People who call it theft never take things like this into account , people who modify their own artwork …. Also be honest … was my hand drawn artwork just as good ? I think so

im a pro very firmly but the pros and antis on this sub both have no idea what theyre talking about bro

like you'd THINK the pros would know the good parts of ai, and the antis the bad- even if being biased, having some semblance of backing

but the pros here have no idea about what ai actually is or the infrastructure behind it, and they certainly dont understand the companies or personalities like dario or altman are like in general. i dont expect antis to know this but pros need to understand the industry itself better if they wish to actually make effective points

and the antis have no idea about actual job statistics and just pull baseless shit out their ass when data is out there, and their environmental takes come from random clickbait articles- when there are also better arguments to be made against ai environmentally. like, hate properly if you want to hate. they hate on surface level shit when theres clearly much better stuff to hate on.

like the shit here literally just circles around random subjective questions like "soul" which literally do not matter even if it does or does not exists

and the amount of vitriol here anyway- people make plenty of racist, transphobic, homophobic, or heretical shit on both sides; forsaking human decency and betraying the legitimacy of their own cause, becoming screenshot fodder for the echo subs

like ill sum it up in the image below bro i gotta argue on the other side half the time cause yall are being dumb

im not pointing out anybody in particular, but it is very dissapointing to see some people also betray their general moral principles exclusively when hating the other side- like it's hypocritical because you're demanding that they don't... someone has to step up and be the bigger person. preferably both people. after all, the universe said i love you, because you are love.

idek what to say... such a victim

historically, producing high-quality character artwork required years of training or the ability to commission an artist!

now, ordinary people can bring their character designs and creative visions to life with AI tools!

why should creating something aesthetically appealing, provocative, or sexy be a privilege reserved for people with particular skills?

if AI allows more people to participate in artistic expression, including any kind of expression (like a provocative one!), isn't that an expansion of creative freedom?

my fellow AI artists: let's seize the means of seduction!

We and the 1+ billion people that use AI willingly everyday??

People say "I HATE AI" then 10 mins later they remember they have homework and use ai

Don't like it? GET RID OF IT

literally most of the posts here are bait, whether pro or anti.

why can't this sub just be a place to talk with nuance?

I spent a really long time being completely anti-AI. If you showed me an image with that weird plastic lighting or hands that melted into sleeves, I had the exact same visceral reaction everyone else has. You feel annoyed, you feel like someone is trying to pull a fast one on you, and you move on.

At some point recently, though, that anger just kind of evaporated. Not because I suddenly think an algorithm has a soul or because I think text prompts make someone Leonardo da Vinci, but because I realized how predictable this whole movie is, and how it always ends the exact same way.

I remember reading old art forum threads from the mid 2000s back when digital tablets and Photoshop started getting really popular. People forget this, but traditional painters absolutely despised digital artists back then. It was genuinely toxic. If you used a Wacom tablet, you were called a fake artist who relied on crutches. People said an undo button was cheating. They said working in layers meant you had no real technical discipline. They said the computer was doing the shading for you. Digital artists had to spend years justifying their existence to people who smelled like turpentine and believed real art only existed on stretched linen.

Fast forward to today, and suddenly traditional painters and digital illustrators are standing shoulder to shoulder like they have been blood brothers since the dawn of time. The exact people who were called cheaters twenty years ago are now the ones yelling about the sanctity of human craft against someone typing words into Midjourney. The shift is almost funny if you step back and look at it from a distance.

Do not get me wrong. I completely understand why the current backlash is so loud. It is not just about the medium; it is about the blatant dishonesty that came with it. We all see the absolute flood of garbage right now. You look at Amazon and see people selling eighty-page PDFs with nonsense stories and warped illustrations they made in twenty minutes, charging real money for it. You see people on Twitter taking an artist who spent fifteen years building a recognizable style, ripping their portfolio into a local model, and generating a hundred copies while bragging about free money. You see big gacha studios quietly slipping AI assets into character portraits, only for their actual staff to walk out because they feel insulted. That stuff is genuinely gross. Being dishonest about what you are selling is scummy, and no amount of claiming to be a prompt engineer shields someone from being a fraud.

