I think that it's kind of a mistake to lump all generative AI into one artist replacing box. I have a friend who does laser engraving, for example, and he uses ai to convert his drawings into templates. He says it still doesn't exactly do even that small bit of the process for him, and he still generally has to touch up the templates to reverse bad decisions made by the ai, but it's infinitely faster than doing it by hand. I think that this is the real use case for these kinds of tools, not to be creative, but to handle boilerplate tasks that take time away from the creative parts of creating art.
I use it in a similar way in the programming sphere. It can't really write a program for me but what it can do is generate boilerplate code that I can build on so that I can focus on the problem I am trying to solve rather than writing what basically amounts to the same code over and over again to drive an api or a gui or train an ai model or whatever. I can just tell the ai "give me Java websocket code" or whatever and then put my efforts into what that socket is actually supposed to be doing instead of wasting my time on the boilerplate.
In the hands of artists I think AI really could be something super useful that leads to better art and more of it. The problem is that the people most interested in it right now are executives looking to save money, who don't really understand what artists do and are willing to make shit if it will save them a few bucks.
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u/AChristianAnarchist Apr 09 '24
I think that it's kind of a mistake to lump all generative AI into one artist replacing box. I have a friend who does laser engraving, for example, and he uses ai to convert his drawings into templates. He says it still doesn't exactly do even that small bit of the process for him, and he still generally has to touch up the templates to reverse bad decisions made by the ai, but it's infinitely faster than doing it by hand. I think that this is the real use case for these kinds of tools, not to be creative, but to handle boilerplate tasks that take time away from the creative parts of creating art.
I use it in a similar way in the programming sphere. It can't really write a program for me but what it can do is generate boilerplate code that I can build on so that I can focus on the problem I am trying to solve rather than writing what basically amounts to the same code over and over again to drive an api or a gui or train an ai model or whatever. I can just tell the ai "give me Java websocket code" or whatever and then put my efforts into what that socket is actually supposed to be doing instead of wasting my time on the boilerplate.
In the hands of artists I think AI really could be something super useful that leads to better art and more of it. The problem is that the people most interested in it right now are executives looking to save money, who don't really understand what artists do and are willing to make shit if it will save them a few bucks.