Description
Hey, I just got contacted by an AI Image generator profile here on dA to try out their generator and I can’t believe the audacity they had of pretending that they “love my content”.
So I wanted to get this off my mind and since I feel like barely anyone reads posts I decided to share this image that’s going around artstation right now. I don't know if this is going to reach a lot of people or make a change at all but I atleast want users to know that I'm not supporting this spam of AI generated images.
I usually ignore brainless trends like I did with NFTs but I don't think AI is something that will just pass by the same way. I always try to see things positively and tho I’m certain that AI will eventually get lost in the endless pit of get-rich-quickly schemes, it’s doing a lot of damage right now to the industry and artists mental health and I, as an artist, feel the obligation to do something even if my reach is pretty limited at the moment. But I don’t just want to sit there and keep pretending that everything is fine. So I can atleast share my thoughts.
For me AI started like for most other artists as something that could potentially be a cool new toy to play around with but as with everything that allows people to cut down effort in exchange for a quick boost of dopamine and attention it quickly became this abomination pretending to be an "artist".
Personally I don’t care what anyone does in their free time, if you want to spend it generating AI images, then all the power to you. But the recent flood of AI here on dA, the lack of moderation from the dA-team plus the blatant ignorance of users that don’t bother tagging their images as AI or purpously not doing so for obvious reasons really makes it hard for me and I’m sure for other users as well to navigate deviations and rummage through all the soulless crap that calls itself "art" in order to find new artists.
I think I should mention what I think about AI in general and why I don’t believe it has a place in the art community:
People say AI is the next big thing and the "future" of art, but in what way exactly? If you want to live in a future where you spend all day typing words into a generator creating hundreds of images a day hoping you can sell one of them for a few bucks, cause let’s be honest, everyone can do this kind of thing, especially with how quickly AI is improving, and people always trying to undercut everyone in prices like they already do with commissions. Cause this is what your so called future will end up looking.
To the ones that say "Oh I just use AI as a tool". Generating an image and drawing over it pretending you did the work is not what someone would call the use of a "tool". A tool is not something that skips important steps of your development and the skills artists spend years perfecting, tools are supposed to help you bring YOUR ideas to life, not doing that part for you cause you are too lazy or lack the skills to do it yourself.
Even saying stuff like "I use it as Inspiration", Oh man, where do I start. How exactly is browsing through pinterest or even better, other artists work that you actually admire and told yourself once "Damn! I wanna draw like that one day", any less of an inspiration? Instead people look at the fancy images AI spits out now and then and pretend to feel any connection, artificially creating emotions, thinking what they see has any meaning to them. Just throwing the creative part away and let a machine do that for you aswell.
I also just found out that AI can create WIPs of the image so there's endless possibilities for scam.
I honestly can't see a single good thing AI does for art aside from making the process faster but I guess that's the driving factor here.
But all of this is not important, none of it means anything. People will do what people do. I don’t fear AI or it taking away our jobs. What I fear, and I think that's the most important part many just overlook, is how it impacts the way people see art and what they call "art". For me AI will never be art, even if it’s able to create perfect images with no mistakes it will never be able to create the same connection I have to my favourite artists, because it’s just that, an image and nothing more. For me art doesn’t have to be perfect or have any deeper meaning. When I look at an illustration I want to see the hours of hard work the artist spends to create something that reflects this, something they are proud of, that I can look up to and be motivated by! Not something that gets done in a few seconds, and gets forgotten a minute later.
Our work constantly gets devalued by non-artists thinking they know anything about what goes into creating what we create and seeing artists having to justify themselves for trying to make a living off of their work is just heartbreaking. I wanted to be open-minded about AI and not get too caught up in the negativity surrounding it but I don’t think that’s possible in its current state. Right now all it does is creating an unsafe environment for artists and their customers.
To all the real artists, stay strong! Keep doing what you love! We’ll get through this!
Like mentioned above, I got this image from artstation where people already spampost it to raise awareness that they don’t want AI images on a portfolio website. I know artstation and deviantArt are very different but both are ART-Platforms nonetheless where artists try to make a living on and people suffer here just as much from the consequences of a moneyhungry company allowing this to happen without putting a second thought into it, ignoring what made this site what it is today and the community that built this place! And no matter what anyone says, AI generated images are NOT art and never will be anything more than a soulless scheme feeding off real artists hard work to create something for people who just mindlessly consume whatever they can get their hands on at the moment.
Please download the image and repost it if you feel the same way. I know fighting fire with fire, flooding everyones feed is probably not the best way but there is not much else we can do other than wait until it's over and keep complaining in comments that get ignored anyways.