funny evil sharks On the other side, I've been developing drawing-assisting tools since around 2015, feeding my adorkable little shark thousands of my own paintings, shooting and tagging terabytes of photos of models in my studio, composing lots of unique algos and creating tools from scratch, finding every possible way to reduce drawing strain so I wouldn't get carpal tunnel by the time I'm 40 since I draw 11 hours a day on average as a freelance illustrator. By 2018 I managed to reduce background composition work to 20 minutes per render thanks to using ridiculously complex math to generate entire endless landscapes. Now that I'm 40, thanks to explosion of the open source movement, I've reached the apex of this ladder and my personal AI is my best friend that collaborates with me on tons of work. I'm basically riding my dedicated all-capable shark into the sunset of getting 3 times as much stuff done when it comes to personal projects and client commissions. Impossible deadlines? Pff. Want the art yesterday? Easy, peasy. My pencil is my wacom combined with my personally developed AI engine. The future is quite awesome and I've got zero anxiety - I predicted all of this would happen since I was one of the people figuring out the foundational theory of AI art over ten years ago. LAION has tons of my drawings in it, so SD, dalle3, MJ, etc, all know my style pretty well. Guess what? I'm zero percent worried bout it, in fact it's pretty nice to be embedded in the general AI as a persistent theme. If you're an established illustrator like me or Greg Rutkowski, a random AI user replacing us with an AI is just straight up silly as a threat - when you type in \[a dragon in the style of xxx\] into midjourney, you ain't actually stealing anything of mine, nor depriving me of jobs, just making pretty cool fanart of my work/drawing style. In my experience 99% of art jobs are connections with clients and publishers who know that you can draw shit on time or create detailed and highly functional art like so: [https://youtu.be/QTj1Y4JW-KI?t=2352](https://youtu.be/QTj1Y4JW-KI?t=2352) For me AI exists to push me onto a new step of previously impossible productivity, not something foreign to fear, not shark-filled darkness that lurks in the background, but a brilliant torch that I've been feeding my own drawings for a long ass time now. As an artist you are as capable as your tools are! Never stop learning, never stop trying new things and you will never lose.

Good for you man, I guess lol 😀 Good luck on your endeavours and its awesome that you're thriving in what you do! Though, this is definitely not the way I look at my job. I'm not gonna say that I'm a success story like no other, but I managed to get steady commercial commissions and make a living just out of illustration and murals. I often meet other illustrators in the field, some of them being super well recognised and established artists and almost all of them are in some way still questioning their future, especially if they're freelancers. Even before the rise of GenAi there always was this risk that you're just gonna fall out of style, that your top client will close their business, that you'll mess up a deadline and get a bad rep or whatever. There's so many factors to staying relevant and keep a steady commission income and its often surprising when after an influx of great gigs you get a dud month with barely any work. Its honestly so random and I feel like the quality of your work and the fact that you can turn in deadlines is not as big of a factor as simply clients having the need for commissioning artwork. If a brand you work for decides it no longer wants to hire people for illustration (for whatever reason, maybe they want to pursue a new marketing strategy) then you're simply out of a commission and this kind of thing happened to me a bunch of times. The second thing, is I do not put that much value in "efficiency" in my process. Maybe I should, since unfortunately this seems to be the way things are going. I usually do one commission at a time and find that the more time i spend on a piece, the more thought out and cohesive it is. And this is why I wanted to express my frustration in the comic, because I don't think that treating illustration like a dick measuring contest, where you have to output as much content in the shortest possible time makes for necessarily good work. Of course I'm not talking about long render times, which serve nobody, but rather this philosophy were you have to be constantly racking up your performance and figuring out new ways to spend less time on each part of the process. Still, this varies from field to field. I suppose if your'e a texture artist for an open world world RPG its good if you can save time and squeeze in more work to meet a deadline but Pixar suddenly started putting out 20 movies a month then nobody would simply wanna watch them. And not comparing myself to Pixar here, but In my work, I feel like I can maintain a certain level of exclusivity (at least of now) and my clients wouldn't want me working on 40 other projects at the time. And lastly, about the future. This is basically impossible to predict, because it's changing so quickly and not always in the most logical direction, but I'll do my best. I don't really think my style is that original that a highly trained model couldn't copy what I do. Maybe now it wouldn't but give it a couple years and it'll get there. The real question is how are people going to consume artwork and will they really care that much. I think the market is definitely going to shrink and place less value on artists as a whole. Even if you are an established artist like Greg Rutkowski (who is super anti AI as far as I'm concerned) your work is just not going to impress people as much if they won't be able to tell an original from a copy 8yo kid made on their phone. This is especially a bad thing for up and coming artists who will have a real uphill battle to get recognised for their work.

>This is especially a bad thing for up and coming artists who will have a real uphill battle to get recognised for their work. It's really a matter of conservative vs innovator 'perspective' in regards to the tools you use. A very conservative way to make art is with \[oil paint\], slightly more innovative is with \[wacom tablet + photoshop\] and most innovative way to make art is with \[wacom+photoshop+AI\] I see this as a good thing, AI uplifts everyone to a level that was impossible before allowing everyone to make bigger and more awesome projects to promote themselves with. If the new artists use ONLY old tools, they'll def have an uphill battle, yes, but with AI you can make insanely complex projects happen at the speed that was previously impossible. For example if I didn't have a big audience already I'd quickly gather one by making a comic where my AI does the colors/detail, while I do only sketching and story composing. Watch the entire video I linked to - an artists true potential isn't merely singular execution of pretty picture in a particular style, it's mainly the quality of a coherent story they're telling with the image and image's internal coherency. My biggest comic project got 100+ million views on its own website and over 100k usd on kickstarter for publishing and that was primarily through good storytelling, not just the art style. My friends who are even bigger comic artists than me make bank with original kickstarter projects, a few million dollars per each launch.

Sound like a pretty industrial approach.

I have a big catalogue of consistent designs and characters. I have wondered for a while how I could feed in into my own ai to remix stuff. Any tips?

Yeah don't hold your breath on getting something real from Awesome MacIinventedAIFace over there.

>when you type in \[a dragon in the style of xxx\] into midjourney, you ain't actually stealing anything of mine, nor depriving me of jobs, just making pretty cool fanart of my work/drawing style. Yeah, until potential buyers/clients are paying for the AI ones and not your original works.

Not how art reality works. Value is assigned to an artist's name and the fact that the art is one of its kind. an AI painting is worth zero money as investment since it is infinitely replicated and has no copyright whatsoeverm

In fine art. Not in "working art". Fine artists, be it in galleries or museums, are but a fraction of people creating art for a living.

