I don't think that if you want to accomplish art, you have to enjoy the process of these specific modes of art or you're failing yourself. And I think that's what a lot of AI artists want, is to have the results, and a big portion of that problem has been solved.

And saying that, I don't disagree with the idea that learning how to draw causes a larger mental development than writing prompts, and that prompters will forever miss out on that human development. It's just that not all people are motivated enough to "climb the mountain" of being a decent enough illustrator, whether hobbyist or professional. Some of them are happier with the process of getting decent results quickly than stumbling over themselves for years just to reach the point of what AI can accomplish now. Maybe the process of drawing is painful because of the way they treat the process, discouraging them from persisting, but it's hard to change people, and they're capable of defining failure on their own terms. And those people will always exist. Not everyone who wants to draw will end up enjoying it or succeeding after their preconceived notions are shattered. That in my mind means there will always be a target audience for generative art tools.

I think AI art could reveal a lot of diminished self-confidence towards life in general, and I could imagine that some portion of the people flocking to the generative programs would have become manual artists if they believed in themselves more, but they don't, and AI has won them over because they get to skip steps to have the result. Maybe they didn't want to do though the challenges of self-development to gain a new skill, but imagined artistry as nothing more than a fun hobby, and AI art aligns with that notion (mistaken or not) than doing months and months of practice, in a way that no technology has been capable of up until this point.

But does that mean those people have failed as artists and soul-searchers? I think that's still up for debate. AI could quickly become the new kitch (if it isn't already) but they're happy creating it, and many are happy consuming it. I don't define myself as an artist and have no insights as to the "value" of AI art as opposed to human art, since I'm a programmer who's stumbled into this other world and I feel that's a domain I shouldn't be making solid declarations about. But I believe both types of art have their place. Maybe a collaborative project between artists of both denominations would be useful in showing the unique qualities of both styles of creation.

I think what most on HN would say is that you are being ableist and gatekeeping by saying those who pay others to climb a mountain for them are not mountain climbers. I guess it’s a sad state.

* If you put a few splashes of paint on a canvas you get something that looks pretty interesting for a minute, but it's not the picture in your head, and after a while all splashes start to look the same.

* If you grab some pencils and scribble all over a page, you'll get something that looks interesting for a minute, but it's not the picture in your head, and after a while all scribbles start to look the same.

* If you throw some geometric shapes into blender and run a render, you'll get something that looks interesting for -ok maybe a couple of minutes-, but it's not the picture in your head, and after a while all geometric shapes start to look the same.

* If you throw a few tokens into a prompt and hit generate, you'll get something that looks interesting for -now maybe a couple of hours?- but it's still not the picture in your head, and after a while all generated images start to look the same.

Each time, if you want to actually get anywhere close to the picture in your head, you're going to need to practice, and you're going to have to learn the medium, and you'll have a lot of experiences along the way. "There's no mistakes, just happy little trees", right? But the actual path -and the happy little trees you experience along the way- will be rather different for canvas, pencil, blender, or stable diffusion.

Have you ever tried to hold a 7-dimensional, non-linear, chaotic landscape in your head whilst trying to resolve nightmare images of deformed limbs and eldritch landscapes?