this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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AI should have been used to do work for us to give us more time for art. Not the other way around...
Star Trek universe, anyone?
Time to collapse the system 😎
The flip side is that AI being able to create art democratizes art so that anyone with an idea can execute it. I don't need to have a steady hand to make a drawing of the idea I have and I don't need to be a software expert- I can describe what I want and what message I'm trying to convey and when the AI produces what I had imagined, I can share it with the world.
Or you could pick up a pencil and put it to paper, actually expressing what's in your soul through your own efforts. I know which one I'd prefer to look at.
Also, saying AI "Democratizes art" ignores several million years of people making art with whatever was on hand, whether that be 3D modeling software, or charcoal on a cave wall. Art has always been Democratic and Free; AI, notably, isn't.
Yeah my artwork isn't the greatest https://billsaquarium.com/ but it's my artwork and can tell the stories I want to tell.
Also AI can't make original painting like the kind my wife paints. It's all digital.
man we're all gonna be plastic crap eventually! dig the comic.
Thank you, this is an arch with the plastic diver, so follow along for a new one coming out tomorrow. And if follow Patreon you get them way sooner.
I'm gonna get downvotes again, but: no I couldn't. Art class was mandatory for 9 years of school for me and I can still only draw shit with straight lines. Using a ruler. I can't do anything with a "free hand" as the teacher called it. If I had a project that required art on even a 3rd grade level I could choose between AI and hiring a person I can't afford.
That said, I hate what it does to professional artists. And luckily I don't have time to go through with the video game I wanted to create so I don't have to choose between AI and a real human with actual creativity right now.
Motherfucker I don't give a fuck whether you're a professional artist or a literal child drawing the most dogshit scribbles imaginable, I STILL prefer that over the most refined AI Slop that could possibly be generated. Its not ABOUT the technical skill on display, it's about the sheer fact that YOU, a REAL, PHYSICAL PERSON, picked up the tools and decided to TRY. That alone is what's worthy of commendation, not the fact that AI can shit out generically hot anime waifus in .0032 seconds.
That's the crux of the issue for me. Most models will be trained using everything they can find on the internet and steal the ability to draw from these images. Then nobody will pay artists and AI vendors will make money instead of real humans.
Capitalists win and we lose
You don't have to draw perfect art. I make a webcomic and it's not all straight lines shit. But it's true art that I did myself no AI needed.
Example
That's still better than anything I've ever drawn in my life lmao
Truth be told, I've given up on the idea of ever creating anything artful on my own. The couple of video game ideas I have, if I end up creating any of them, will have to have outsourced art. For which I'd use humans, just nobody particularly expensive lol
I have an idea for a fast-paced side scroller that doesn't require all that much artwork necessarily, but is also not the one I'm most excited about. The one I really want to make is a 3D RPG (without the MMO that often comes in front of those letters - I'm crazy but not THAT crazy) and I have a lot of mental material, but I literally can't afford to get it done at the moment. Have been considering reaching out to a studio whose asset packs I like on the Unreal and Unity stores to get a lot more work done in the same style, but I already know it'd be crazy and my ADHD ass isn't going to finish the game anyway. Plus I'd want sound effects, semi-OK voice acting... All things I can't do alone unless AI (voice actually is the easiest - I could do one role myself, and get some friends to do a few more).
But at this point I've realized my other two projects are more likely to bring in money than the game which is more of a creative output, and I can work on them alone or give people a stake in the company to get them to work for cheap. Why make a passion project for yourself and other people to enjoy when you can focus on what truly matters in life, B2B SaaS.
Is having a for-profit company intermediating and generating all art really "democratizing" it?
AFAIK "democratizing" something doesn't simply mean "makes it easier". That ease is also only temporary. Once you're thoroughly deskilled and dependent upon it, that's when the subsidies will end.
democratise art?
that's the most stupid thing I've heard.
everyone can do art, grab a pencil and a paper, or clay, or a stick and a knife, or....
Doing art is practically free. you cant have anything more democratised than art.
AI is simply not art, it is inherently unable to do anything creative and only makes cheap soulless slop.
If it's used as a fancy brush, an artist can do amazing stuff with it, but the creativity and art still comes from the artist, not AI itself.
Beethoven composed music while deaf and you are complaining about not having steady hands. If you really want to make art, just start doing it. It really is that simple.
You misspelled plagiarism. Ai learned from stealing.
And as for art:
….
Actually , you know what? I’m not going to touch this. I’d rather watch you fail than help you learn via criticism. So You go head and call whatever you think you’re doing ‘art’ all you want.
No other real artist touch this one either. Save the criticism and lessons for real artists. Let this one fail on their own.
Humans learn by copying other artists too.
AI isn't a person. It's just a bunch of numbers that get multiplied with an input.
To make those numbers a real person steals everyone's art and find out which set of numbers best copies that art.
It's pure theft, if you only feed it a few comics it will recreate them as perfectly as a photocopier. The magic is that if you feed it enough art it's copies become less authentic to the original (although sometimes still almost identical) so people feel like it's an "artist making new art" instead of a broken copy machine. Then you slap a name like "AI Model" on the copyright infringement machine and you can sell a subscription for 30$/month so any moron can copyright infringe. Best part is they take the liability!
What a great money making deal, and you can kill the environment all at the same time!
Yup yup Leonardo totally got sued by the first person who made a cave painting for plagiarism.
Great logic.
Go huff your own farts some more, troll bait.
When I had a good idea for art I wanted for personal use I went to fiverr and paid someone to do it for me. AI is killing the already meager income streams of starving artists.
Then the question is: whom does that favor more: people with good ideas or people with bad ideas? Of those two groups, which one was more likely to work hard and develop a talent?
No it is not. Because at some point it is paywalled. That's not democraticed. That is blitzscaled.
What does 'democratise art' even mean? It's not like everyone votes for a specific generated AI image.
Anyway, I think what you mean is Socialism, in terms of AI making 'skills' available for everyone.
But it's not. It's stealing your capability to learn and taking it for itself without paying you for your efforts. Every input you use trains the model. Even though you're not creating art, you're still creating a prompt and you should be paid for your labour.
It's already been said by the operators of this massive scam. They can only operate via theft.
nope. AI is producing what AI imagined. It is not some kind of magic brain reading machine and never will be. I'd rather see palsy-drawn shaky line stick figures than midjourney six finger abominations any day.
By choosing the path of least resistance you're cheating your own creativity and robbing the world of yet another human voice.
And training the machines to take other artists jobs.
Cute.
AI is producing a vague estimate from a large amount of training data (usually image-description pairs), and a user prompt, sometimes with the help of a user image. As such, the AI is unable to be used for anything beyond slop. But for the media executives with their "granduous ideas", it's more than enough. They're almost always having the outsider's understanding of what art is (the "coming up with an idea" thing), but de facto see themselves as a kind of "artists".
Yep. And the big names are so overinvested on AI that we're building gigantic data centers and google is investing in fusion (PURCHASING!) before it's even proven.... pouring more resource stress and emissions worldwide...
what the fuck are we doing
Or at least a crappy version of it, for the low price more pollution and unemployment.
Democracy is about having your say. When you create the art yourself, that is you expressing yourself democratically. With AI, it's doing the talking for you.