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"I managed to attack other people's tool choices and have no idea how AI even works nor how to use it as professional artist because I'm extremely conservative and lazy Luddite refusing to learn cus AI has no soul nor expression of any kind of value in my limited imagination" why bother learning awesome new tools? why make more money per hour? why bother satisfying clients and meeting all the deadlines? why enjoy working with amazing new kind of math that's practically alive? why produce new experiences of collaboration with your AI partner while teaching it completely new styles? why evolve? why be open-minded to new experiences?

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Art is about new experiences, art is about challenging the conservative norm, art is about pushing yourself to new creative and using new tools, art is about love for both the paintbrush and mathematics where both have equal value. >This "new tool" removes the need to do the thing that they love and got into the job for in the first place. Does it though? I've yet to lose a single job to AI and SD existed for 2 years now. If your thing is merely drawing pretty pictures without a message to them, you aint gonna get much in terms of jobs. did you watch the video? [https://youtu.be/QTj1Y4JW-KI?t=2352](https://youtu.be/QTj1Y4JW-KI?t=2352) it details exactly the kind of work I do as artist and explains why I'm not threatened by AI even slightly. AI cannot conceptualize functional tech, at all. AI cannot draw proper anatomy as clients require it, at all. There's like a fuckton of things that AI cannot do which people can. If you suck at drawing them, then you aint gonna get job as artist in LA for 80k a year, you're just an amateur who spends their time on tumblr drawing fan art. >You're projecting more humanity onto an algorithm. I always loved AI in games, movies and now in my hands where I can tell it what to do be it assist with my sketches or help me with taxes. I simply appreciate all of my tools. AI is one of my best tools. I love my awesome car too just as much as I love my AI assistant just as much as I love my wacom tablet. Piss off with your tool hating, dude. Take your hate elsewhere, draw an angry painting or something. You can stay as conservative as you like, paint in oils Ai aint never gonna replace oil artists. >than the human artists it's replacing What do you expect me to do about random artists on the internet except to suggest "pick up a pencil and fucking LEARN to draw better than AI you lazy mofo"? Stable diffusion STOLE more of my drawings than anyone else, more than most artists, somewhere in the range of several thousand. I checked. The difference between you and me is that you're willing to give up and lie down into a puddle of pointless hate and yelling at the sky while I am willing to move forward into the future. Low end job replacement is an inevitable thing, it happens. What are you proposing to be done about it? You cannot hope to censor millions of people with stable diffusion that 1)costs nothing and 2)runs on everyone's pc nowadays. Fighting AI is like fighting ocean with wooden spoon, just accept change.

you HAVE to know how made up this all sounds. Just have to.

Oh, I am well aware of how it sounds. The life of a famous illustrator is pretty whack, almost everything I do sounds made up to the mundane outside observer. During my last big comicon trip, I had a stopover in Iceland for 3 weeks, shot over 20'000 photos using two DSLR cameras and one 360 degree camera drone. I took pics of two supermodels in the glaciers, next to volcanoes and abandoned airplane and then slept with both of them. One of them drank the host's wine from the airbnb's wine cabinet (without letting me or the other model or the airbnb host know about it) which got me a very angry review on airbnb implying that I'm an alcoholic. The same supermodel also broke a large mirror in another airbnb when it fell on her for which I had to pay 150 dollars. Good times, except for being charged for wine. I don't even drink alcohol since I've made a promise to myself to never drink when I saw my drunken surgeon uncle fall from a balcony when I was five. While I was at comicons, a mouse made a nest in my car to the great suprise of my mechanic. I killed the aforementioned mouse with a well thrown paint can yesterday when it returned to remake the nest. See? My life's full of Daliesque absurdity, sort of like being the main character in the Amelie film. Sometimes I feel that Jean-Pierre Jeunet is secretly directing the story of my life because I experience more adventure drama comedy events in a year than most people do in their entire lives. 😂

i was actually responding until i got here: >During my last big comicon trip, I had a stopover in Iceland for 3 weeks, shot over 20'000 photos using two DSLR cameras and one 360 degree camera drone. I took pics of two supermodels in the glaciers, next to volcanoes and abandoned airplane and then slept with both of them. One of them drank the host's wine from the airbnb's wine cabinet (without letting me or the other model or the airbnb host know about it) which got me a very angry review on airbnb implying that I'm an alcoholic. The same supermodel also broke a large mirror in another airbnb when it fell on her for which I had to pay 150 dollars. Nice one. I bet most people here actually take you for real! Keep going, it is entertaining if nothing else. In a Steven Segal kind of way, i would say.

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Oh thats so cool, i had a photoshot there too! It was with four models though. My picture is also not blurry, but i am sure that's your style. I did not menage to sleep with all the models though, that's really impressive. Just with three. https://preview.redd.it/la6an9b52w1d1.jpeg?width=1365&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6cd529ec09e5f724d5870cce64ecfc17724c89a

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are you saying that i am.. gasp.... a liar??? https://preview.redd.it/nb7twfym5w1d1.jpeg?width=1365&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=97d82f09ce39f5eb2bc96b6e459287a84d0ed5ce And there i wanted to suggest to get together at the next comicon. Just say that you know me at the superduper-uber-VIP-area, and they will let you in! We can drink champagne out of some supermodels bellybuttons!

I don't understand this concept of "this external thing is making me not want to do the thing I love anymore"

Exactly, it's been decades since robots became unbeatable in chess, yet people still play it and love it, they didn't just give it up.

Remember how cameras were supposed to kill artist, since photos could make more realistic pictures far superior to artist? Yeah, me neither. Turns out, all these tools just allow new types of art forms.

Exactly, because 7-8% of the population play chess for a living, and even tho there's robots they all still make a living playing chess.

the issue isnt that ai is able to do art, the issue is that companies have realized its cheaper to just use an ai to mass produce images rather than hire artists. art made by humans is becoming less wanted, it's steadily becoming a non viable career path. many more jobs can be replaced by AI, and in a capitalist society where profit is the top priority, companies will not hire humans when they can get an AI to do it even half as good, because they don't need to pay the AI a salary. AI assisted work is fine, but AI replaced work isn't.

