Raw LLM Responses

Weak argument after weak argument. 30 minutes in I'm just done. You have two arguments (AI is theft, using AI is not doing art), and you keep failing to argue for point two, by incessantly trying to shoehorn point one into arguments where it doesn't belong. Yes, AI is theft. No, you don't have more creative vision and decisionmaking using Blender (or DAZ, or anything else that doesn't involve you holding a pencil drawing from memory). When you work in Blender, you don't "create" anything. You manipulate parameters, combine assets, choose camera angles, adjust lighting, and iterate, but none of that is made from scratch by you. You are changing properties until you see what you want to see, on objects you just plop into your scene that already have default properties to work for the purpose they've been designed by Blender programmers. That's the whole point of a digital tool. Something that does a very specific thing, something that can't be made to do anything else, it only does that. The shaders are assets downloaded from some asset library. Don't tell me you use substance painter to texture all of your surfaces. The type of light you intend to use is picked from a menu, and no amount of temperature, luminance, geometry, focal point, and other emissive profile tweaking make it your own creation. Someone applied their knowledge of physics to decide core characteristics you can't change. Again, digital tool. How the render engine interprets surface properties when you click the render button is a programming effort of other people, who made said button for you that does use their expertise to interpret the optics for you. At no step are you the person creating, you are changing preexisting parameters on objects you don't conjure into existence, you invoke a default instance and tweak it until you see the desired result. The tool fills in the gap in your knowledge to make things look the way they do, and you are holding it against Shad that he uses AI to color in his images? Meanwhile you press the "make things more realistic" i.e. render button to do the same. Knowing that the "glossy layered weight" slider in DAZ controls shininess isn't any different from knowing that saying "make it shiny" in an AI prompt will increase reflectivity. Knowing the technicalities isn't the determining factor in what constitutes as "making art". The Blender user isn't calculating fresnel equations or ray tracing algorithms any more than the Stable Diffusion user is, both are using abstracted interfaces to communicate artistic intent to systems that handle the technical complexity FOR THEM. What you are saying is that "since natural language was used to create this, it's slop, my difficult process is superior, for being difficult". Shad isn't doing anything less when he's doing photoshop edits, he's just several layers of abstraction removed from directly influencing specific parameters, for tools that none of you made, tools you've been given. If you are arguing that difficulty is the determining factor of artistic merit, then any tool or technique that lowers physical toil (that's including your Blender) automatically strips value from the result, and you make an entirely arbitrary cutoff point where ease no longer translates to expertise/merit. Let's say I take away your computer (that's general you, not second person you), give you paper and pencil. Are you honestly, with a straight face, telling me that the average Blender "artist" pulling assets off Renderhub would have any more luck trying to draw something than someone prompting AI? What skills are you improving when you are getting better at Blender? Software literacy. Where the buttons are that make the thing. The parameter names that do a specific thing. The Blender programmer's logic where things are located (that changes every version number and make older tutorials useless). But none of that is actually artistic skill development. None of it! If you are a "digital artist" condemning AI, without the skill to engage in asset creation, sculpting, traditional drawing, painting, material science, optics, or any of the foundational skills your software abstracts away for you, you are the pot calling the kettle black, and invoking Van Gogh to make an argument doesn't work in your favor because you are just as far removed from Van Gogh as the AI prompter is. If you're going to invoke the masters of the craft to defend your artistic legitimacy, you better make sure you're actually practicing anything resembling what they did.