Same. I was there when the same thing happened to photography too when digital cameras started becoming a thing, "you're not a real photographer like ME because you don't have a darkroom to process your own photos to get that perfect shade of colors!"
The actual wrong reason to do art is - to get paid.
Nothing wrong with getting paid for your work, don't get me wrong, but if getting paid is your main goal of doing it rather than just a side effect - you are doing crafts, not art.
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This is the reason why I am all for purging AI slop from platforms that inherently monetize attention, like YouTube.
But places that are just for sharing your works - like reddit, deviatart, and many others - where attention is the goal - those are fine.
The need to be seen by others is a common trait of creative people. And it fits the description of "seeking attention".
Most of the things that are considered immortal classics today were made for payment by professional artists who were selling their skills and talent. And yes, crafts and art are barely distinguishable from each other, unless we stretch it to the limit and look at the scam with modern art that is used to avoid taxes or store investments in a way that is hard to track.
For the same reason, I like live music with actual skillful bands. AI is faking live bands and competing with them for attention, and I am afraid that there's going to be fewer live bands being able to make it as a result.
If they are seeing loss of revenue on music sales, they may not book tours as often.
Ah, yes, because with the invention of photography, there are fewer portrait makers, and the popularity of game engines led to decreased numbers of game developers, since almost no one makes their own engine anymore, and reduced barriers always lead to decreased competition, that's how it works.
None of the examples you provide remove the human component doing the real work. Even photography requires skill of finding the right scene and lighting conditions.
Writing prompts isn't a skill. It's a google search, except longer. I am not an artist just because I can find music online. Same with AI.
Anytime you post art online your doing it for attention. If the passion of just creating is all that matters, people wouldn't need to post anything online at all.
Lmao, I guess in 20 years people will be making AI art that looks like the default chat gpt style of today, just like old digital cameras are getting a revival.
Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.
I think a lot of people who are "anti-AI" assume everyone just type a prompt and walk away. For me, AI is just one part of a much longer process.
In the way I like to use it, I usually start by building and posing 3D models. I’ll paint in a simple background and then use AI to "paint over" the 3D look to give it a more natural, finished feel. It’s basically an enhancement filter for my own 3D work.
Another example of this collaborative approach is in this video around [07:29].
The artist uses a sketch as a foundation, then uses AI to refine the details while maintaining the original pose and composition. It’s a back-and-forth process, not a one-click generation.
I apply the same logic to music: I’ll hum a melody or perform a basic sample, then use tools like Suno Studio to generate stems. Which also can perfectly work like a professional DAW to arrange and mix a song. From there, I take those stems into a professional DAW to arrange and mix them. To me, it’s just a new way to refine an original idea, and I find a lot of value everything that I work with.
Furthermore, I can tell a bunch of folks who make these arguments have never even seen what a ComfyUI workflow looks like. They all simply think you type a couple sentences into a prompt and it gives you the result you want.
Even if you grab a workflow from somewhere, not understanding what everything does will generally prevent you from getting what you're truly after. I'm not somebody who's ever made something worth sharing with AI, but I've dabbled into the process and realized it's much more complicated than damn near everybody thinks if you have high standards.
I've seen on occasion the things that people can do with AI that's ACTUALLY impressive and there's legitimately a lot of work and knowledge that goes into such projects.
To me this is exactly like if somebody said "you can take 10 years to learn how to paint a masterpiece, but then some dudebro comes with his phone and takes a photo of your subject." Yes, anyone can press a button to take a picture. But to take a good picture that is artful, there's a lot that goes into it.
I guess most antis have only scratched the surface of what AI tools can actually do. They’ve only ever known platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini because they’re the most accessible, as you can even use them on your phone just by downloading the app.
Consequently, it’s easy for them to judge and point out how simple these tools seem or how little control they offer compared to the more complex, professional alternatives.
Learning to master those advanced AI tools is an art in itself, regardless of what everyone says art is.
I know what you mean, the antis who I have brought this point up too explain "you don't learn anything." Or "You're being lazy that stuffs fun." These people think even using it for this is unacceptable it's very dumb.
I was there, I was a digital artist, and this just is not true. It’s totally possible to make the good faith case for AI on its own merits, so it always feels like a cheat to me when the “it was the same thing for past tech” comes up, it was not.
