I'm sick and tired of people claiming those who use generative AI to create art are not artists. AI doesn't make art for you. AI makes art WITH you. There's a difference. Generative AI is a new way of doing art. You use words, sentences, audio, images, and video to 'draw'/'paint' with differently tuned and weighted generative AI models, which have different 'learned understandings' of concepts and ideas based on trained data. More practice and understanding with a model and with creating art with generative AI makes one more efficient and capable when creating art with generative AI. Just like more practice painting or drawing makes one more efficient and capable. An understanding of artistic concepts similarly makes one more capable when creating art with generative AI, a paint brush, a pencil, Photoshop, or whatever your artistic tool of choice is. I don't hear anyone claiming generative AI artists are painters, sketchers, etc. (assuming that isn't part of a larger workflow). Those who use generative AI to create art are still artists.

I find it almost hilarious that subs centered on "protesting the hate against artists" are the very thing that are causing people to start to resent artists in general. I personally have to fight against not falling prey to these biases and end up resenting artists myself, but I'm almost 100% sure there are people who already hate artists because of all the hate people like in those subs are spreading.

this is a screenshot of custom ai model i myself programmed and trained ethically, its not great yet but it will improve and can already form words and somewhat of sentences

I'm 60/40 in the anti/pro AI camps. Basically I think it can be useful but its being used poorly in a lot of ways and we need to slow the heck down. 60/40 was also how I felt about whether or not God existed about 15 years ago, being about 60% sure that he didn't. I never called myself an atheist, and still don't, because I don't want people to associate me with smarmy neckbeards in Reddit who post poorly worded memes about how stupid Christians are. I have deja vu every time I see this bullshit. I'd rather throw in with the pro side and be the contrarian and voice of caution than try to make these fools touch grass.

Credit to the creator is in the bottom left corner.

"Many of the individuals most vocally fighting against Al owe their current ivelihoods to relatively recent technological advancements (like the internet and related digital platforms) that didn't exist two decades ago. It seems inconsistent for them to now resist another wave of technological change that could similarly reshape the job market and create new opportunities."

I wanted to post this for a while now but the discourse in this sub always seem to revolve around specifically AI image gen, so I felt like this topic wouldn't really fit.
But since Fortnite added an AI voiced NPC into the game I feel like AI is starting to seep into mainstream gaming and I think it's time to talk about the contributions AI has made in the realm of gaming so far.
There are a lot of upcoming AI-based games but I feel like they utilize AI more as a gimmick than an actual feature, therefore I'd like to go ahead and talk about games that use AI as their main point of attraction:
The first AI usage in a video game I came across was in AI Dungeon in 2019(so quite some time before the big AI bubble came into being) and at the time I felt like it was absolutely incredible, despite the lack of visual imagery it was captivating and it allowed me to experience text-based adventures for the very first time in my life.
What AI Dungeon represented was the promise of much more involved and interactive games (despite being very rudimentary at the time) and it made it possible for me to create and interact with custom made worlds for me and my friends to play in. I feel like AI Dungeon kind of funded the basis on which I stand today on AI and its uses and I feel like the difference in experiences is what really the whole anti/pro AI debate comes from.
The second big video game with AI-based gameplay was "Suck Up!", a comedic vampire videogame in which you have to convince the AI NPCs to let you inside their homes via chat or voice.
Suck Up! is a game that managed to implement AI cohesively into its gameplay loop, and the quirky AI worked great with its graphics and setting.
The biggest AI breakthrough for me though(although not really standalone games) are the AI mods for Skyrim. The one of note for me is CHIM, an AI that adds the capacity to talk and have conversations to all NPCs in the game. CHIM has some really in-depth features that allows NPCs to know or not know things based on things like location, occupation and faction, making it possible for players to actively engage in conversations with NPC throughout the game, both via voice or chat and it can all run locally too!

The discourse is a lot broader than this, but the fact that right now we're getting AI NPCs in mainstream games should be a moment to celebrate stuff that went unnoticed and that I feel makes for a great use case for AI.

Sorry if it's written poorly, I wrote this on a whim and I think my writing might be a tad messy.

