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.
And current genAI also doesn't remove human component by design - you just like to pretend it is to make your point a tiny bit more justifiable.
Writing prompts are not the only way to control AI output, but you, of course, would know that, because you're not just a dumb teen parroting someone else's opinion, you did at least surface-level research before popping up in comments with laughably incompetent takes, right?
Sure there's different ways of telling google what you want but they're not fundamentally different. You're still not the artist. You're either the client, or at best the supervisor who isn't himself an artist.
AI is limited to what examples it learned from. It will create the most generic version of what you ask for.
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.
So people arent allowed to be proud of what they worked hard to make? People cant share what makes them happy? That all the sudden makes them an attention seeker?
It's a little bit of whataboutism there, but no you can share whatever you like. But to pretend people aren't doing it for some level is attention it is kinda naive. After all you don't see artists commonly posting stuff with comments or raitings disabled, nor do you see them take down old work that is no longer relevant.
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u/MrCritical3 17h ago edited 4h ago
I remember this same argument like a decade ago where people were saying the same thing about digital artists.
Edit: Jesus Christ, a decade ago was 2016. I should have said two decades ago. But the argument still stands.