I saw a post earlier, https://e621.net/posts/2560997, that was noticeable worse than it used to be, at least in my opinion. Especially bad in fullscreen on a large screen. Higher resolution, yes, but noisier due to gif compression. This is the original that used to be on the site - "https://www.furaffinity.net/view/38055751/" or "https://d.facdn.net/art/opekun/1599188008/1599188002.opekun_b_original_size.gif". This is the version I have upscaled and denoised - https://webmshare.com/play/1ZbYV. My question is... how firm is the no neural edits rule? I understand why it's there, to stop a flood of "improved" edits and things like spaghettified images (looking at you, spaghettihentai subreddit), but are there any exceptions to this? I'm perfectly fine not posting it, I just thought the people complaining about the noisiness of the gif might appreciate it.

My finger was literally on top of submit when I had the paranoid thought to check the rules, just in case there was something about AI image manipulation, and I was unfortunately not being paranoid.

—edit is it okay if I just post a link to the upscale image in comments?

meme00444 said:
My question is... how firm is the no neural edits rule? [..] are there any exceptions to this?

The main reason they're not allowed is that E6 is more of an archive site, and if you upload the altered version then the original would be lost, then if upscaling/denoising programs get better they'd only have the already altered version to work with. It's better to host the original, then if anybody wants to upscale/denoise it themselves they can.

I think the only exception would be if an artist created something, ran it through one of those programs themselves, then uploaded that version without sharing the original.

meme00444 said:
I'm perfectly fine not posting it, I just thought the people complaining about the noisiness of the gif might appreciate it.

[..]

—edit is it okay if I just post a link to the upscale image in comments?

Yeah, posting links to upscaled/denoised versions is perfectly fine, either in the comments or description, you just can't upload them directly to E6.

meme00444 said:
is it okay if I just post a link to the upscale image in comments?

I would recommend putting it in the comments or description, yes.