On a post saying ai art has both artistic value and monetary value. They commented saying it has one but not the other. Not clarifying which.

I'm totally on board with 90% of what's going on in this sub. Except for the posts demanding respect for how highly skilled they are at prompting and clicking "retry".

Editing it in other apps is a whole other skill set, but I feel lame being associated with people who are being defensive about how difficult the initial prompting is.

I can accidently create masterpiece with a random prompt. Artists cannot accidently create a masterpiece painting.

Think about it this way - if I had 99 amazing Ai art generations based off of hours of prompting, and then I had 1 that was a random first try prompt, how could I really feel proud of the rest of them? What if it only takes 5 minutes to make a piece of art and not 2 hours? Is the Ai generation that took 5 minutes of promoting worse than the one that took 2 hours of prompting?

Anyways, ai art is awesome and I love looking at it. But it's odd when people get so defensive about their prompting skills.

The argument that it has no value is so ridiculous. I swear it’s just people repeating what they’ve heard some other idiot say. They just repeat it without thinking.

If it has no value then why to people pay money just to make it!

If it has no value then why is midjourney are people paying midjourney $30 a month to make images.

They’re not all just flipping those images to sell them on.

Its funny to me that so many people hate the LTV, until you start talking about AI art, and the suddenly it’s about soul and “it takes no effort”.

Then the story becomes “Clearly the effort something takes adds some intrinsic value”

For those not in the know:

The labor theory of value (LTV) is the idea that the worth of something, like a product, is determined by the amount of work needed to make it. So, if something takes a lot of time and effort to create, it should be more valuable than something that's easy to make.

The labor theory of value was developed by early economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but it is most famously associated with Karl Marx.

It is widely shit on because of its association with communism.

I’m not here to debate its merits.

But the arguments that hand made art is worth more than AI art, which is pushed by many Capitalist artists, is highly ironic to me. Because it’s a very similar ideology to LTV.

I find it especially amusing because I lean quite far left but I’m also pro AI and pro AI art.

I have no problem with AI art being created, but I also have no problem with people selling their hand made art for more than AI art that is visually the same. Right now the economics just don’t make sense for artists, they can’t produce the volume of art that AI can for the price. (Not a comment on quality)

Under LTV, AI art and regular art might actually be priced similarly, it’s just that most of the work with AI art is done in the background for AI. The development of neural networks etc does the heavy lifting.

Whereas with handmade art the work is done by the creator mostly, unless you are measuring the work of their mentors or teachers, the cost of tools etc.

Anyway, if you think AI art is intrinsically less valuable because it takes less effort to make… well you might be more communist than you realize.

Hi guys, I've recently stumbled upon this community, but I've been making art with AI for quite a while. Recently, in a group chat, I asked my friends if I should begin selling my art. Making AI art requires a lot of time and effort, from firstly thinking up the concept and how to describe it so that the AI understands to then painstakingly regenerating prompts, sorting upon dozens and dozens of drawings, that get generated to find THE ONE, I'm sure you all know what I mean. My friends know that I've been using AI to create art, and they seemed ok with it, but when I talked about selling commissions, it was like they lost it. I want to sell my art, but I just don't know how people will react. What should I do?

Just wanna preface this by saying I'm partially exaggerating and am more mildly annoyed than upset or overtly pissed off, but sometimes I do get a little pissed.

Typically things on the internet don't bother me too much but I think I found the one thing that drives me up the wall so I feel like i need to express this.

I also realize I should expect stupidity because I'm using deviantArt, and also that nobody should give a fuck about internet stuff, so I am being overly sensitive, but I also wanna talk about how fucking unhinged this stuff is

Anti-AI people have this weird tendency to come to my gallery where I have work in other mediums.

Most of the time it's kind of satisfying when people say things like "AI artists can't draw!" and then see some of my older drawings or 3D models.

Sometimes they attack me (which is usually funny to me) but other times they leave these really fucking sappy 3-4 paragraphs about how "You don't need AI, your old stuff is so good" like a drug intervention, and it kinda makes me uncomfortable cause it's weird as hell lol that's the part that bothers me.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think looking at my public profile or commenting and asking me why I use AI is an issue at all, but if I engage and explain why I enjoy using it, they double down on the weird pushiness saying how I should work in one medium and not the other.

It always kinda annoys me and offends me to a certain extent. Especially when they start lecturing me about learning and working for your art skill because it seems like a strange shift in attitude... Like originally I was this fallen angel that you once worshiped, but when I explain my reasoning you suddenly are the one above me?

