[dotnet00]

Add in the fact that many of the people using or pushing for these tools don't even respect the craft of artists they're stealing from.

Not only in terms of not being interested in understanding the effort taken to develop the craft, but also in terms of understanding aspects of the craft itself. Whenever someone brings up the idea that ML is the same as a human learning from referencing other's art, I feel they giveaway their lack of any genuine exposure to art as that's a purely technical interpretation which misses that very little of art is about pure technical skill.

In a way, I feel the AI imagery stuff has just brought enshittification to art. It's the same overall pattern where some tech"bro" comes in citing disruption, technical legality and the future without any interest in understanding what they're talking about, develops a technology that's good enough for attractive marketing but not actually sufficient for the field, but they bring in so many new people that there's no competing and combined with the shit management from the "techbro", the industry is forced to settle for a new normal that grows ever shittier until all the value has been extracted from it.

I used to be very interested in working on generative AI, it's what got me working on a PhD. But I completely lost interest the moment I saw how irresponsible everyone was with it. The tool is fine, but I am increasingly of the opinion that it's a tool we as a society are not ready to ethically wield.

[livefox]

This is absolutely it. I'm a tech lover at heart, I am constantly playing with all the newest stuff that comes out. And when I first saw some of the things people were doing with Stable Diffusion I was very interested. Quickly mocking up textures for simplistic scenes? Quickly filling in repetitive background elements or flat coloring artwork to save artists time? Smart fill, smart lighting, these are some powerful tools, especially for concept art or speeding up commission work.

But the first thing I saw people do is start generating "good enough" art to get their ideas out, and as an artist, I saw how shit the art looked - but it was enough for the people who were not artists. I have seen quite a few friends lose long-time commissioners who are just generating tons of ideas with clicks.

I don't lament people's ability to generate ideas or become invested in art with tools that make it easy for them. I lament the corporate idiots that are going to try to make fully AI generated movies and paintings and books, and flood the market, kill all the real artists, and yeah, enshittify our art and media.