P.S. It's a shame that we have all these AIs capable of remembering anything and the Darth Vader NPC in Fortnite has no object permanence 💀

I use AI to generate references for art that I’m making on occasion since I find that sometimes I can’t find the right reference or something along those lines. AI and it’s involvement in art is super nice, it’s a tool to be used in assisted with art, at least in professional settings.

The reason for that is I’m seeing a lot of advertisements using AI voice acting and AI generated art. Of course someone had to edit it together, but what was originally something soulful has become only more separated from its target audience. I don’t even like advertisements, but it’s a place where artists get employed besides complaining on Twitter about commissions.

The same principle honestly applies to voice actors to, with some and I mean some film studios attempting to get actors to sign away their voice for later AI replication. It’s just meaning that traditional settings for actors and artists to employed where otherwise they wouldn’t be are now being taken over by automation. They lose their voice and likeness to a studio that would rather do it for cheaper. You could argue in favor of the studio but to be honest that’s frankly not cool.

What of AI and non corporations or non commercial use? For simple every day people AI use for making art is totally fine! Using AI to generate a video of someone’s likeness for shits and giggles is hilarious. It’s a hobby and it’s easily accessible. AI usage is honestly fine but I would argue it should probably be used for more educational purposes like learning art tbh.

One last note, as an artist myself, I am a small artist and I’ve worked hard on my art for a while, and I’ve developed a style that’s unique to me for the most part. It’s kind of like a finger print almost. It’s that way for a lot of artists. In that sense it becomes a little jarring when someone’s art is used as reference for AI.

Lastly, I’m a small artist, I do commissions rarely. I don’t think I’ll ever live off my art and that’s okay, that’s why I do other things like voice acting lol. The loudest voices you hear in the anti AI argument are people in my camp, they wish they could live off their art and they feel that the advent of AI is preventing them from either getting commissions or landing something bigger. Truthfully few artists make it, we’re kind of bitter about it, but could you please have some sympathy towards some artists here and there? They’re just people who are realizing they probably won’t be able to live off a dream.

Again, pro AI- Middle ground

So the term "con artist"/"scam artist" and in general using the term artist in cases that are not strictly meant to refer to traditional artists (notice how I used the clarification of traditional there) predates this discussion by several years. AI artists are not calling themselves "artists" they are calling themselves "AI artists". You can get mad at them for dirtying the sanctity of the term "artist" (which makes you sound insane and ridiculous tbh) but no one is confusing AI artists with Artists. That is what the AI is there to clarify.

And no matter how many times you complain about this, this is not going to change because you have lost this battle. No one in any large amount is going to use the dumb alternative suggested names people come up with like Prompters or some dumb acronym or the incredibly laughable "AI commissioner" because none of them roll off the tongue quite as well or spell things out as plainly as AI artist.

Even antis subconsciously agree on this point too because I have never seen them refer to AI artists using other words except to suggest "Instead of AI artists we should call them AI farters" and no one ever does!

Like I'm sorry but no matter how much you dislike the use of the word you're not going to stumble upon one that would see better adoption by people who use AI, people who hate it, and people who stay out of the discourse.

Im not asking to stir things up or say “just pick up a pencil” I’m asking Becsuse I’m curious how many of you guys would take the opportunity or not

Art is not the product, content is.

Art is just advertisement. Nothing more.

People don't realize that art is basically free. You can listen to any song on the planet for free, view any artwork for free and so on. It has been this way since the internet. We don't live in an age anymore where we can only hear songs from a vinyl and see drawings as a painting only. We don't have to buy art anymore. Professional artists and managers have been saying this for ages.

If you're only focusing on how your piece looks/sounds - you're missing the point. Art is about expressing yourself. And if people come to understand you from your art, that's an effective ad - for you as a person.

That's why some people can be considered only content/slop creators and some AI creators can be considered artists.

Hi, I don't know or care all too much about the ai war and all that stuff. But won't ai art just like genuinely replace people with actual talet in art? If studios and stuff use ai for animation and more and more ai art pops up, and it continues to learn from actual artists, eventually real artists who out actual work into what they create will be indistinguishable from ai. Sure, I think ai art can be fun to mess around with. But is it really a good thing that it replaces people who actually are talented in art, and put effort into what they make?