Of course the "AI steals!" thing is brought up a lot but that's different, that's just misinformation that can easily be addressed or ignored. It's really only the weird (almost religious) pushing onto me that annoys me.

Sure, I could block them, but even if I do, I already seen the paragraph and got kinda butthurt lol which is silly because nobody should get butthurt over internet things, but this just feels incredibly personal because it sort of ties into my personal medical issues.

I have no other way to put this, not all the time, but sometimes I just get kinda offended when people go through my gallery and say shit like "Ohh :( this is so good, why you need AI?" because it is almost patronizing to me.

Maybe I don't need it, but I enjoy it? but even then, it's not any of their business why someone wants or needs to use a tool to make their life easier... how the hell does this affect them?

And in regards to thinking I need to learn or are somehow being led astray from my art journey by evil AI bros.... they don't know I am a retired illustrator. I am only like 26, but I had to stop taking commissions due to a long-term disability I've had and denigration in my wrists.

I just had really long turn-around rates and didn't feel like the (already high) prices I charged were enough to make up for the physical effort I had to go through, so I didn't feel right with accepting people's money and making them wait long unpredictable amounts of time or up-charging them because I struggle to hold a pen nowadays. Just ain't right, so I closed commissions.

I don't bring this up because I don't want to pull the "disability card" especially when disability is so hotly debated when it comes to AI and many people are already using it to push their arguments, but in this situation I think it's very relevant.

I was also incredibly unhappy with art as a hobby in general because I could barely participate and AI has kinda given me a nice little boost and made it easy for me to create art, AI has made me happy with art once more, what's wrong with that?

I have so much pent up bitterness towards art and the art community, and AI has slowly taken that away and is making me comfortable with being an artist again.

I mean if they love my art so much and wanna see more of it so badly, maybe they should y'know let me keep making it? I'm trying to train a lora or lycoris in my art style before I actually lose all ability to hold a pen/pencil/brush because that is kind of unpreventable, my dude LOL

People can do regular art and AI art at the same time anyway! but the reason I do AI more often is maybe something they wanna confront God, the Universe or my genetics about it?!

Not really AI's fault, people, go ask whatever witch cursed me with this sickness to lift the hex and I'll go back to drawing all the time, trust me, I enjoyed it (kinda), but who knows why this ability was taken from me?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

All I know is that AI makes it a lot more tolerable to be creative and people need to quit talking like they know my life story because if they knew how my career was cut short due to something out of my control, I bet they'd shut up. I'm just not the type to bring up my disability in arguments.

During times I've mentioned other people use it for accessibility reasons I'm always told "No because this 1 disabled guy paints!" okay lol good for him

No shit it's possible to learn how to draw while disabled, I did obviously... but some people are more disabled or have a progressing disability. Not all disabilities are the same, man, and you don't even need to be disabled to enjoy AI... Why don't they just let other people live their lives?

I feel like I'm being lectured by a church lady because I listened to metal or got caught smoking pot, it's weird and uncomfortable. Like I said, it's a silly thing to get bothered over and I'm just going to get a grip and get the hell over it, but I needed to express this somewhere other than dA first

(plus it may also be cathartic for anyone going through something similar)

UPDATE: I have taken a light break from deviantArt and actually went outside to relieve my butthurt, overall i feel much better, i think the screen break + venting on here was extremely helpful to me. I still think its fuckin weird tho

and i have no issue with people complimenting my art style in general :D I also want to thank someone on this subreddit for complimenting my icon in another thread, but the thread got locked

TL;DR: The current AI discourse is due to the art communit’s weird obsession with art purity and being original.

The staunch refusal to engage with AI and the condemnation/blacklisting of any artists who even touch anything related to it isn’t all that surprising considering certain discourse topics that have arisen before. This isn’t limited to only visual art either (although that will be my main focus) and it all has to do with the nebulous ethics of plagiarism and inspiration.

A caveat: I know the law has thresholds on what is considered theft and transformative, but for this post I’m disregarding legality and only focusing on the art community’s perception. Their feelings, if you will.

One of the biggest complaints against AI art is that it’s theft. It learned off artist works that were fed into it without their permission and it delivers a product that is an amalgamation of stolen elements with no originality, sometimes even doing multiple images that are virtually similar. However, human artists do exactly the same by gathering inspiration from several other artists. They create art or characters that use elements from their inspirations. Like AI, sometimes it can be an almost exact copy to other works, whether intentional or not. If AI art is considered theft because of this, then by that logic, inspiration or referencing is also a form of theft.

