Source (Bluesky)
Lol right, because there are no free AI art services and you need a dedicated iPhone to do AI art. OP forgot to add $400 for a leather upholstered "gaming chair".
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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I keep seeing this kind of argument, and I understand, but I disagree.
The comparison isn't between using an ai service and doing it yourself, but rather between using an ai service and commissioning an actual artist. I can afford $20/mo for infinite mediocrity. I cannot afford $20/image (or more depending on the artist).
Of course, there is a flaw in my argument, in that I was assuming that the techbro was being honest. People aggressively pushing dalle or midjourney or whatever aren't interested in "making art accessible". They hate art and artists, and want to force creative types to be miserable doing jobs they hate. I have to remind myself that this is the kind of person that the comic is complaining about.
I wish we could start arguing about the ethics of compensation for training data and requiring a concrete way to both protect opt-out, as well as compensate those who contribute, rather than argue about a product that absolutely does have a user base (as is continually proven). I don't think there's a win against the demand, but you can win the ethics battle and force better regulations.
I agree with the points about ethics and compensation, however.
So a couple of things. One, he's right and I agree with him on his first point. There is no such thing as a "ai artist" or a prompt director or whatever you'd like to call it. The machine is not complex enough in use to need a specialized person like that, and I wouldn't say they were an artist even if it were. Second, I literally follow artists who use ai just for finishing details on their work, sometimes it's as simple as fur renders that they don't want to add by hand so they involve an ai renderer to apply the finishing layer, and these are artists I've been following since before ai "art" (image generation) existed. So he's just straight up wrong about there not being a single real artist using ai. It's a tool, like any other. You can have your negative opinion on it, but it's honestly useless to be so hostile to something just because it scares you and you don't understand it, so I'm not going to watch the video past that.
If current models never changed again - none of what's happening would "die." We already have programs that can turn any image you provide into any image you describe, even if you provide solid noise.
What people do with that tool can be trivial... or it can take immense effort and thought. I don't understand how an iterative process lasting days could be anything but art. Objecting to where the tools came from can't change that.
I don't think there's really a "demand" per se. It seems to me like the vast vast majority of AI "art" and text is spam. Many of these users seem to be using cheap/free versions of whatever LLM or image generators.
OpenAI is by far the most popular, but also said that even on the most expensive $200/month plan, they are losing money.
Is this "demand" going to exist if and when they inevitably raise the price?
If and when Facebook makes changes to how they monetize posts, will the shrimp Jesus spammers move on to the next scheme?
Will the businesses using AI for customer service and data entry keep using it if it costs more than using human employees?
This whole "industry" is teetering on a knifes edge.
That viewpoint is extremely short sighted. You're missing the field for the trees. Open source models that people run on their local hardware with open weights absolutely do exist and function well. As an example of demand, I personally have a DnD group that uses it for token generation. It gives a far deeper sense of immersion for our custom campaigns where we would otherwise not be able to afford to commission custom imagery, and yes these are generated locally on an m1 mac mini. People viewing it as a replacement for custom commissioned art are, at least with its current and foreseeable capabilities, incorrect in their assumption. It's merely an augmentation and tool that fills niche low-cost low-"risk" voids. I assure you, for example, that there is absolutely some kid out there who has generated an image of either their imaginary friend or custom super hero. This has likely brought them great joy, especially if they're unable to otherwise embody their idea due to lack of skill or funding. You have to look at the tool from all angles. A car, in isolation, is a multi-ton inheritia machine capable of unspeakable atrocities, yet we cohabitate with them every single day because we understand life is complex, there are benefits to doing so, and a single view of a tool does not reflect it's reality.
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If what you need is a constant stream of ever-changing imagery that you don’t glance at for more than a second or two before moving on, I’m sure AI is great for that. So are jangling keys and those slime ASMR videos. But if that’s what you want from viewing or making art, you are an alien to me.
I use it for illustrations of characters, items, and locations for my homebrew TTRPG campaign. That's basically exactly what happens: party looks at it once, gets a general idea, and usually never looks at it again. Without AI, I just wouldn't have the illustrations; I'm not commissioning art that's going to get looked at once.
I wouldn't call that "art", in any real sense. They're visual aids, not aesthetic masterpieces.
Without AI, I just wouldn't have the illustrations
Well, this situation has existed for a long time. You can buy extant asset packs, no commission necessary. They’re not too expensive, either. As you noted they are just visual aids. Actually I happen to have a supermassive amount laying around from random humble bundles over the years, that were pack-ins with other items I wanted
No judgement or anything, it’s just far from an “AI or nothing” situation
I'm very particular, and my setting is not thematically typical. AI gives me the power to have a decent degree of control over the content when it's difficult, if not impossible, to find media that's appropriate for a particular character or scene.
