I’ve been pretty quiet in recent months, watching with interest as the debate around AI text-to-image converters heated up. I was blown away by what was about to be accessible when I first began exploring Midjourney. Version four has already shown that AI art will never be as good as actual art. It’s often much better than what you’d pay an artist to do for you.
However, there are counterarguments. I’ve tried to be courteous and sensible in comments and Facebook groups, even while being attacked and accused of being anti-artist and pro-AI, but it’s worthless since supporting robots over artists is meaningless.
I agree, and I also support artists. Everything he said in this blog post is true. Artists are being mulched into oil like dinosaurs to fuel this beast. This is all correct: AI art will mostly benefit technologists while damaging artists.
And here is where we differ. Because I don’t see it ever going away or dying. It may be dreadful (it is), yet it exists (today).
As artists and writers, we may be furious about it, but we must also contemplate how it will be used against us, how it will injure us, and how we will continue to do what we love without being replaced by robots.
“Hope” may be the best and only alternative available, yet it is useless. I don’t support the geeks. But I believe I’m supporting artists in coping with their frustration and anxiety, as well as preparing them to deal with changes that humanity has never experienced before.
It’s understandable that they would object. However, labeling it theft does not make it criminal. With legal concerns ambiguous at best and unlikely to ever be sufficiently rebuilt to completely restrict AI artwork, moral difficulties remain, which most content producers realize. As a result, they say stuff like this:
As a result, this is a matter of justice. It’s just not fair. I’m not saying AI art is nice or excellent. I’m only informing you that it has arrived. But it is still going too far.
I’ve narrowed it down to three concerns after reading hundreds of comments: Genuine art has a soul. AI will never be able to replace human enthusiasm. This seems genuine, but it’s also something that inexperienced authors frequently say to excuse their work. They connect genuine emotion and excitement in creativity with output quality, which is seldom the case. Instead of becoming a hobbyist, passion and delight in the process might motivate you to keep going until you develop enough expertise to be marketable and able to make great work that others want to purchase.