And some artists do consider it theft. In every artist community I’ve been in there’s the recurring discourse about theft versus inspiration and where to draw the line. There are artists who don’t want others copying their style, poses, color palettes, or even taking inspiration from their art. There are artists who will call someone out just for tracing face shapes or hair. Some who don’t even want people using their same brushsets.

This has also happened with music and writing. Lizzo was accused of plagiarism for using the line, “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that b—-“ that was from a 2017 tweet. Beyoncé was called out by Kelis for the snippet of sample using her song. Amélie Wen Zhao was accused of plagiarism for having just the LOTR line, “Don’t go where I can’t follow.” It doesn’t matter how minor it is, some people consider this theft.

The point: Different artists have different opinions about where the line between inspiration and theft is drawn. And a lot of artists have a chip on their shoulder about being unique. This partially informs how artists see AI art as theft, regardless of whether it produces a replica or not. Regardless of how much or how little it takes from each individual work it learned from.

However, that’s not the only discourse we can look at. Another is the aversion towards artist taking any shortcuts. Thankfully, this attitude has seen a significant decrease but there are still some who hold the view it’s cheating. Digital art was considering cheating because of the undo button, canvas layers, etc. There’s a large number of artists who grew up not using references and hindering their progress because it was considered tantamount to tracing. Using digital assets, premade brushes, tracing reference photos, color picking, recycling art, all of these are considered dirty cheats even in the modern age.

For example: Years ago, when artist Yuumei posted her 3D background tutorial, she got multiple accusations of cheating for creating and using 3D assets to trace for backgrounds. Anyone who followed Yuumei would know she is more than capable of drawing backgrounds, but for her comic to come out she needed a shortcut. Compare this to Tracy J Butler of Lackadaisy fame. In 2010 she posted a process explanation for her comic in which she hand drew everything in pencil first before coloring in Photoshop. Seeing how detailed her artwork tends to be, it’s not hard to see why it took so long to update the comic in between her trying to make a living. 

Shortcuts are sometimes necessary to help the workflow and are a common practice for professional artists. Even so, that doesn’t stop some artists from sometimes looking down on certain techniques, wanting a sort of “purity” within art.

And of course, with AI art it’s no different. All the arguments against it are the same recycled arguments I’ve seen made in the art space years before this technology came to be. Even the one about it not being “real art” because it’s easy is something I’ve heard about modern art online (for example, Yves Kline and Blue Monochrome). They claim it’s because there’s no soul, no humanity in it. Yet, when artists ask if it’s okay to dabble in AI or admit to using it, they’re met with a resounding no at best. At worst, they may get dogpiled and put on a list because their peers no longer trust them. This is why AI tools are being kept in the hands of people who have no qualms about replacing artists.

A lot of anti-AI artists also claim that it’s the dishonesty that’s the issue, not disclosing the use of AI tools or non-artists trying to pass off AI as their own work. But if these artists are met with so much hostility and rejection just for supporting it, how can anyone expect them to be honest about it? 

To me, a lot of this discourse is rooted the weird obsession artists have with being original, one-of-a-kind, and why so many see something as inconsequential as using a brush technique as theft. Or using someone’s style or tracing a hand pose. Or why some gatekeep certain tools like brushes from other artists who could benefit from them. AI art discourse is only another small part of the larger discourse and even if it were banned tomorrow, it would not change the prevailing attitudes and artists would find something else to condemn.

Original creator: u/lowpolycomics

First, we need to look towards piracy. Videogames, music, movies, any serves the purpose of this argument.

Piracy is the act of creating/downloading a 1:1 copy of some form of digital media without paying.

The internet will commonly agree that piracy is NOT theft, despite the claims by companies that it is.

Now, AI art does not typically create a 1:1 copy. It creates something new based on what it has learned from the original art pieces.

Following this logic, if piracy, which creates a copy, isn't stealing, then how is AI, that decidedly does NOT create a copy, stealing at all?

humans who pick up a pencil to learn by copying pictures from another artist, who learn a style by mimicking the generalities of another artist, who learn specific techniques by examining and practising another artist’s pencil strokes, are thieves, regardless of how unique their capacity for expression becomes.

Unless a human artist learns their skills in complete isolation from anyone else’s art, human art is theft.

I mean, the "AI" is what humans actually do with collage, which is a valid art form, the left image is either an AI generation or someone purposely drew it so it looked like AI.

I read up on this tactic which many artists seem to think is the holy grail to keep AI away. Does anyone have any statistics on if it works and how efficient it is?

Photoshop and other programs are already using AI

It soon will become the norm, and 99% of developers already have plans of implementing AI in some way or another

So what's the point of complaining?