It sounds more like AI has disempowered you to exercise your creativity tbh
I draw when I want to draw, paint when I want to paint, narrate when I want to narrate. I design, print, and paint minis and settings, I make props and maps and documents. When it comes to semi-important limited-use side characters, sometimes 5 minutes describing them to an AI is sufficient effort for the demands of the task.
Yeah so to be clear, listing a bunch of pursuits where creativity may thrive doesn’t really illustrate your passion for the craft. It actually makes it your interest in art sound passing and sterile. My point is not that you have been banned from picking up a paintbrush, but that your creative process has been damaged.
And look, what we actually already have from you is an example of that damaged creativity and resourcefulness; you are proclaiming that a problem that has been solved for decades is “impossible” without AI. You’re also flitting back and forth seamlessly between these images being “glanced at for one second, less than art” and “semi important, needing to serve a particular taste” depending on whatever you think serves your point more in the moment. It doesn’t sound like you had any thought or justification behind it before today. Just something you were doing because it’s easy and you felt the need to come defend it today when you saw the concept taking some heat.
Which is all fine. You’d be better off just owning it rather than trying to construct some goldilocks zone of importance where it’s justified
Uh, wow, don't really know where to start there.
My craft is not painting. My craft is designing characters, locations, scenes, interactions, storylines, events, etc. The visual aids I use are accessories to the craft, not the craft itself. My craft is not damaged because I outsource a minute portion of it. Is the creative process "damaged" because a baker doesn't make chocolate chips from scratch for their cookies?
There is no flitting back and forth, there is no contradiction in making a particular visual aid to assist in efficiently conveying information, and that depiction only being necessary for a few moments.
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See also Spiderweb Software's "Failing To Fail" talk: solo dev used the same assets in every game, and a constant complaint in the forums was that the graphics sucked. So once his sales were decent, he hired an artist to overhaul everything. The next game had the same complaints. He celebrated. Now he knew he could ignore that shit.
I can't speak for your party, but if I were in your campaign, I would vastly prefer silly doodles over some disposable AI image.
My party very much enjoys the visual aids I provide. They are one part of a toolbox of resources that contribute to the immersive quality of my campaign.
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What does that phrase even mean? Asking something else to make something for you is not artistic, so it can't be that. People who commission other humans to make things aren't suddenly artists. If they literally just mean consumption of images, it's not as if web searching for images has been difficult for the last couple decades at this point. If you don't care about art at all and just want content, there are lifetimes of things you could look for readily available to indulge. Just start typing and away you go! Literally the only thing that has changed is that now you are accelerating dead internet theory and removing human interaction from what you consume. Of course, if you don't care about art that is a moot point, since human self-expression and communication never meant anything to you in the first place.
At best, the phrase should be specialized, on demand consumption of niche content is more accessible, not art.
Artists understand that art is primarily about self-expression. Non-artists often instead think art is about producing nice pictures. When all nice pictures come with self-expression baked in, the two groups seem to be on the same page, but when a computer makes nice pictures that are completely devoid of self-expression, we find out they're not on the same page at all.
Right, people never make art just for money. The animation outsourcing industry loves when you can tell who drew each frame.
That's the thing about human-made art: even when it's just cranked out for a job, there's still an element of self-expression to it just from it having been made using skills honed through self-expression.
Yet absolutely none of that when someone spends five hours editing text to match the image in their head.
Correct
How.
The self-expression of art is in its creation, not in its final product. Yes, the self-expression usually results in differences in the final product - if you hired 2 people to make a painting off of the same detailed description, they would be different paintings, largely because of differences in self-expression. However, if you were to, for example, hire 2 different artists to make perfect copies of the same painting, to the point where they're indistinguishable from each other, the self-expression would still come in when one artist uses a different tool than the other, or starts with a different base color. The methods both still result in an identical final product, and so the product doesn't showcase their unique self-expression, but the creation is separate, and unique to the artist.
Notably, you, the person who asked them to make the art, contributed nothing but a prompt. Yes, that prompt resulted in nice pictures that you wanted, but the self-expression - the thing that makes it art - was entirely someone else's. It's their art, they just made it for you. AI "art" is the same thing, except it's made by a lifeless computer devoid of self expression. So, it's still your nice picture, but there's no self-expression at all, and so it's not art.