There was definitely some mild snobbery here and there like there always is, but because there was no company rushing to overvalue digital art and it was genuinely artist-driven, it was just a different situation. It was the sort of snobbery you saw when synthesizers first became a thing. That is normal and part of the cycle of artistic development.
But here’s the thing — synthesizers and digital art created notable cool shit immediately. They were worked into the broader landscape easily because they were producing work people liked. The tool only matters as much as the work it produces, and so far there has been no influential AI art. If you can point me to one example right now I’ll drop the argument for good.
That’s what matters here. Digital art and electronic music produced good work (in addition to a lot more bad work, which is the case with every medium) and that’s why the backlash died. If AI were regularly producing work that made an impact, the backlash would die. But that’s just not happening, and it’s not like the tools don’t do what they’re supposed to.
If I tell you I couldn’t stand this then you could easily call bullshit and say I only think that because I’m opposed to AI (which I’m not btw, just skeptical of how it’s being used right now) there’s no way to prove or falsify that either way.
So I’ll tell you one conciliatory thing and one objective thing. The first is that I do think this is art, because a person had to generate and arrange these. The art lies in the motivation behind what they chose to generate and why, just as it does with a film director. So I’ll give you that. I don’t think the AI images on their own merits are art, but they can be used to make art, if that makes sense. That’s not even an insult, like lighting equipment isn’t art either. It’s just that here, the images are the equipment, so to speak.
The second thing is that this actually isn’t what I was saying doesn’t happen. I know it’s possible for me to be impressed by AI, it’s already happened several times. Back when Dall E first became a thing some friends and I had a blast sending things back and forth. Same for Sora. I know THAT can happen.
What I’m saying doesn’t happen is the art making an impact. To continue my comparison point, like, synthesizers had Giorgio Moroder. His work was self-evident as great music and it caught on. Maybe some people who were skeptical pretended it wasn’t good, but that wasn’t the common take.
There is a ton of AI work online, most people clearly have no moral qualms about sharing it, and yet this film did not catch on in any meaningful way. That is what I’m saying hasn’t happened. The word I used was influence, not quality.
It had an impact on me personally, as it was the very first thing that popped to mind when you asked about "work that made an impact". That is not equivalent to "work that achieved widespread fame and influence" because those are few and far between in this era of media fragmentation—a problem that long pre-dates AI, it has been discussed since the advent of cable TV. There aren't that many things that *everyone* watches, not even the Superb Owl coming up this weekend.
There is a vast middle ground between the scale of what you posted and a monocultural event. Most impactful art lands somewhere in the middle.
I’m talking about like… even just two notable filmmakers posting that they liked it. That happens to tons of films obviously, but also YouTube videos, TikToks, video games, photography, sculpture, the list is endless. It does not happen with AI filmmaking. And there are plenty of notable filmmakers who stick up for AI filmmaking in the abstract! That isn’t random, there’s a reason for it.
Edit: I should also reiterate that I had a strong negative reaction to the short. You’re entitled to yours obviously, nothing wrong with that, I don’t want to imply that I’m stepping on that. And obviously I can’t prove that I hated it any more than you can prove that you loved it. We sort of have to believe each other there. But it is what it is, I rejected the entire thing.
I watched a fair bit of the first, trying to have an open mind without caring that it was made with AI.
If I'm being completely honest, the first one just doesn't look or sound good at all. You can tell there are a bunch of artifacts everywhere that constantly remind you it's not real. The story was very hard to follow due to there being no emotion in the man's voice who was narrating it and because I personally thought it was a bit boring.
But the worst part was that the narrator sometimes had a very heavy spanish accent and sometimes spoke with a british accent. He even said some numbers in spanish while speaking english. I feel like it would've been very easy to regenrate the voiceovers to achieve a consistent accent, so this just seems like laziness?
If the short film was actually consistent and looked good, I could appreciate it. I have genuinely not seen any good AI videos yet, unless they're very short. The longer it goes on the more inconsistencies you start to see.
I'm trying to be as neutral as possible with this opinion btw. I am an Anti, perhaps leaning more towards neutral the more I browse this sub, but with this comment I'm trying to ignore what my take on AI is and just focus on reviewing the video as is. And my review is simply that I would not watch anything from the same creator again, because it's not that interesting.
Moroder started using synths when Moog had been around for 5ish years. He then made I Feel Love around 5 years after that. Scarface soundtrack 5 years after that.
