I think it's a great thing.
There was never anything stopping anyone from picking up a pencil and learning to draw. The idea there's some inborn "talent" for art is absurd. There is only people who practice and people who don't.
What you are actually "democratizing" is the ability to produce finished products without ever putting in any kind of work.
Which means you are absolutely devaluing the people who actually did put in the work.
It is a terrible thing. A miserable race to the bottom of human expression.
Jokes on you, I agree with everything you just said, fully unironically
The web is way worse where people have to put zero effort into uploading their content
The best places on the web are the places where people have crafted the page they want.
Note: I don't really care if people use AI to generate anything but they should be forthright about doing so.
IMHO this is absolutely the case, and has always been the case. Being paid as an artist, on the other hand, is something entirely different, or having one's art recognized as good by other people. But I am sure everyone remembers other more popular artists telling them they're "doing it wrong" in art class, on forums, or even all the way back to preschool coloring books if someone would deign to color outside the lines.
There have always been those who seek to gatekeep what art is and who they view as legitimate participants in it. I suppose everyone does in some sense. But I am very excited by the prospect of art as a personal developmental journey becoming more open to everyone.
It’s about expressing and finding yourself and developing a soul through creative action, not just a squirting out a picture that looks “correct”.
You only shortchange your own soul’s development by trying to skip the hard steps that it takes to develop a skill like that.
Because you can make an image on a computer that looks like it was drawn does not mean you can draw. Hell, I’m not even sure it means you can express yourself. The inputs you contribute when using an AI prompt are so minimal compared to the informational input required to create something in the physical space.
Don’t let anyone convince you that it’s an exclusive act. Find a pencil and get at it.
Ultimately though, I realize that trying to get everything what you want from a single prompt won't work. Tokens have implications, and they influence each other too much. Long term, one needs more than just single prompts, and the tools are still evolving to support that.
Still, you'd be surprised at how much you can express even now.
You're already the most complex model and model-maker—the procedure of developing a skill through a creative feedback loop and its output can be vastly more edifying for yourself and others. Don't take my word for it. You can only know by doing it.
These models have their place as useful tools, but are in no way a replacement for the experience of creating and all its challenges. You can't climb a mountain by paying someone else to do it for you. That analogy begs the question—what is the true value in climbing a mountain? What is the value in creating?
This is all explained well by "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". People apply their childhood drawing symbols to realistic art in their teenage years and get frustrated. They never learn to see with an artistic eye and quit.
I was skeptical at first but after going through a couple of the drawing exercises I was convinced. They are so cleverly constructed to make you step outside of your normal brain and just draw, it's kind of amazing the results.
I'm never going to be an artist professionally but I do actually draw as a pastime now and I have improved substantially.
I think if I had practiced more as a kid and teen I may have pursued art professionally.
Part of the problem is that adults see a kid upset that their drawing isn't very good and say things like "That's ok, you're just not an artist. Not everyone can draw" and people internalize that. It's supposed to make the kid feel better and it might cheer them up in the moment, but it also convinces them that they cannot learn to be better at things they are not immediately good at.
Toxic Feel-Good shit.
Drawing was for anybody who put in the work.
You may as well say football wasn't democratized until the release of FIFA International Soccer in '94.
Beyond that, if you think AI algorithms will replace art, you don't understand art. It replaces much of the commercial utility of many artists and creating many types of images, but the idea that it threatens art, generally, is preposterous. People who think art school is only about learning to physically make art are like people who think computer science degrees are only about coding. Most of what you learn in art school is conceptual thinking, communication, really deeply seeing things in a way that most people don't, and stuff like that.
Factories didn't replace potters when they started making pots and dishes or sculptors when they started making cheap home decorations-- it just meant the artisans no longer made money creating a commodity because most people were satisfied buying chintzy shit cheap. Many potters who lived through that change probably died in poverty because of it. Talk big numbers about the way industry shifts all you want, but not everybody can switch to an entirely different category of employment just because someone taught a computer to do it.