When some weirdo perfects a combination of fetishes shared by seven living persons, insisting self-expression is nowhere to be found is fucking nonsense. His self could not be more expressed. His soul lays bare. There cannot be less personal character in that, than in every identical rote inking of Homer Simpson's head.
How that freak created his eldritch pornography is an entire iterative process, like any other person using tools. You dismiss that as "nothing but the prompt," when there's nothing but the prompt. That's all there is. That's the part where a human being expended effort to convey an idea. There is no one else to blame for the horrifying image on your screen, telling you very little about the tools, but more than you ever wanted to know about the person.
And you're throwing hands with the "process art" movement, or really half of modern art. Marcel Duchamp gave a shovel a silly name and it's hung in the goddamn Louvre. If intent alone is enough to make something art, how is this the only tool in history that is immune to intent?
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I wholeheartedly agree with you, OOP is mocking the supposed barriers to art that AI users will bring up as an excuse to use AI.
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Hehe "borrowed"
Oh yeah, I forgot everyone is born with inmate talent, time and privilege.
“innate talent” is a pervasive idea that undercuts years of work and practice. art is HARD and most people just don’t find the doing part to be fulfilling.
everyone wants to make a masterpiece, but no one is born with some kinda artist-gene that gives them the ability to do so as if by magic. outside of savants at least, but that’s a whole other thing lmao
Yes, talent is oversold and used as an excuse to often HOWEVER there ARE differences in people's skill level and rate of learning. Especially if learning disabilities are involved.
I really really wanna draw regularly. And i practice regularly have for years. Ive gotten much better than couple years ago me but overall my art still sucks (others confirm not just the usual artist hates own work) and it's mainly because i have a learning disability that affects my spacial reasoning and ability to visualize shapes.
This may come as a surprise to some people but that makes drawing very difficult, i can't get proportions correct and I struggle to find shapes. My best drawings are ones that i practically traced the initial outline to get the shapes. AI generated art absolutely makes getting an idea out of my head more accessible. And i can then trace the outline of the ai art and draw the rest myself.
I know people hate it but just blindly saying "anyone can draw just do it bro" is basically just as worthless of an argument that ignores reality
this too, it’s a lot like singing in that way. anyone can train their vocal control, but some folks just will have a much harder time with it for all sorts of reasons they can’t control. both sides of that “only some people can do it/anyone can do it” coin can be damaging for their own reasons.
i think it’s really important to talk about these things in a frank way, thank you for contributing to the discussion ^^
I forgot every artist had all of those things in spades
To be blunt, I think the powers behind project 2025 do believe the common man has inmate talent #modernamericanslavery
… but I suspect you meant "innate" talent
If you have people that talk like this around you as an artist I think you need to find different people to be around that is the real take away here.
Also, I have genuinely never in my 29 years of life heard people say anything like this. So this post can kind of fuck off.
Also, I have genuinely never in my 29 years of life heard people say anything like this.
Look at the comment they are replying to.
"Never happened to me, must not be real."
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What someone practiced can do with nothing, and what a newbie can do with nothing, drastically differ.
These dipshits are trying to communicate that this tech offers half-decent results. Immediately. For no effort. They could surely do better, themselves... if they spent an entire year trying. Opportunity be damned, most people just don't want to. Developing a skill is a process that sucks. Vanishingly few people learn to paint portraits, and code games, and play piano. But any idiot can now use a program to do a half-assed job of all three.
Experienced artists, programmers, and musicians will recognize the flaws. They can declare the results useless slop. But it's being generated by people who would do even worse without it.
Source (Mastodon)
That's nice.
Meanwhile, the average person only sees results. They do not seem to share your fundamental aversion to how a JPG was made. They didn't experience whatever grand philosophical journey produced it. It doesn't need to be artisanal grass-fed human Art.™ It either provokes an emotional response, or not.
If AI slop is a text in the absence of subtext, it is still a text. Comes with death-of-the-author built in. And people can still say something with works they did not make themselves... as you're doing right now.
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I would never be able to write that well
But eh, people with disabilities don't exist we shouldn't try to find solutions for them
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I have a pretty quick ~$500 phone (snapdragon 8 gen 3) and tried this local AI app once (just something on fdroid, you could probably find it) but the experience was pretty terrible. Like a minute per image on the small local models from 2022. I'm sure you could do better, but my conclusion is that an $800 phone is as useful as a $60 phone for generative ai because you're going to have to use some remote service anyways.
A minute per image, on a pocket computer, sounds like Marty McFly Jr. making a three-second pizza and going "C'mon, c'mon!'
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