I'm late!!! Fleshy artist here xD
Some people have already pointed out why AI art is annoying, so I won't spend too much time reiterating:
As for why people hate it: Cause it's being spammed fucking everywhere. There's faggots calling themselves "AI Artists" who cash in and try to fuck over genuinely talented people who work hard to make what they do.
Ask a programmer today if they could program something in assembly, they would absolutely refuse and instead use a higher level language. I think it will end up in the same predicament. those who know assembly, real time programming languages and such are needed because the higher level languages run on it, so it won't be replaced. It will be like standing on the shoulders of giants.
In my opinion the only ones that loose out with AI art (and AI in general) are the bottom feeders. [...]
Some sentiment I've seen with some artists shows the correct approach. The two I've seen the most:
- AI up-scaling is already good enough that trying to grift with low res art doesn't work and diversifying my art will be more productive
- Generating an image to test color theory and composition before spending hours on a piece / generate my own references
[..] All in all: It's a tool that saves money and time if you use it correctly.
It's soulless as fuck and the more it gets refined, the worse it'll be later on when it'll start being able to copy pretty much anyone's art style.
What'll be the point of artists then? It's one thing when practical shit is taken into consideration, but this is something that shouldn't be taken from human hands.
AI art definitely will need its own category, and I hope that happens soon to stop the spam of it. It should eventually come to pass and the "AI artists" will eat their boots realizing how much of a non-artist they are. What a bunch of buffoons thinking tinkering a prompt on a program makes them as esteemed as a proper artist.
Now, for real. If AI art can't make anything new, then artists still have a place. The "art community" will start seeing some filtering out in the area of artists trying to become commercially viable. AI will be able to enhance the workflow, not replace it. Honestly, I would still draw entirely over the algorithm's output, because the art I work with requires being decomposed into its parts (each finger, the palm, the forearm, the upper arm and shoulder, the torso, the waist area, the pelvic region, etc.) for
animation purposes. Standalone art, I believe, is starting to become mastered in the commercial market and what will truly sell are full products that use an artist's "art style." The only "artists" that are terrified to death of being replaced are the ones that haven't improved over five years, use rudimentary coloring, have extremely basic or poor composition, implement limited lighting principles, and fundamentally lack any objectible technical skill (as Yaku pointed out). By the way, there are a lot of these people. Unfortunately, that just comes with the market territory. There are so many competitors in this market trying to make names for themselves, and with limited time and money, there
will be many losers and few winners.
Part of the reason why I never got into running the art-for-subscription model for making money was due to things like these stable diffusion algorithms. I didn't have the foresight to predict that something like NovelAI would come into existence, but I did know that the art I produced would need to be part of something much greater in order to sell. After all, there are many other artists that are significantly better than me in many aspects, but I can't play catch up with them. It would take me another decade to do so, and I would make pennies to their thousands, wasting time. Artists like Sakimichan and cutesexyrobutts have dominated good chunks of the market, and it is too saturated now with tons of people branding themselves as artists looking for compensation in the form of your monthly sub as they try to chase the pioneers' success. That is part of why I never marketed a Patreon or Subscribestar or whatever. Also, while commissions are different and part of the exchange involves the artist-to-client connection, that
might get phased out as people as simply generate things they want in their favorite artist's style, but I can't say for sure since the human interaction element is quite powerful.
The true underlying motivation for why I became an artist is because game development is what I really want to pursue; I want to make a tangible product that has my visual style and ideas in it, and I needed a skill to have. While game dev has its own deal of shovelware (particularly in the indie scene and on places like itch.io), it will be far, far, far into the future before AI can entirely replace the craft. Thus I made sure to learn a ton of things. I am: self-trained as an artist (lewd!), educated in programming, capable of working in teams, and knowledgeable on the process of game development. I'm also becoming well versed on the business side of things with a close acquaintance. I offer so much more than just being able to draw, since automation has caught up to that step. While I do finalize my art as single image drawings (or a variant set) and post them to Pixiv and the internet for all to see my perverted fetishes, I know that each one is merely a training step so that I can one day use my artwork in a game.
To be honest, I didn't even know something like NovelAI was thing or even possible; it never dawned on me the technology would be made since I naively believed it was too much of a human endeavor. However, I was able to digest it's appearance a lot more easily since I knew I wasn't being replaced. NovelAI will not output complex files that compose a character that is animation ready, but us human artists will be able to set that up. With these AI art tools however, that art setup stage will be easier to brainstorm and compose. Tangentially, AI might be used to assist writers in speeding up their process! Though, I don't know if it has the same nuances like digital art, since writers often have their own flavor of writing, and some are transcendentally artistic like Shakespeare (the literal pronunciation of things is rhythmic; he used iambic pentameter).
Ultimately, AI tools will increase the skill floor for artists, and those whose level of skill are below the new skill floor are endangered. Adapt, evolve, survive.