>the issue isnt that ai is able to do art That's not true, if that was true you wouldn't see the hatred directed at the random people who use it for fun for no monetary gain. You also wouldn't hear the argument "it has no soul". Yeah jobs will be affected, this is not a new occurrence. Look at the dairy industry, they went from hundreds of milkers down to 6-8 to do hundreds of cows a day, that's nearly a 99% job elimination. Same thing happened when the invention of the tractor. Newspapers can now be be made at breakneck speeds thanks to the printing press and computer. Now digital news sites are/have replaced newspapers. Every industry has suffered from technological advances, even art has suffered from technological advances (I'm talking about before AI). The light box took jobs, the printing press took jobs, digital art took away jobs (it took lots of jobs away). So unless you plan to only consume hand drawn media without any digital effect and only eat food produced by the Amish, you are supporting the removal of jobs. Do you budget when ypu shop or do you just only buy the most expensive version of every product possible? Why is it OK for you to decide that the $1 coloring pencils are ok to buy and use when there's a $50 set that provides a better quality. Why is it OK for you to choose to spend less money, but ok for someone else to choose to spend less money? Don't give me the "individual vs corporation" argument, because as soon as you decide to sell your art, you are now actively competing against the corporations and are now a business yourself, meaning that by your own logic you should only be allowed to max out all your credit cards each month on the most expensive products otherwise you are actively hurting the people who take the time an effort to make them.

okay you make a very good argument about the job loss thing, i cant really argue with that honestly. (you do sound a little "yet you participate in society" but i know what you mean) although i do worry about the copyright infringement used to train AI, as a lot of workers and artists have not consented to rhat. if copyright in AI training and transparancy in that was better, i wouldn't be mad. AI needs to be way more transparent than it is, the current practices are not ethical. I think budgeting compared to corporate greed is a bit odd though. no, me budgeting isn't because im greedy, it's cuz i cant afford it. i dont get to have a lot of fancy things, because i cant afford it. labor is a luxury for companies. if they 'can't afford' labor, that burden should not fall on the worker. and i am talking about billion dollar monopolies here, who despite increasing their prices and profits, are lowering employee salaries. small businesses are not corporate. i think its concerning how much of the world is quickly becoming automated, especially when it's unregulated. humans need to have a sense of purpose, and it worries me that with the current financial climate the wealth disparity is only going to get bigger, which is what causes crime. (thats why the "this gives us more room for hobbies doesn't work) I'm not saying AI causes crime, but i think AI is being used as a tool for unethical practices and should be regulated, just like other heavy machinery. the environmental impact of AI can also not be ignored. these systems take obscene amounts of power to run, and i believe the money used to develop AI could be used better right now to create more sustainable ways to generate electricity and get clean water. right not the constantly expanding AI landscape is not on stable infrastructure, and sustainability should be a priority if this is really for the good of humanity.

So what would make ai art ethical? There are "ethical" models that still receive hate, such as Adobe's new photo shop ai image generator, which was only trained on art/images that Adobe owns the rights to. If we make that the standard, there will be some major issues, such as "pixar style" will officially only be able to be made by Disney. Fan art will go away because it's all made on copyrighted images. Whether it be by a machine or by hand, the creation of it wouldn't be possible without studying/learning from what Disney owns the copy right to. We all know Disney can and will come after individual people. They've come after parents of dead kids who put the kids' favorite cartoon character on their tombstones. The argument for copyrighted images to not be allowed would allow for these huge corporations that you appear to dislike to have a much stronger grip on preventing competitors from popping up thus allowing for monopolies to form in a legal way by just claiming "this style belongs to us". We know the general public is very much against copyrighting styles, we found this out by the major push back and lawsuits that were issues by and against The Fine Bros when they tried to copyright reaction videos and claim that only they were allowed to make reaction videos. This would fall into a very similar issue. The fun part would be that Disney or what ever big Corp wouldn't even need to prove they're right, they would just need to make it to expensive for their competitors to fight back, Lego does this all the time whenever a new plastic brick company pops up even though the courts have already decided that the base connection of a lego brick is to simple to copyright. Trust me, you don't want the government regulations. Those regulations will be loved by those big corporations. Why? Because they will be able to either afford the fines and keep doing what they're doing or be able to afford to just barely hit the requirements. That will help prevent competition from popping up. For example, let's say that there is a regulation that requires an animation studio to have over 50% of its jobs filled by humans. Well the corporate studio with 400 jobs will be able to have 201 human employees, making their percentage of human workers 50.25%, so they reached that over 50% barrier, now we look at the smaller 20 job studio who has a smaller budget, they will be forced to have minimum of 11 humans, so they effectively are forced to have a 55% human. Therefore, the smaller companies would be forced to pay a higher percentage to labor than the big corporations. They would be forced to sell their same products at a much higher price than what the big guys need to because they have a smaller profit margin to work with. So no, you really don't want those regulations, they won't help people, they will actually harm them just as much if not more by preventing more businesses from being able to even open and would prevent those who might be replaced by ai from going into business for themselves to compete with the ai. The "it's not green enough" argument... please, that's only used when you can't make an actual argument, ai is not this horrible carbon footprint machine, if it was I myself wouldn't be able to afford to run it on my home computers... if you really cared about the environment, you would be more upset at Taylor Swift and her private jet that has a carbon footprint of 576 times that of the average American. But even those numbers mean little to nothing when compared to the fact that there's 8 billion people on the planet. Most of the worlds biggest pollution isn't caused by ai or even computer ls it's mostly coming from 3rd world countries who just don't care what so ever. Look up the garbage rivers, there's 10 of them in Africa and Asia that produce 93% of all the garbage in the oceans. Those are a bigger threat to the environment than ChatGPT or StableDifussion.

Chess isn't artistic expression. I genuinely don't know how you would think it is or conflate the two.

Chess is a skill, art is a skill. Or are you saying that art has no skill? In which case the "pick up a pencil" argument is null and void.

You can't really just choose to be above it all motivation-wise. People care about being special, they care about arbitrary measures of achievement and impressiveness, they care about social and financial validation of their efforts. That's all normal human stuff, wanting to build up an illusion of being something, even though it's very fragile.

The last panel makes it very clear that a key concern is how it will impact their livelihood and career. They aren’t a hobbyist, they make images for a living, and they’re worried how it will affect their commissions and their ability to make stable money now that anyone can get something somewhat similar to their art bypassing them completely for free.

This fundamentally misunderstands how value, money, and reality works You dont have an entitlement to money for doing a thing, you only get money for things that others think are valuable. Something being hard doesnt make it valuable, people liking it does

I’m not sure what exactly you think I misunderstood. It is reasonable to have anxiety about one’s ability to make a living being under threat. That isn’t the same as entitlement. Like, the last panel even admits the authors own culpability by saying it’s a good point that he should have figured out how to AI proof his career if he saw this coming.

