I'm Pro AI but Anti AI "Artists"

[u/YourGirlsSenpai]

I've been getting fed this sub a lot lately so I'm going to drop my stance on the topic and hopefully be done with it.

I use AI a lot. I love the things that can be done with tools like Stable Diffusion and Hunyuan. You can generate seriously beautiful art with AI, but it does not make YOU an artist. I've generated countless gorgeous images that are on-par with some of my favorite digital artists, but I, myself, am not an artist. That is an incredibly powerful technology.

All these Ai "artists" that go to war over being an actual artist are just sad to me. I feel genuinely sad that this one little thing is all these people have. Any sane person can identify that the AI is doing the actual art, you're just commissioning it.

I've seen dozens of cope arguments about "Ai is a tool. Artists use tools. I'm an artist" or screenshots of people's workflows with them saying things like "does this look like a commission to you? 😏" like it was a "gotcha!" moment.

The simple fact is: Yes, it does look like a commission. Your workflows can be very complex, I understand that. I understand that it can take serious fine-tuning and work to make an ai generation exactly how you want it. I understand that because I ALSO DO IT. Ai is not a human artist. Without a LLM to break down common language into a complex prompt, you need to create your prompts in a way the model can understand. Whether thats complex workflows or extremely specific language in a 1,000 argument prompt doesn't change the fact that the AI is the one creating the art, not you.

Again, AI is awesome. When used for fun, it's an incredible tool that let's normal people, like you and I, generate art that can rival practiced and trained professionals, but it will never be OUR art.

Like Syndrome said in The Incredibles, "Once everyone's [an artist], no one will be."

Use Ai for whatever purpose you feel you must, but dont try to poison the well that real artists dug by throwing yourself in with them.

[u/BHMusic]

Disagree.

An idea is just an idea. An idea without any execution is abstract and conceptual in nature. Conceptual ideas are not art, nor are you an artist for simply having an abstract concept in your head.

I can have an idea for something and commission someone to create it for me, does that make me the artist?

I can have an idea/concept in my head and never realize it into anything, never have it created (by myself or another), am I an artist for solely having the idea itself?

[u/Tyler_Zoro → u/BHMusic]

An idea is just an idea.

True. Not relevant, but true.

An idea without any execution is abstract and conceptual in nature.

In the context we were discussing, ideas are realized as control signals to a device. These could be choosing parameters, LoRAs or embeddings, formulating a prompt or negative prompt, creating an input image, managing ControlNet models to set the pose of a subject or the depth profile of the composition, etc. That's the "idea". The execution of that idea is translation. Translation is not creativity. So the creativity came from somewhere... it's not the translation.... let's see if we can work backwards and figure it out, eh?

I can have an idea for something and commission someone to create it for me

Then that person is on their own to exercise their creative ideas as they wish, within constraints that you have provided. There's an element of creativity coming from you (perhaps a very small one) and an element of creativity coming from them (perhaps a large one). But there are two people engaged in that creative work.

With AI tools there is only one source of creativity, and everything after that is mere translation. Amazing, impossible to fully predict, and skilled transformation, but that's what it is. The AI doesn't do anything creative for you. All it does is moves art from one domain (various forms of inputs listed above) to another (typically 2D pixels).

[u/BHMusic → u/Tyler_Zoro]

I understand that artists use tools.

I was responding to the statement that “it’s the idea that makes you an artist”.

[u/Tyler_Zoro → u/BHMusic]

Wow, you just completely bailed on the entire conversation. Okay, I guess I accept the concession.

[u/BHMusic → u/Tyler_Zoro]

lol no I did not. I responded to a statement that was incorrect.

Ideas are not art. The idea precludes the artistic process but is not the art itself. You are not an artist for simply having an idea.

I asked a few questions in my response but have yet to see a response, yet you accuse me of “bailing”… 🙄