[chefandy]

> I don't think this general complaint about AI workflows is that useful

Maybe not to you, but it's useful if you're in these fields professionally, though. The difference between a neat hobbyist toolkit and a professional toolkit has gigantic financial implications, even if the difference is minimal to "most people."

[ajuc]

Linux vs Unix. Wikipedia vs Britannica. GCC vs Intel compiler. Good enough free hobby toy beats expansive professional tools given enough hobbysts.

[chefandy]

First, we're talking about the state of the technology and what it can produce, not the fundamental worthiness of the approach. Right now, it's not up to the task. In the earliest phases of those technologies, they also weren't good enough for for professional use cases.

Secondly, the number of hobbyists only matters if you're talking about hobbyists that develop the technology-- not hobbyists that use the technology. Until those tools are good enough, you could have every hobbyist on the planet collectively attempting to make a Disney-quality character model with tools that aren't capable of doing so and it wouldn't get much closer to the requisite result than a single hobbyist doing the same.

[johnnyanmac]

1. they don't beat them outight. It's simply more accessible.

2. those "hobbyists" in all examples are in fact professionals now. That's why they could scale up.

[stuckinhell]

Blender is an another good example

[hutzlibu]

Blender was a professional tool from the start. The company behind it went insolvent ... and with crowdfunding the source could be freed.

[chefandy]

Right-- being open source doesn't automatically mean it's an amateur tool or has its roots in a collective hobbyist effort.