I guess I’m not properly equipped to respond to this since I’m very offline… but. Even though AI “art” is getting past the ugly phase, it is still slop. Yes, one could say prompt manipulation is a skill, but regardless there isn’t any soul behind the final image. When an artist makes something, there is intention/purpose behind every. single. step. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” right? This isn’t the case anymore with AI, since the machine just spits out an approximation of the prompt, based on the data set it’s trained on. It might be fitting to liken AI “art” to junk food, since you can keep consuming without any care or purpose.
That isn’t to say AI cannot be leant to a creative vision - see King Gizzard’s Iron Lung video, or (maybe?) a dnd table using it to add some immersion. But a lot of the data fed into AI was stolen, and the general population’s acceptance of AI signals to corporations that we are okay with it replacing legitimate artist jobs with purpose behind their craft. So my anti-AI sentiment isn’t just “it looks bad” or adjacent to mercenary class interest… I think there are some truly creative ways to use AI to make actual thoughtful art, but the broad uses of AI “art” contributes to the purposeless consumption that has crept across the internet over the last decade.
OK so obviously it makes sense that artists would be anti AI. For like, mercenary class interest reasons. But it's bizarre to me that anti AI sentiment is so popular among the gen pop. I think the obvious angle is "a lot of AI art is shitty" but like. A lot of early cgi was shitty, and I don't think many people were against cgi in the 90s. Maybe they were? Idk the AI art thing is particularly stark because there was this period early on when it was not very good and then there was no ill will towards it. And then it got good and popular and is now hated by an appreciable segment of the (online) population. Very odd.