AI Art 

The debate about generative AI for images is an interesting one because it’s clear it can easily take work away from human artists. A few years ago when AI was a bit inconsistent and drew obvious errors like humans with extra/missing fingers, then you couldn’t use these images in a professional context without editing the image, but then maybe you would need to hire someone with those editing skills to fix it.

With how creative these AI models can be, it has the likes of JimllPaintIt fearing for the future. Images can be generated in a famous artist’s style, so what happens if people can just generate ones in the style of JimllPaintIt?

In a now deleted thread, he stated:

“My attitude towards AI “art” has – in a short space of time – gone from mild disinterest to acute irritation to absolute despair for the future of humanity. The most depressing thing is seeing artists embrace it. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.”

JimllPaintIt

Some others raised a good point, that the person typing the prompts still needs to be creative:

“The irony I have seen so far is that the best results from it come from talented artists. I don’t think it’s the awful thing you think it is. Talent is still needed for vision. I think it just opens up art to more people who have vision but not necessarily the physical skills.”

The animator Cyriak then chimes in:

I’m sure musicians have great record collections as well. The idea that “skills” and “talent” are magical properties some people are born with is rubbish. “talent” is just being bothered to keep trying, and skill accumulates as you keep trying.

Cyriak

Which I think isn’t correct. It’s more like a combination of what you are born with, then learned skill, (nature/nurture) as someone else points out:

In that case, if you kept practising you could run faster than Usain Bolt? or is he just naturally faster than you?

Matt_Francis

“I don’t draw pictures by running in a straight line with pencils tied to my shoes. I’m not sure anyone does”

Cyriak

Not sure what Cyriak’s response even means. Is he saying it’s a completely different skill so art is from practice, but physique is natural?

People keep talking about how AI will take away Software Developer’s jobs but at the moment, I think it can be used to take away some of the tedious aspects, and also give a good starting point (boilerplate code) to then enhance with your skills. You also need to understand how to ask the AI to realise your vision. I think there are comparisons in the Art world, but I think it’s easier to understand how their jobs are impacted more directly. ie Hiring an artist for one (or a few images) when you can use AI – versus hiring a developer for a few weeks to get a fully working program/website.