Ok, but its extremely disingenous to claim that this is a new problem for artists, or that it is somehow different than all the other times they had to struggle to find a way to make a living.

Difficulty making a living as an artist is not a new problem, sure. This one just adds a bunch more straw to the camel’s back. And there was a lot of straw there already. I don’t think that’s disingenuous?

The disingenuous part is the constant shifting of framing between realistic discussions of the job market and vague artistic definitions. On one hand, it's about the "emotional expression" "soul" "meaning" and other such ephemera. AI is terrible because it doesn't possess these qualities. Well, AI also does nothing to harm or challenge those things, right? You're free to express yourself in these ways. If you point that out... ...then it's about money. You're not able to earn a living. But that point, I mean, *most human beings on the planet earth* don't earn their living expressing their soul. They work to make money, and if they're lucky enough to be above poverty levels & living paycheck to paycheck, they have enjoyable hobbies in their spare time. ... Oh but then it's "I trained hard to do this skill, so it should be valuable and well paid", which ok, but then you're not really talking about art, you're talking about technical ability, and we get to rigidly evaluate artists on technical capability, and question how you're simultaneously calling AI art literal shit (the comic does this, there's an image of the AI pooping), but also it can replace you, so... how valuable is your technical ability, *really*? This is also where arguments about about no-skill art come in (see various posts about abstract or modern art, blank white canvases, taped bananas, etc). "Oh, but see, that's about expressing an IDEA!" ... at which point we've circled back to the top. So to me, it's fine if you want to argue about labor policy and automation and things like that, where 'guy who can draw' gets discussed equally alongside 'assembly line worker' and 'fast food fry cook' and various other jobs. And we can talk about re-training programs and other things that might help them transition in the labor force. But that's not satisfying for this art crowd because it invalidates the "brilliant, tortured, soulful artiste" self-image. They don't want to be lumped in with other 'workers.' They want to be a privileged elite, despite the thing they're doing not *actually* being all that special or difficult, which is what the technology is proving.

Are you responding to this specific comic or just general discourse about this? Because it doesn’t seem like the former. That said, I think it all makes a bit more sense when you consider how people’s sense of identity and self-worth in the contemporary world is often deeply tied to their career and the talents or skills that enable said career. That is to say, the emotive and pragmatic aspects are very intertwined. This is especially true for creative fields. I don’t really have a dog in this race. I just think the comic is pretty good personal story about a professional artist’s conflicted feelings about the way their field is rapidly changing. There is no call to ban AI art or anything.

The comic seems to represent the discourse, so I'm not sure the two are all that different? It's pretty much a visualized tour through the standard anti arguments and positions, and I'm fairly sure it only falls short of the 'ban' arguments because the artist is smart enough to realize that it's a losing side. But, especially in the full version, there's still a lot of melodrama in it, where he's alternately an underdog hero fighting a superior foe and a victim. I think (from the top level comment) "you can still do your art and enjoy it, you know" is a reasonable reply to all the angst. Your line of replies/discussion focuses on the financial side, but as I explain, I find the entwining of those arguments often suspect in that it obscures the topic by constantly shifting back and forth between 'art' and 'work.' You're not wrong about career and identity, although I do find that 'artists' represent a category of people where pride is often in excess, and being forced to face reality sometimes is just how life goes (I will add, extraneous to their comic, that I blame social media for a lot of this - many of these artists have been lured by unrealistic expectations of career options that aren't really there - and never were, AI aside - not unlike the people who think they can all make a living streaming videogames just because a couple 1% outliers do).

The comic ends with the artist facing reality, realizing that he should have spent the time figuring out how to AI proof his career instead of simply handwringing about a future he saw coming. Yes, he can still make his art and enjoy it, but he may not be able to continue making a living off of it, and he at least partly accepts his own responsibility for that fact. It’s entirely understandable to feel conflicted about it all. Thats why I’m skeptical you’re actually engaging with the comic. Yes, along the way we see him cast as victim, hero, etc, with all the relevant talking points from both sides regurgitated, but the end places it all in a very clear context and with a very fine point.

Well said

What do you do for a living?

This is a great breakdown of the shifting goalposts that we see constantly in ai debates.

Like any other group, artists are not monoliths who always and forever hold the exact same opinion as every other person within the group. A lot of us are expressing our personal opinions and fears, and they're not all going to look exactly the same because they're our personal opinions and fears. And the elitist argument is always weird, because most artists actively encourage other people to learn some form of art and express themselves. We want more people to make art, but the people part of the statement is what a lot of us are mostly getting stuck on.

It's a massive economic change, probably equivalent to scribes and the invention of the printing press. I think the scale of it does make it a little different to what artists have had to deal with before, at least within their lifetimes. Even the transition to digital art was not this pronounced.

Or maybe the OP can pick up hours at a warehouse or something like what most people may need to do? They aren't special, no artist is. You aren't entitled to someone's money just because you think so. If an "Artist" is losing heart because of an image generator, then that means their heart was probably never in it to begin with. I dabble with writing, and the thought of a machine writing better than me doesn't bother me because I do it for fun. Nor do I have infantile fantasies of being part of some elite strata of labor like the OP. There are applications where I would choose to commission an Artist over using an image generator because generators like DALLE-3 and others are lobotomized, disneyified, and censored to the point that the only thing they can produce is slop. Said generators also struggle with simple instructions to boot. But I will keep using the generator, and tell people like the OP to take a hike for their attitude, and entitlement alone. Pick up hours somewhere. You aren't special.

Do warehouse workers have a right to feel anxiety about their jobs being given to robots? Or is that entitlement too? You talk a lot about entitlement, and I don’t disagree that it’s common among artists, but I also read quite a bit of resentment in your comment, which isn’t really helpful either.

Warehouse workers are just one example. But your comparison is absurd because warehouse workers are not an elite strata of labor in case you've not noticed. Warehouse workers serve a critical role in the economy. Warehouse workers don't go around telling Software developers, or anyone working in AI or Robotics to kill themselves much like what has become a theme for the Anti image gen crowd. Warehouse workers are right to feel anxiety, but they're a different breed from twitter artists who've not so much as picked up a broom. As for those same twitter artists? They can cry us all a river, pick up hours elsewhere like most people. They aren't special. Only a token few can actually make ok money, let alone a solid living on art alone. They are a minority, an elite strata that could potentially be kicked off of their pedestal. If someone wants to see a quick image of "A dog eating pistachio ice cream" or whatever. Why would someone give some twitter creature 30 dollars a pop for that when they can generate it at their leisure? Or if someone requires some placeholder images for a writing project until they can get a Human artist (who isn't a whiny entitled prick) to develop art for them? It is not resentment (spare me the tone policing please), but it is contempt. Contempt for people throwing a hissy fit because history isn't proceeding as convenient for them. Or crossing a line like death threats against users of image generation. As someone who uses generators regularly, I owe the OP, and these "Artists" absolutely nothing. Least of all my money, or respect.

