Raw LLM Responses

I think it's funny how people rail against AI art while being digital artists. Once upon a time, "real artists" would be railing against how tools like photoshop are ruining all the "real skills" required to do something right the first time because photoshop can just fix it. Digital artists can just change the color of something without having to repaint it, they can copy and paste textures, they can use special digital brushes that draw on eyelashes or hair without having to individually create every lash or strand, like magic. I have seen digital artists railing against AI in their youtube videos while the footage they are speaking over shows them copying and pasting a photograph of a mountain they got off the internet into their piece and then using digital tools to slightly alter it within seconds to make it look like they drew and shaded those rocks by hand. This vtuber might have gone to great lengths to create her digital avatar "from scratch" but is she animating it painstakingly by hand? No, she's using digital sorcery to animate it with a camera plugged into a computer that's using AI algorithms trained on millions of faces to recognize, with statistical probability, the most likely thing her face is doing and then automatically animating the avatar to match. OH GOD! THE FAKENESS! AI art is just digital art turned up to 11, or maybe 23. Can AI make really pretty pictures with minimal human input? Yes, but actually getting AI to do what you want it to, that's where the artistry comes in. Actually getting what you want out of an AI can take a remarkable amount of effort. AI loves to give too many or too few fingers, just getting the hands right can be a whole battle. If you basically provided no guidance and just got a pretty picture, then that's just an image generator. But, in my opinion, if you give AI a short-story-length description with painstaking detail to create the image in your mind's eye and it executes it, then you used a tool to bring your imagination to life, I see that as an artist. If you drew a rough sketch of everything you wanted and where you wanted it and had the AI polish it to perfection for you, that's still an artist. If you drew an immaculate pencil drawing and had the AI colorize it for you, you're still an artist. But I don't see much point in trying to get people to provide a certificate of authenticity regarding how much effort went into getting AI to do what they wanted. If they got a good picture or video or whatever else out of it and presented it well in the context of whatever it is they are doing, then good for them. Whenever people make arguments about "learn to draw" or comments like it (not what the video says, just seeing it in the comments), I wonder how they would respond to a physically disabled person, who literally can't draw, using their voice to tell an AI the image in their head so that it can be created. Are you going to tell that person they aren't an artist? Or do you demand that they hire a person with functional limbs to draw for them? Sounds ableist, sounds like you demand they use money or the charitable donation of someone else's time to be an artist. But even then, you might say they aren't a 'real' artist, at best a creative director. Probably with a snide sneer and a sense of self-importance. But, if you think a tool is valid for a disabled person to use and still be an artist, I think that tool is valid for anyone to use and still be an artist. Arguments like the one in this video reminds me of a friend I have. He's a musician, and he has a strange fascination with determining whether he likes a song by how difficult it is to play. It doesn't matter if it sounds good or is moving or anything like that, it's always this "how hard it was to play" thing, with a hefty dose of "if you were a musician, you would understand." That's what this sounds like to me. As if the only skill involved in creating music is how much sweat was produced or how likely you were to break a finger trying to execute the piece. As if the artistry of creating the correct string or chord of notes to move someone to tears or give them goosebumps didn't require skill or creativity because it was easy to play. There's a default assumption here that the AI art was too easy to make, that decisions weren't made by a creative person about where things would go and why, when AI art is, in fact, not entirely and inherently "the AI did everything and made every decision based on statistical probability" You can literally give AI a rough sketch of what you want and where, tell it the style, the color, everything. You can do 'inpainting' where you adjust a created image to match your intention and use that to fine tune it over and over until you get what you wanted. You can give AI an image that you, as a "real" artist, painstakingly drew and colored and shaded over the course of a week and tell it to change the pose of a character from a standing wave to a bent over, cutsy, wink with peace sign with a stick figure sketch or photo of the new pose for reference (maybe even one you drew yourself once upon a time) and have the AI adjust that for you. You can, in fact, make decisions about all the what's and where's and why's and that is being made more and more possible every day with the advances in AI that let you do more, better, and faster. And, though I don't think that degree of difficulty is the hallmark of creativity or validity, there are whole courses devoted to 'prompt engineering' to get AI to do what you actually want it to, so AI doesn't "just do it" all nice and easy with no effort. AI is a tool, it's basically the evolution of photoshop. "Photoshop? I think you mean photo-SLOP! Amiright, ya'll?!" -This artist if she predated digital art. "How would you feel if you watched a youtuber and found out it was all scripted?" You mean... like this video? Yes, I know the example was about content that was presented as unscripted and then finding out it was scripted, but there is a difference between scripting and deception. Scripting isn't inherently bad or devoid of creativity, quite the opposite, and in fact, I would say that scripting and executing content that actually appears unscripted is much more difficult than simply creating scripted content. If scripted content intended to appear unscripted was good enough to fool you, maybe you should give them props. Yes, if you are looking for unscripted content, then receiving scripted content could be disappointing, but considering the amount of "unscripted" television that is definitely scripted or wildly edited to the point of absolutely not representing the reality of what was happening... does it really matter? If you enjoyed what you watched, good. Maybe AI art does mean you are no longer an artist and can at best be a creative director. Okay, well that is still a respectable creative title, is it not? And we still respect and enjoy the thing they made without disregarding it out of hand like this video suggests we should with AI art, do we not? And maybe we should try to create some titles to better define the degree to which you were artist or director or creative at all when working with AI, I can get behind that. I just see a lot of people's take on this to be a little too similar to other arguments about what makes a "real" something, a real marriage, a real woman or man, for example, and it can get really icky really quickly. If we can have a sensible conversation about what makes an AI artist, an AI creative director, an AI director, etc. as applicable, then cool. If AI being involved means it's all inherently fake and revolting or if someone is just another person railing against the endless progression of technology and culture... well, there are no breaks on this train, and I suggest you strap in.