AI art isn't for artists
You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.
Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.
Like, when you think about it, if you need a bowl, you can commission a ceramic artist to make a beautiful one for you, right? Or you can make one yourself, which will give you varying results depending on how skilled of a potter you are. Or you can just go buy a bowl at Dollarama, because you need a bowl, don’t have (or don’t want to spend) a shit ton of money, and Dollarama gives you enough choice that it’s not really worth dealing with a potter or becoming one. It’s just a bowl, for god’s sake. Who cares?
So now you’ve got all these artists talking about how Al art is soulless or inexact or technically inaccurate or whatever, then laughing at tech bros who find it preposterous that anyone would spend years learning how to draw so that their random ideas can exist. And sure, if you don’t want to learn how to draw, you can commission someone. And so all these artists online are angry because AI art circumvents the need for commissions, and are saying that if people don’t want to pay someone they should get better at art. But for some people? It’s just a bowl, for god’s sake. Who cares?
I think there’s always going to be room for commissions. But I think the reality is that some artists are going to be losing their jobs. The low level jobs? The ones where a client hires you because they really have no choice but they’re annoying and don’t give a shit about your expertise and you’re really not getting paid enough anyway? Those are all going to disappear within the next few years.
That’s just how technological innovation works. It just hurts more because the arts are so volatile already.
I’m always going to laugh at people who type text prompts into AI engines and call themselves artists, because I wouldn’t buy a bowl at Dollarama and call myself a potter. But what I didn’t realize until now is that doing that is kinda missing the point.
So yeah, some of the AI art stuff is really wishy washy right now in terms of quality and there are a bunch of ethical concerns about where the training images come from. But it’s going to get better, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
When I said better, by the way, I meant the quality of the images, not the ethics. It’s tech and capitalism, of course a bunch of it is going to be ethically questionable.
Here’s a last thought: when you want a picture of something, is your first instinct to hire a photographer? Or do you look for a stock image? And if you had access to a program that generated much more specific stock images, wouldn’t you use it? Sure, it’s never going to be as exact as if you could hire a photographer to put something together. But is that worth the time, money, and effort?
Or is it just another bowl?