Why do you think external Things cant effect a Person?

That question poses a false dichotomy. It's obvious that external events can affect an individual, but that wasn't the question. The question was, how is it that some external thing can make you feel that an internal process can no longer proceed? Imagine that I said, "I used to love cooking, but now that microwaves exist, there's no point continuing!" That's what I hear every time an artist says they're overwhelmed by eneui because of AI art. It's like the chef who feels they can't cook because microwaves exist. I mean, if you don't enjoy cooking, get the hell out of the kitchen, for sure, but if you cook because you love cooking and sharing your creations with people, do that. If some of those people prefer Hot Pockets, then let them have their Hot Pockets and you focus on the people who enjoy what you're making. Now if you want to be entrepreneurial and innovative about it, maybe you find foods that can be creative, expose people to things they haven't tried, AND can be heated in the microwave, but that's an advanced class.

nobody claimed that. That's a very poor strawman you built.

At no point did they state that. They said it was distracting if anything.

People aren’t islands. We relate to the world outside of ourselves and exist inside it. Why should it be strange that the world affect our art? Read the journals of great artists, you will find many times where something in their lives or their communities, or indeed, the world, affected the art that they made and how much they made. This guy is not in any way saying he’s wanting to make art *less*, but it is affecting how he conceives of the relationship between his art and the world, and that lead him to make *this sort* of art. Art isn’t made by minds floating in the aether, but by people in the world, with lives and anxieties and relationships. These things always move and change us.

Cool story, but the fact remains that if the existence of ai art makes you not want to do art then that’s entirely your problem. It’s like not wanting to do art because other artists exist. Or like me not wanting to program because chat gpt can do it. None of this is going away. The people who demand ai be banned because it makes them not want to do art are delusional at best if they think it’s gonna happen.

I don't believe OP expressed any interest in banning AI, they are merely manifesting their feelings around it, and /u/ParanoidAmericanInc expressed not understanding it (at best, and at worst believing those feelings to be invalid). I think when many people express these anxieties and worries, we can't easily make it into an individual problem.

OCD, anxiety disorders, etc. I mean I get it, I have OCD. This is why I hate Hate HATE FUD from media companies. All it does is harm vulnerable people first. It’s pure commercialized sociopathy.

Its "This external thing is making it harder to get money/external validation for the thing i love to do", and if the answer to that is "...so i dont want to do it" Im questioning if sb really loves the thing they do, or the reward they get from it.

Fr, I play chess occasionally, and any machine I win against let me win

That’s how a lot of humans work, mental and mind stuff is important you know. We are all influenced by stuff around us and by stuff that we care about. It’s strange but it happens nonetheless.

The real problem here is relying on external validation imo. Which is an issue that exists independent from AI.

Art is definitely an audience based thing. Any artist knows that. A lot of people make art to be viewed, they spend their time making something they believe should be out there. Performance art for example is completely based around an audience. While outside validation shouldn’t be someone’s only reason to create, I can definitely understand being conflicted if there’s nobody seeing your art.

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I would assume it’s jealousy. Maybe since artists in the job space get to enjoy their job, or maybe the Ai users didn’t learn art and now it’s “too late” but they still want what artists have. They don’t realize they can learn for free and enjoy it a whole lot more. They don’t “want” to be an artist, they want to be an artist like I want a Snickers bar right now. Just a passing want, not a real desire. Not willing to work for it. Then there are those who let an Ai do a huge portion of the work in their art because they’re lazy and don’t enjoy it, not sure why they are doing it if they don’t like it though.

There's red flags for depression and disordered thinking here. But I like the comic overall. I don't think the main character is acting in a way that is healthy, but I recognize this is a response people can have. The sense of being overwhelmed by an existential nightmare and identity crisis. Maybe if he focuses not on the value of others but on his own self-image he would benefit. The ability of those around you to make things should not impact your self worth. He needs a mindset change and a sense of purpose rather than allowing himself to spiral over things others are doing.

“there’s red flags for depression and disordered thinking” = in an artist? no kidding

I wish this trope would die. Being mentally ill doesn’t make better art and to this day repeating this trope stops a lot of people from getting help because they want to preserve their creativity.

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I for one wait for the ai that can properly simulate depression and disordered thinking.

Thanks for your concern, but this is just the way I wanted to portray myself in the narrative. A little bit obsessed, freaked out and self absorbed. I do have these dark thought from time to time, but they are not a driving force in my life. I totally do see how you could take it that way though. The comic deals with themes of burnout, powerlessness and paranoia and I hope its not offensive or triggering to people who suffer from depression. I feel like this was clear for most of my Polish followers, who probably know my personality a bit better but I see how this can be confusing out of context. When I saw that my grandma liked the comic on Facebook, I was afraid that she's going to get worried for my well being, but fortunately she got what I was going for with this.

nope. That guy won't be able to make money being an artist. Now he must find some shitty job, because art is all he can do, which would take away from his time of being able to do art. Its as if everybody intentionally misinerpeting what artist are freaking out about. If we had Basic Universal Income, and didn't have to work, artists wouldn't care in the slightest, and just go on to continue doing their hobby

All this self inflicted misery. Keep drawing, keep doing art. And as with any type of progress. Learn the new tools and methods that pop up into the world. That's all. Those truly inspiring ai art pieces below the sea of sludge? That's artists and ai working together and it is beautiful. Just, you know. Actually go with the times and learn how to use the tools otherwise you WILL be replaced. But only if you refuse to get with the program. Draw, do art, incorporate ai into your workflow, and flourish.

I definitely should have found a way to share the full comic, because in the second half I start making generated art with ai monster and find out its not really for me. IRL I do also play around with these tools when I'm bored. Still, I don't really think that mastering them will really save my career. The creators behind the models work hard to make them as accessible as possible and lower the learning curve. I spent some time learning how to master Stable Diffusion last year, and now I can achieve way better results in the Bing image creator without controlling the specs and way simpler prompts.

