Art has always been human. That's worth protecting.
In a world of infinite AI output, we're building the registry, the community, and the network of real: every work, every profile, every connection, verifiably human.
Why we built this
The world is becoming more automated. Trust is becoming rare.
More AI. More synthetic content. Less certainty. As generation becomes infinite, attribution breaks down. A feed of beautiful images tells you nothing about who made them, what they went through, whether they exist.
Art has always been human. It has moved souls, sparked change, preserved truth, held value across generations. It does that because someone real chose every brushstroke, every frame, every line. When the choosing disappears, so does the thing we came for.
ArtHelper exists for the artists still choosing, and the people who want to find them.
The mission
Three things we commit to, for every artist on here.
Every artist is a real person.
Every profile passes a two-stage check: a detection model reads submitted work for generative markers, and a human on our trust team reviews what the model flags.
Your work is never training data.
Every image uploaded to ArtHelper blocks AI crawlers at the edge, is excluded from training datasets, and stays yours. Your art doesn't become someone else's model.
Find the people behind the work.
A verified directory is more than a list. Each artist has a genome, a quiet read of how their work looks, who they are, and what they're reaching for.
What verification includes
Six things that come with the mark.
Verification isn't just a badge. It's a set of concrete advantages that live across your profile, your work, and the parts of ArtHelper that look different to collectors.
Site badge.
A verified Human-Made badge displays on your profile and on every work you upload, across every surface of ArtHelper where your art appears.
Green ring status.
Your avatar gets a distinctive green ring across the community and feeds, signalling verified human artistry at a glance, everywhere you show up.
Gallery visibility.
Increased placement in consumer-facing galleries and feeds, putting your work in front of more collectors looking specifically for verified artists.
Merch store access.
Exclusive access to the Human-Made merchandise store, with verified-artist pricing on HM-themed products you can sell alongside your work.
Artist spotlight.
Eligibility for our artist-spotlight program, which showcases your work to the whole community across email, social, and homepage rotation.
Embeddable widget.
Place a verification badge on your personal website, Shopify, Squarespace, or anywhere HTML runs. A one-line embed that proves you.
The mark is the first thing I put on a new work. It's how I tell collectors this is me, not a model.
Why the mark has value
The minute you take the mark, your work is worth more.
In a market flooded with millions of generated images a day, verified human-made is a premium signal. It tells collectors, galleries, and the resale market what they used to assume: that a real person made this.
Marked work commands a premium.
A verified human-made piece isn't competing with the endless generative feed. It's on the other side of the line.
Your mark covers all of your work.
The mark isn't stamped on one painting. It's a blanket certificate on you, the artist. You verify once; your whole body of work earns it.
Collectors ask for the mark now. It's how they know the piece in front of them wasn't a prompt.
The mission, in real time
Seed complete. Now on the road to a million.
The doors are open, signups are doubling every month, and compounding has started. Each verified artist is bringing more.
The community
Artists are joining the mission. Here are a few hundred.
Signing up wasn't really about me. It was about putting my name behind something I believe in: that art made by humans, for humans, is worth protecting. The mark says that out loud.
My Human-Made profile is the most valuable page I have on the internet right now. It's the one place where I know nothing on it is fake, and every person looking is here on purpose.
A lot of what makes art worth making gets lost when there's no signature. The mark is the clearest way to say a person was here, and they bled for this.
Where the line sits
Tools that assist are welcome. Tools that replace are not.
Artists have always used tools. The line we draw is simple: if the making still happens through you, we're in. If the making happens without you, we're out.
AI that assists the artist.
Using a language model to write a better artwork title, clean up a description, or draft a social post is the modern version of hiring a copywriter. The creation is still yours.
- Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One: the edits photographers have made for decades.
- AI writing assistants for titles, descriptions, and captions.
- Digital painting and 3D tools: Procreate, Blender, Figma, Photoshop's brush engine.
- AI-powered search, layout, and organization of your own portfolio.
AI that replaces the artist.
If a prompt generated the image, it's not human-made. Anyone can describe an idea. The magic is the thing we're here to protect.
- Generative image models: Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, Sora outputs.
- Prompt-to-image as the primary act of making.
- Heavy generative fills that produce the image rather than refine it.
- Re-uploading someone else's generated work as your own.
Moderation
When it's gray, the community decides.
There are edge cases: hybrid work, heavy generative fills, honest uncertainty. Flagged work enters a public review queue, and trusted members of the community vote.
Flagged
Our detection model or a community member raises a question about a work.
Reviewed
Trusted, long-standing members of the community see the work with context and vote.
Decided
The work is either accepted back with a public note, or declined with the reason shown.
Who we are
Twenty-five years in the art industry, and we're not done.
We're the team behind Art Storefronts. For over two decades we've been building the platforms, tools, and communities that help artists make a living from their work.
ArtHelper is what that two decades taught us, reassembled for what comes next. The mission is the same, with one new responsibility: make sure the word artist still means something.
You belong here.
Whether you're an artist making the work, a collector looking for the real thing, or someone who just wants to know what they're looking at, there's a home for you on ArtHelper.