[JKCalhoun]

I can draw. But since I didn't keep at it for decades now, I am, at best, at the same level as I was when I was in my twenties. It sucks but I suppose computers came along and stole away all my leisure (and later professional) time. My choice. (I regret it often though.)

So, while I could do incidental art for a project I am working on, AI is going to do better than I could. (I have uploaded sketches of mine though and had it improve it. Is that still shit of me?)

I once paid an artist friend $1K (or was it $2K?) to do a set of playing cards for an iPad game I was working on. It was during the Great Race-to-the-bottom era of iOS apps such that $0.99 or $1.99 was all I was probably going to be able to ask for it.

Did I make back the $1K? Why, not at all. I think I made maybe $100 or something like that. (Never mind the unpaid time I invested in writing the app.)

Retired now, poorer, but still wasting my money on projects that will cost me, and ultimately make me nothing in return.

I guess I don't feel ashamed leaning on AI to give me something to put in the corner of the PCB I am about to order from JLCPCB. (The PCB that, after a number of iterations, I will have spent hundreds of dollars on and will never see a return when it goes "to market".)

[mcphage]

> AI is going to do better than I could

I don't know about that. Lots of people use AI to write text for them, saying "AI makes it sound better"—but the truth is, it doesn't make it sound better. It makes it sound a lot worse, and pisses off the people you want to read it. So does AI draw better than you could? Well, if you did the drawing, would it make your customer base hate it? Because AI art probably will. I don't know if that's "better".

[JKCalhoun]

Maybe there's a hair top be split with regard to 1) presenting your written piece to an LLM and asking for feedback (not dissimilar to the role of an editor for authors—or, you know, just reading it aloud to your spouse to elicit feedback) versus 2) asking the LLM to write it for you wholesale.

I have done the same with artwork (although not exclusive I must confess). I draw a thing, upload it, and ask the AI to draw the same—perhaps adding, "Make it appear to be an ink and brush style perhaps akin to a mid-19th-Century illustration for a children's book."

[fragmede]

Reframe it. Don't look at it as a business failure. You wanted something to exist, and were willing to pay $x to make that happen. Hobbies don't have to generate income. It would be nice, but does it have to? If I pay $x,000 to go on a ski trip, I don't expect it to generate income for me somehow, so why should making PCBs or iOS apps be any different?

[JKCalhoun]

I understand your point, and, to be sure, it is just a hobby to me at this point—and I have no expectation of a hobby "making a profit". (To be sure iOS apps were a different story).

Paying artists though makes this hobby an even more expensive one. And as I am not making any money, it's not like I am robbing anyone… (Another way to look at it perhaps?)