads. Is the scratch team really that incapable of just drawing a new pose for the scratch cat?

dogmaster25 wrote:

(I was going to put images here–but the filter seems to even hate scratch's own cdn, and cubeupload never gave me a confrimation email, so we're stuck with this until i figure that out).

the reason why cdn is blocked is because scratch never intended it to be an image host and could lead to abuse, from what I’ve heard.

unconstructable13 wrote:

If the image really is AI generated, then that is actually next level insane
I wonder what was going on inside the scratch team’s heads. Is the scratch team really that incapable of just drawing a new pose for the scratch cat?

That would be crazy! I was really confused when I first saw it. Scratch Team had just gotten done talking about their whole “CLA” (creative learning assistant) thing that is entirely against “AI slop” during the Scratch Conference.

unconstructable13 wrote:

the reason why cdn is blocked is because scratch never intended it to be an image host and could lead to abuse, from what I’ve heard.

That would make sense. It just sucks I have no alternative here.

dogmaster25 wrote:

unconstructable13 wrote:

the reason why cdn is blocked is because scratch never intended it to be an image host and could lead to abuse, from what I’ve heard.

That would make sense. It just sucks I have no alternative here.

you can use cubeupload

unconstructable13 wrote:

you can use cubeupload

I tried, for some reason their email verification seem to be broken. I've tried with two emails and I never got the verification email

dogmaster25 wrote:

this is the best i can do for images for now. ST, please fix your filters
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1227692373/

scratch cat looks kinda souless :sob:

I doubt the Scratch Team would use AI generated art. Didn't they decide not to add it to scratch, so it'd be weird if used it in an email.

I haven't gotten any email from Scratch…?

Has anyone else gotten this email?

looks fine to me

this isn't the only ST picture that's under suspicion of being AI. None of the previous Scratch Cat pictures made by the ST look this weird, so it's possible

redspacecat wrote:

(#9)
Has anyone else gotten this email?

Anybody who is subscribed to the “parents” mail list for Scratch should had gotten it (which that's how I got it)
I did run the image through some AI image detectors, most of them said false, maybe it's augmented from something else.

This is the Email.

ispretty wrote:

(#11)
this isn't the only ST picture that's under suspicion of being AI. None of the previous Scratch Cat pictures made by the ST look this weird, so it's possible

What are the other ones? that is odd

I highly doubt this is AI. What makes it look weird are the eyes which are on the wrong side. As a test I AI generated pictures of scratch cat in the pose the email had, and it took forever to find an AI that actually knew what scratch cat was, and did it in the right art style I said. Even then the colors were slightly off and if you zoomed in, you could see it all textured and grainy. The picture in the email had the same colors, the same head shape, and no imperfections that an AI would have made.
I could be wrong, but it would have been a lot faster just to make the pose themselves then sort through AI images.

NoUsername-King wrote:

I highly doubt this is AI. What makes it look weird are the eyes which are on the wrong side. As a test I AI generated pictures of scratch cat in the pose the email had, and it took forever to find an AI that actually knew what scratch cat was, and did it in the right art style I said. Even then the colors were slightly off and if you zoomed in, you could see it all textured and grainy. The picture in the email had the same colors, the same head shape, and no imperfections that an AI would have made.
I could be wrong, but it would have been a lot faster just to make the pose themselves then sort through AI images.

There are many types of ai image generators though.

unconstructable13 wrote:

dogmaster25 wrote:

this is the best i can do for images for now. ST, please fix your filters
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1227692373/

If the image really is AI generated, then that is actually next level insane

Seems like it.

if this is - by public consensus - drawn by ai then i'm a billionare (which, i'm not)

there's seemingly zero ai artifacts on this. the perspective is odd (leg is a little stretched possibly (debatable), the left eye is not mirrored to the right one), but besides that there's seemingly nothing here.

the smile is literally just cat-a or cat-b's except stretched a little with the top line removed, and without the inner filling. the context here is different so the mouth is replaced by a smile and isn't just wide open. whether or not that's less friendly looking or more, not my thing.

This is literally just a cat-a edit in possibly scratch-paint (of all things, still worth the possibility, as much as i severely doubt it) or they edited some other scratch cat they had elsewhere.

the color scheme also completely matches scratch cat's. the ones you uploaded to the project are seemingly low quality, but the difference is low enough (dont have time to be doing much else, but via colorpicker, 10 color, 84 saturation, 100 brightness; cat-a is 11 color, 90 sat., 100 brightness; minimal difference here)to the point where that's likely just a result of the lower quality.

are we just gonna scream “they made this with AI!!” any time something looks off to some extent?

dogmaster25 wrote:

(#2)
this is the best i can do for images for now. ST, please fix your filters

The CDN being blocked is intentional. People were misusing it to upload images directly to the forums, which was placing unnecessary load on the servers.

That's not really what it's for anyway. I recommend getting in touch with Cubeupload support regarding your email issue.

i honestly don't think it's ai
sure, it's a bit different from the normal scratch cat, being a tiny bit off but everything seems fine, the image has a bit of bloom which can be an artifact of screenshotting
the lineart is quite similar to the lineart used in the main scratch cat sprite (vector line) and doesn't seem to stray anywhere

Zydrolic wrote:

(#17)
there's seemingly zero ai artifacts on this. the perspective is odd (leg is a little stretched possibly (debatable), the left eye is not mirrored to the right one), but besides that there's seemingly nothing here.

My running theory is that they may had used something like Gemini's nanobanana, or something similar in Adobe Illustrator to generate something with both inputs (Scratch cat + the shield). I'm not sure how much or if any artifacts would be introduced with it though.

Zydrolic wrote:

(#17)
the color scheme also completely matches scratch cat's. the ones you uploaded to the project are seemingly low quality, but the difference is low enough (dont have time to be doing much else, but via colorpicker, 10 color, 84 saturation, 100 brightness; cat-a is 11 color, 90 sat., 100 brightness; minimal difference here)to the point where that's likely just a result of the lower quality.

The OG images are in the email, which I sent a link to here.
…
I think this image has been augmented with AI, not created with–but edited most likely. It seems way off model considering how consistent the Scratch Cat has been in Scratch's marketing.

You'd be hard pressed to find anything that isn't the 3.0, 2.0, or Griffpatch Scratch Cat from any other communications Scratch Team has made. We don't talk about the really weird Scratch Cats found on Scratch Foundation's new merch though… the eyebrows freak me out…