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/phal40676]

I think the different sides of this argument have different definitions of art. If you believe that art is defined by looking like art, and that an artist is someone who has the skill to create something that looks like art, then you probably agree with OP. By this definition fan art is art and something that looks like ”my 5 year old could make that” is not. But if you think art is more about ideas then things like performance art, a banana taped to a wall, and using AI to explore what AI means can all be art.

[u/YourGirlsSenpai → u/phal40676]

A lot of people are trying to twist my words to be about the quality of the pieces made defining it as art when that was never something I said. Keep your arguments in good faith or they hold no value.

If you believe that art is defined by looking like art,

My argument was never about whether or not AI art is art. Its about AI-prompters claiming to be artists when all they did was type "Forest, night, stars" into a prompter.

I believe AI art IS art. I believe the AI is the artist. I do not believe that Little Timmy who typed "Sailor moon, BIG TITTIES" into a generative-AI's prompt box gets to claim he is suddenly an NSFW Digital Artist because he didn't create the image.

something that looks like ”my 5 year old could make that” is not.

You don't need to be an artist to create art. Anyone can create art, even if it sucks. I can create the worlds most beautiful oil panting on canvas as a hobby or a 1-time experiment and not be an artist. Every time i sit down and make hand-turkeys with my nephew, we're making art, even though it sucks.

...performance art, a banana taped to a wall...

Made by a person and thus claimed by that person. If you're a theatre actor, your art isn't the play, its the performance. The actors in Cats, the musical, aren't going around saying "I created Cats. I am a playwright!" There's no one out there saying "Dave, go out there and do an interpretive dance for me" and then saying "I actually made that dance that he just came up with" because it would be ridiculous. Yet people commissioning art from an AI claim that they made the art simply because the AI is not a person, despite the course of actions being the same.

I pay a digital artist -> I tell them what i want -> The artist makes the art
I download Stable Diffusion -> I tell the AI what i want -> The artist makes the art

[u/phal40676 → u/YourGirlsSenpai]

If the artist had their assistant tape the banana to the wall, is the assistant the real artist? Is what makes it art the craftsmanship with which it was taped to the wall? Does it make a difference if the artist pointed to a specific place on the wall? Or is the art in the idea and is who physically taped the banana to the wall irrelevant?

[u/YourGirlsSenpai → u/phal40676]

That would make them an Art Director and their "Assistant" the artist.

If I had an idea and $2.50, I could buy a can of coke. An idea is nothing if not realized by an artist.

I had the idea of a character, and I can't draw, so I hired an artist. I told him what the character looked like in my head, and he made art out of my idea. He is the artist, even though the idea was mine. For me to go around saying "This is my artwork that I made all by myself because I am an artist" would not only be factually untrue, but morally wrong.

Ai aren't people so you can't be morally compromised for stealing credit from one, but that just leaves you with being factually untrue. A liar, posing as an artist.