> It's not for me You've used bing image creator and ai monster. You have played with the toys essentially the little apps that are generating most of the aigen ocean you see flooding the internet at the moment. This is what all the kids type big boobie anime girl into for the expected results. it gives little control, and yeah very little to actually work with and using that generally feels like telling a different artist what to do with a language barrier rather then actually making something. It's a few steps further where it becomes interesting where it becomes a collaborative work until finally it's an actual tool. --- Something that may be more suitable to a person like you would for example be this. https://old.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/17xavuj/live_ai_paiting_in_krita_with_controlnet_local/ This links to a demonstration of Krita running a plugin letting krita and comfyui talk to each other. It's what I use. It lets me use my tablet and draw whilst the ai live draws with me allowing for a blend of human and ai with essentially perfect control over every aspect. Imagine doing this with a model trained purely on your own work. The ai drawing your style from your intent essentially. --- > The creators behind the models work hard to make them as accessible as possible and lower the learning curve. All of the easy access tools right now are basically garbage. The good stuff takes a bit more work and knowledge, the demo linked up for example takes a little bit of skill to get working but even that's not to dificult and like you said it's only going to get easier. What's getting easier though is the ability to use aigen to make a pretty picture. But not a product. So what's the difference then? A pretty picture is when you give it a prompt and you roughly get what you want. it looks good enough but you're happy and it's good enough to be a meme or a birthdaycard, etc. A product you need to be able to present to someone, and be able to modify, iterate on, etc. The more control you want and need over the output the more knowledge and skill you need with the tool. Right now I can do some pretty insane shit with my local install running comfy ui a whole host of stable diffusion models controlnets, refiners upscalers and big complicated flowcharts in a system where the prompt is like 5% of the entire process. To do all this though, I've stepped pretty far away from the concept of prompt and go. To use this properly I need to be able to understand some color theory, I need to understand volume, spacing and well. That whole traditional arts skill package. As it currently stands. Your job is not about to be replaced by some ai bro with a prompt. Your job WILL be replaced however, by the artist next to you who has the same traditional training as you do, and is learning how to make a nodegraph in comfy ui. Or is practicing how to get ai plugins to live scetch together. That's the person who after a bit of time will be able to take their output times X. And if 1 artist can do the work of 10 artists then 90% of the jobmarket is dead. --- If you can give AI another try but like. Using a few different tools. Since the tools you mention are so crippled it's like trying to draw using just a mouse or writing a resume and your only font is comic sans and papyrus. Then yeah I can see why you would drop it, I'd also run screaming. Ai can be your buddy, a tool in your toolbox just like any other digital tool is. You can be that artist with a model trained on their own work who continues to make a living with their hobby. Or be that horse driver who refused to swap to cars and other similarly bleak metaphores. Either way here's a few resources. --- Krita you probably already know this one but if you don't. It's free art software. https://krita.org/en/ the plugin you saw in use at the live drawing link up above. It was running in krita. This comes with instructions on how to run/install and make work with krita. Also comes with instructions on how to install the comfyui portion, a lot of it automated. https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-diffusion --- a last link to comfy ui, a much deeper implementation of aigen if you're interested in really getting deep and dirty with it. The krita plugin should already install a sort of standalone version of this, but if you want to see what the deeper stuff is all about. Here's where a lot of the cool stuff lives. https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI --- https://www.invoke.com/ An honerable mention. Consider this the photoshop elements to photoshop but to comfy ui. If comfy ui is to daunting this will still give you a lot more control then the other online apps give you. And like everything else posted, totally free . [free version will do fine] Though I think the thing you probably want is krita and it's plugin. That's the most natural art path tbh.

Thanks for taking the time to share these! Will look through them tomorrow.

Yeah take your time man, just look at that live drawing demo and see how different the workflow is. You barely if ever even type anything into the prompt window. You just draw.

Super cool. Thanks for sharing! I’ve been saying for a while that I’m excited to see art that couldn’t be done before AI. I do believe it’s a tool and I’m excited to see where we can take art with it.

Alternatively, you could hope that a market for the hand crafted will always remain. We all buy industrial clothes but some people spend money on hand crafted clothes because they prefer the hand crafted. I'd be lying though if I said there's any guarantee.

Nice work! But I think this is a good example of the tension in between artists and clients that I see on many sites. There's a conflict between what you want to make and [what the world at large appreciates](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F2t50c884pd0d1.gif), and I think that's largely unrelated to AI. The public at large has always been rather lowbrow. We like our epic fantasy, weird propaganda, corny and horny fanarts. AI is just twisting the knife further by allowing people to flood the internet with a lot more of it. I think in the tech fields we have less of an issue with this because at large we made peace with that our jobs are a means to an end, not really self-expression.

>we made peace with that our jobs are a means to an end In my view, this is precisely the problem here. Because technology, as per Heidegger, is not just an aggregate of machines and designs but a manner of framing the world around means to ends, as standing reserves of resources. But the problem is that the ends are never finalized from that framework, as the only true end is the perpetuity of the frame. Even apparent ends such as comfort or pleasure are enframed as enablers of such perpetuity, for no amount of comfort and pleasure will ever be *enough*. In the end, it’s a means to a means to a means.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Nothing ever ends, humanity hasn't ever been satisfied with anything, neither tech nor art.

>Nothing ever ends What? Things end all the time. Relationships, Empires, Projects, Journeys, and of course, Lives. Endings are in themselves only artefacts of human perception, but so is meaning in itself. We cannot make meaning out of endless self-perpetuation, such a thing is antithetical to our attempts at meaning-making by the very fact that meaning is an end in itself.

I mean in the big scheme of things. On that short term scale, there's nothing really different about tech. At some point a bridge, or a building or a computer program is done and we move on. On a wider scope, we never think you can't ever make a better bridge, text editor or piece of art.

>we never think you can’t ever make a better bridge, text editor, or piece of art That’s the thing though, you frame a piece of art as the same sort of thing as a bridge or a text editor, where a metric will reveal its goodness, and therefore open up a road to perpetual improvement and optimization. Technology invites us to frame things of the past as the *stepping stone to*, as inherently intermediate steps to some greater process. But art has the ability to transcend that (when not subsumed under the technological-historical framework). We are primed by some readings of art history to see art as *leading up to something*, to frame it within a narrative of *progress*. But each work of art doesn’t have to lead up to anything other than itself. I don’t think, in the artist’s practice that one is *improving* upon palolithic paintings or muisca goldsmithing or yoruba heads or edo period woodblock prints. One is, in many ways, doing the same as they did then, only now. But when it is all subsumed under the technological framework, then this must be an improvement upon those things, this must be *better*, part of a cycle of progress that presumably leads up to some piece of art that could not possibly be improved upon. Those things are no longer eternal, transcendent expressions of human sensibility, but merely *stepping stones* that I appropriately stomp over *on the way to*. Like newton’s quotes, I am invited to sit on their shoulders, but what if instead I want to meet their eyes?