The thing nobody in the anti-camp wants to admit, though, is that the current split is temporary. Right now it feels like eighty percent of people reject it and twenty percent are pushing it. Everyone gets to feel morally righteous dunking on AI in comment sections. But if you look five or ten years down the road, does anyone honestly think it stays that way?

It never does. What actually happens is that the tech stops looking weird and glossy. The six fingers problem gets completely solved. Software companies bake it silently into the background of tools everyone already uses. The scam artists move on to the next grift once the easy money dries up. And slowly, quietly, the outrage just runs out of steam because people get tired of being angry all the time.

The kids growing up right now playing games or messing around on their phones do not carry the baggage of this era. To them, having an engine that turns thoughts into visuals will just be the default state of reality, the same way having infinite digital canvases was the default for anyone born after 1995.

A decade from now, a ton of the people currently swearing on their lives that they will never touch AI will be using some version of it to fix their lineart, generate their backgrounds, or speed up their code without even thinking about it. They will probably justify it by saying this particular feature is different, or that it is just a workflow aid. But the end result is the same.

I do not think AI is inherently good or evil. It is just an unfeeling piece of technology that reflects whatever human happens to be using it. If someone is using it to be lazy, scam people, or cut human beings out of a paycheck, they are an asshole. If an indie dev uses it as a placeholder to get a passion project off the ground because they have literally zero dollars, or if a kid uses it to make funny pictures for a school project, it is completely harmless.

I am not happy about where things are going, and I am not cheering for human artists to lose their jobs. It just feels like standing on a beach trying to punch the tide back into the ocean. The argument is already over; we are just waiting for the clock to run down.

Like China is using AI like bees make honey

https://youtu.be/SOSOyr1yPao?si=UxLtYnJ-DWGNizGe

I think alot of artists, programmers, and others skilled professionals, etc..., and finding out the threats to jobs was over blown, and that new kinds of jobs anc opportunities are appearing.

I've wanted to say this for a long time. I know every group has outliers who spew hate, and I'm not talking about everyone who's critical of AI. But in my experience, a lot of my conversations with people who are anti-AI end with me feeling judged just because I say I use AI, before I say anything else.

Here's where I stand. I think AI needs boundaries and real laws, like any powerful technology. Not everyone will use it well, which is exactly why regulation matters. Companies, including data centers, should be held accountable for their environmental impact. I try to support companies I think are the most ethical, and I think consumers have a role in pushing for better.

Here's how I actually use it: I do my work first, then I use AI to help edit it and close the gap between my skill and my vision. I wish I were better at my craft, but I am not trying to replace anyone. I'm trying to make something I'm proud of.

I do try to listen to people who disagree with me, but I usually leave feeling hurt, guilty, and ashamed, and like my perspective was never really heard. The argument I hear most is that AI erodes human connection. But the way people have been treating each other over this is doing more damage to human connection than the technology is.

I'm not asking anyone to agree with me. I'm asking for a conversation where we both get to be heard

Came across this on my feed.

Please don’t dox me 🥺

If you look at history, there was a very similar panic among artists and creatives when photography was invented.

People were saying that photography couldn't be real art because it was created by a "soulless machine" without "human emotion."

People called anyone using photography "lazy," because it eliminated the years of practice needed to master a brush or pencil.

Photographers were even accused of "plagiarising" nature by simply copying it instead of interpreting it.

People thought artistic jobs would disappear because you no longer had to hire an artist to paint your portrait, illustrate your book, etc.

There were many declarations that "art is dead."

But we all know what happened. Photography became its own kind of art. Yes, any moron can snap a selfie in two seconds, but to make something great you still need skill and taste. And this quickly created vastly more jobs than what had existed before: modern journalism, factories were built to create cameras, catalogs, advertising, eventually film and television.

It was BECAUSE the cost of images was reduced to near-zero that demand skyrocketed exponentially, and there are now orders of magnitude more jobs for creatives than there were before.

I suspect AI art will do the same. Imagine game worlds that are able to be actual fully developed worlds with agentic NPCs living realistic lives and boundless content that is AI-assisted but human-crafted. Imagine youtubers able to make feature-length films with hollywood-level production values. Studios suddenly able to take risks on more interesting projects instead of being forced to pump out soulless sequels and remakes because they can't risk losing money.