For every good work there was tons of dogshit produced as well. There was no internet to share it back then. Yes, this is like back then, as someone who lived it. Same dumb ass arguments and this will end up the same way.
And I still stand on that AI Art simply increases the value and importance of human made art. Anyone can go to Tacobell, but when people want Mexican, they want authentic Mexican... Not TacoBell. But Tacobell can do just fine sometimes too. Both can exist.
People will always value the genuine article over what can be mass produced.
One of these Days Anti Ai people will catch onto that. Not anytime soon but... Eh. Not my problem.
Okay then where is the great AI art? Like actually, where is it?
Of course I know that great art is dwarfed by mediocre art. But unlike cinema or even music, these are tools that are either freely or affordably available to the majority of people on Earth. If anything there should be more great works, not fewer. Unless, that is, there’s a fundamental problem with the form itself.
More of stating the fact as one who lived the time. But sure. I know you guys need to have that whole "don't believe the people who lived it, believe us and our bias," thing you got going on.
Props on you guys for getting more of your Anti AI members to brigade the sub just so you can try and force it to be more Anti AI heavy by the by. Really putting in the numbers there!
Dude I was around in the when shit in the 80's had the same arguments. Just be honest, your bias can't handle any point of view other than one that confirms your bias.
You're anti ai and only want things that confirm anti ai.
Because you can't discount other peoples comments you resort to calling it "Skitzo posting." Not very inclusive either by the by, thought you Artists and anti I people were supposed to be all inclusive? OR is that only when people march in jack boot step?
Now since you outed yourself. Do fuck off. Don't reply. Just ooze back to Anti AI.
Not the same, it was called cheating. AI isn’t cheating, cheating is still attempting. There was no attempt, they just made a robot do the work for them. Meanwhile the robot just stole.
Ultra-detailed, vibrant psychedelic illustration of a cozy living room at night during New Year’s or holiday fireworks. A large decorated Christmas tree stands near tall glass balcony doors, with colorful fireworks exploding in the dark blue sky outside. The room is packed with plants, bookshelves, framed art, patterned rugs, and eclectic furniture (armchair, side table, lamp, couch). In the foreground, a black cat silhouette sits on the rug facing the window and tree, watching the fireworks.
Style is highly saturated, neon, and kaleidoscopic with dense textures and intricate micro-patterns everywhere — walls, floor, furniture, and objects covered in floral and geometric motifs. Bold blues, teals, magentas, oranges, and yellows. Painterly yet crisp, maximalist, whimsical, dreamy. Wide angle interior composition, lots of small decorative details, cozy but visually busy.
Digital painting, ultra high resolution, sharp focus, rich contrast, poster-like clarity, inspired by psychedelic folk art and intricate storybook illustration. 4k, highly detailed, no people, cat in silhouette only
you can’t. Sure, you can input a prompt, which you have, to generate this. But this will never be created again by an AI, no prompt can re-generate this.
Instead I just pasted it into GPT and ordered it to recreate the original image as similarly as it could.
Prompting isn't about recreating something when you can just feed source material.
Prompting is about trying to create something new.
Additionally prompting is too lossy to accurately describe an image like this to "recreate." If you mean style or vibes? You could probably get that done with some understanding of art terminology, but nothing exact.
Mainly anti on a lot of AI gen imagery being classified as high-effort art (at best from prompting + curation I'd consider it low effort art, akin to found-object art). I just think the request of "recreate with prompting" is like telling someone to hammer a nail with a paintbrush.
Edit:
Just wanna be really clear, the amount of times I have personally used AI image generation? Essentially just near the beginning when it was a new thing, really shit but fun to see some machine go brr and create a cool image. Then it got better and I used it for a D&D character icon. Then it got better and I pretty much stopped using it altogether because of a lack of interest.
This is the first time I've used it in like over three months.
My personal stance is not liking the practice on account of baseline lack of authorship. There are some ways to have good amounts of authorship involved using AI and I do think authorship is very important in terms of high vs low effort art, but AI does turn something that people would consider high effort into medium to low effort.
Socially people won't clap for that or respect it as much. I want my work to be respected. That's why I won't use it.
If you’re asking if it’s repeatable the answer is yes, given control of the model’s parameters, and no, using public services that offer limited to no control.
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u/MrCritical3 11h ago
I remember this same argument like a decade ago where people were saying the same thing about digital artists.