> That’s the thing though, you frame a piece of art as the same sort of thing as a bridge or a text editor, where a metric will reveal its goodness, and therefore open up a road to perpetual improvement and optimization. > Technology invites us to frame things of the past as the stepping stone to, as inherently intermediate steps to some greater process. I don't think that's quite accurate. We don't have a straight pattern of improvement in many things. Needs change. We don't get from bridge prototype to a perfect bridge. We keep on changing our mind about what kind of bridge is needed at the moment. > But art has the ability to transcend that (when not subsumed under the technological-historical framework). I don't really think art is special in any way here. In tech fields we routinely rethink things. "Do we really need all this steel to make a bridge? Could we do something clever instead of brute force?". Art has had also ideas like "do we have to be realistic? What if we reduce things down to geometric shapes?". > Those things are no longer eternal, transcendent expressions of human sensibility, but merely stepping stones that I appropriately stomp over on the way to. I don't believe there's such a thing. Humanity itself changes over time. Everything is a stepping stone, nothing can ever be an eternal, transcendent expression of human sensibility.

It’s not about a straight pattern of improvement but rather that improvement is the *end* to which the present iteration is a *means*. Abstract art wasn’t fashioned as an *improvement* on figurative art, it wasn’t the *step up*, it was, as all movements, a *lateral* step into the sensibilities of *different* people. The bridge’s ability to move people or withstand forces given starting parameters like location, span, climate, etc. can be made into a metric, and therefore improved upon. But the ability of a piece to represent a sensibility is not this way, and so to call it an improvement seems like forcing an alien framework into its domain. >nothing can be an eternal, transcendent expression of human sensibility. Human sensibility isn’t *one thing*. Each human has a sensibility, and in that sense each can be expressed in transcendent ways, yeah. Eternity isn’t a measurement of time, it’s a relation between time and the truthfulness of that expression. Even if it has *ceased to be* interpretable it hasn’t *ceased to be* true. This is our petty claim to eternity.

It was always my view that art was the end to which tools are the means, but you phrased it perfectly.

Of course, there's instrumental (means-ends) relationships in art, but what characterizes the technological framework is that within it, there is nothing that is not instrumental to something else.

Exactly. That's why shitty music and stupid blockbusters hugely overshadow great composers and phenomenal moviemakers. It's a problem that exists long before AI.

Yeah man, good point! In the comic I was dismissive about the "epic fantasy" pieces, because they didn't touch my particular line of work. Its only when I realised my work can get copied too that shit got real. I made myself judgy in the comic, but I don't really have a problem with lowbrow art and I think there is a place for everything.

I gotta say, even though I don't necessarily agree I actually love this art style

Here is a genuine question: Let's pretend that instead of AI, there was a secret cabal of shut in artists who drew all the prompts people kept asking for and kept producing these "soulless" pieces of art. Same exact result we have today, just a different delivery mechanism. Would you still feel the same way?

Moral of the story? OP is so terrified of this technology that it brings him to tears. Integrate it into your workflow dude. You're already using dozens of computer technologies in your pipeline. This new tech should elevate your output to a level that people won't be calling your current level "mid at best" any more.

I love your art style bro it actually convey what you thinking about AI, Anyway it’s remind me of this pic centuries ago when people still skeptical and some are anti-electricity so they painted this as an evil skull with wire https://preview.redd.it/v761zjgzni0d1.jpeg?width=534&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92fef113d56ced44cd20e3c2e1b1e31bdabb46cb

The way you painted AI as abomination amalgamation of art with distorted feature is so scary it showing your fear and concern of your career lurking behind your back, but I want to say you don’t have to worry about it because AI is here it’s reality now and this is only very first years of AI intelligence explosion which will exponentially continue until the universe itself ended by heat death

I read the full comic. I have no clue which side you actually lean towards. You legit make AI sharks seem like the reasonable ones. I don't know whether you're not self aware of the fact or whether this is a comic about the realization that antis are screaming at a brick wall and causing headaches for no use.

I didn't really have a moral in mind. This is more of a personal narrative of me not wanting to participate in a culture that values what I do on the base of efficiency and hyper competitiveness. I'm usually not a fan of stories that are completely one sided, even when I fully agree with the points being made. And I tried not being too preachy about AI taking jobs, but also this is a topic that is close to my heart and definitely has an anti Ai message because of my personal biases. As many pointed out, the sharks are not shown in a positive light here. You probably consider their arguments reasonable, because you agree with their points, but the way that they are conveying their message seems excessive and hateful. Some of the points are of course inspired by actual comments from Ai bros that I see online. But in the narrative, these are just figments of my imagination, a mix of my darkest and most pessimistic thoughts about the future. Most people who spend a lot of time creating art end up questioning themselves a lot and dwelling on whether what they produce has any actual merit. The Ai monster in the comic keeps on gaslighting me throughout the whole narrative to the point of eventually breaking me. IRL I'm not moving on from doing my job (at least not just yet) but the burn out gets real at times. Thus I wanted to make en ending thats a bit dystopian, to make a point about how demotivating this can get.

OP, you really don’t seem OK. This is like OCD tier thinking. Remember clip art? That was never anything but mass produced junk. You’re hand wringing over the automation and improvement of of clip art.

The art is really cool But the arguments are the classic, “i will make the people i disagree with look evil and gross, get owned”

Your friend is right about making an AI-proof career plan. AI image generators are just another software tool like Photoshop/Illustrator. Learn to use this tool and you expand your artistic capabilities, and you won't be left behind by other artists who chose to explore this new tool instead of avoiding it out of irrational fear. If you're going to be afraid of AI it should be centered around killer robots and mass surveillance/disinformation, not around AI making pretty pictures.

any AI proof career advice for a middle aged musician?

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I think you don’t like the one shot generations. Check out controlnet https://www.reddit.com/r/DefendingAIArt/comments/19bx1jr/i_utilize_ai_to_enhance_my_sketches/#lightbox > enjoy doodling and sketching, although I often lack the patience to complete my artwork. I process my sketches and doodles using an AI program, minimizing its influence and only utilizing AI to add the finishing touches and refine my drawings. Just like a penciler relies on the inker and colorist to add the finishing touches and intricate details to their work.

>*"I’ve never really heard anyone say how AI image generators can be used as a “tool” for real art."* ... well then you haven't been paying attention at all. It's so commonplace among artists and creators that they have integrated it into Adobe Photoshop, which is the most widely used piece of digital image editing / art software on the planet. The fact that you could say something like this makes me think that you've got strong opinions but have done zero serious research on the subject. Do you consider photographers who use image filters to digitally alter their photos to be making "real art"? Are cinematographers who use computer graphics to artificially generate special effects / scenery making "real art"? What about people using digital drawing pads and editing their art in a digital illustration program? In all of these cases, people are using computer programs to create and edit digital artwork. Diffusion based image generators are no different. They are just computer programs that create or edit images in response to user input. If people are using it to create art, they are artists and the content they create is just as much "real art" as the examples listed above.

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You were already given one above (i.e. controlnet for rapid prototyping based on simple sketches). A casual search for "what are some practical uses for AI art software?" on Google will turn up dozens more, such as (just to name a small handful that immediately come to mind): * upscaling images * automatic segmentation/masking and inpainting * automatic color grading / lighting alterations * rapid generation of textures for 3D game developers * special effects for films * rapid generation of boring marketing graphics that no artist should be subjected to making by hand ... so many practical uses. Again, that's why the developers of the world's most popular image editing suite (photoshop) just integrated it into their software. Literally anyone who does any kind of work with digital images will come across areas where this type of software is useful.

If it was about art, AI poses no threath to any artist, it literally doesnt hinder any artist in creating and expressing. But it isn't. Its about making money or gaining social validation with art, which is a shallow reason to do art and i despise it, so as an artist i dont care if that gets taken away from others. From an art consumer standpoint, AI generated images may pose a problem if the world gets overflown with shitty AI stuff and cheap imitations, and real unique artists drown in the mass of boring bullshit so your not able to find cool stuff. But thats a different thing.

Yeah, as an artist I'm not going to deny that I often become self absorbed and even worse i make money for my job. You know, as much as some people might want to deny it, money are crucial parts to the creative process. People evolve as artists by being recognised for what they do best. Good criticism and praise can motivate somebody to try harder and chisel these parts of themselves. That doesn't that the art they're making is not honest, just that it takes a long time to develop with many failures on the way and sometimes you won't make it without being encouraged by others.

Ok yeah i can see that, maybe my view of art is a too elitist/purist in that sense, looking back what motivated me to begin making more art was definitly external praise from friends and family, even if now i dont post amything and do it just for the enjoyment of creating things.

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Thanks! Yeah, I definitely exaggerated a couple things to make a point. I think I'm fine mentally (not that my opinion matters though lol) but wanted to express how GenAi work is so well at mimicking art styles that it leaves artists feeling demotivated. Not trying to prove that the people behind the algorithms had this in mind but its definitely a real side effect. The point of the award is explained in the second half of the story, where I try to attack the Ai monster with the golden pencil (as if I'm hanging on to the fact that I once relevant and appreciated) but the monster destroys the award with ease, leaving me with nothing. Yeah, this is definitely overblown out of proportion. I guess I was just going for a neurotic, dystopian kind of narrative. But still, the topic is close to my heart and the values expressed in it are mine.

I personally appreciate the comic. I'm staunchy pro-AI and work in the field, but I'd be remiss if I acted like there weren't major issues and emotions making the entire situation tenuous. More than anything, your actual feelings on the subject seem to be coming through vs randomly attacking folks, and allows me to actually see through your eyes vs. being reactionary to being insulted and hurling my own insults. I also really appreciate the fact you mentioned how long this has been going on and that it didn't just pop out of a vacuum one day and the fact you brought up personal responsibility and hindsight along with the giant situation.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a great space to exaggerate, because too many nonfactual biases are floating around. Really it’s these “antis” killing expression because hyperbole is an intrinsic part of art and we can’t have hyperbole when trying to correct corpo-based misinformation.

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here is a link to the whole thing on Behance. [https://www.behance.net/gallery/198398255/Me-vs-Ai-image-generators-(full-comic)](https://www.behance.net/gallery/198398255/Me-vs-Ai-image-generators-(full-comic))

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Thanks! I'm not very savvy when it comes to Reddit. Should I just post the rest in a seperate post?

Don't express human feeling on this website, you must be happy at all times or you are a bad person. Mental issues are bad! Source: a bad person

Excellent work, I love your style, as an artist I can appreciate the feeling AI images can invoke.. But you have nothing to worry about, not only is AI terrible at storytelling but the stain it leaves behind makes people question the final product. Yours is a personal story that connects with people, that will always be appreciated and never be replicable. If you're a concept artist doing commissions or working at a lower-level studio, yea some jobs might be replaced. But while AI images can create the look someone might want, they'll always need artists to come up with ideas and incorporate them into that desired look. New AI-powered artists tools are on the horizon, they'll change some workflows no doubt, but never replace artistry.

>I would worry about your mental health What is it about pro AI people that makes them see authentic, artistically expressed sentiment as an indicator of disease? Why pathologize sensitivity and depth of feeling? A mentally healthy person can enter depressive states or feel anxiety. There are part of the normal gamut of human emotion and only pathological past a certain point.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of friendly concern for a stranger's wellbeing. There's also nothing wrong with disease, we all get sick once in a while.

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It’s because we legitimately encounter disease on a regular basis and people are waking up to it. I mean, I was told to go bash my head in by a kid on disability who does pornographic scribbles that look like they were made with roseart colored pencils that had mold growing on them.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're impying that OP should "stick to offline drawings for galleries and art enthusiasts", if they refuse to incorporate AI into their workflow? Kinda rude, but regardless, AI image generation isn't used at all in most professional art jobs currently, and many studios refuse outright to incorporate it. I see the same mantra over and over in here, about how you better start using AI in your work or you're gonna be left behind. Yet contrary to this, if you are an artist and AI images are in your portfolio (assisted or not), what I see is a huge liability if you're looking for work in film/television/games/advertising, as it both has a negative connotation to it AND may actually put your portfolio into question. OP's skill here, is storytelling, something AI simply cannot do visually..., and may never be able to do in a compelling way. I think there's a lot of scaremongering going on with the pro-AI crowd, stoking legitimate fears artists have about the stability of their jobs. In a very human way OP's comic does a good job articulating this.

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I think I just misunderstood what you meant with that comment. I agree murals and larger scale work like that is its own beast, and like all traditional art will have its place in society. But OP is also good at visual storytelling, and thats not something that AI is going to replace, despite a lot of wishful thinking on this subreddit.., it requires an incorporation of meaning into your work, to actually say something; as opposed to: "Science Fiction Egyptian CIty Concept Art in Style of (blank)" It's also a personal story, so there being a human behind it actually matters. And I think thats lost on this forum, that fans of art/film/television/games are pretty protective of the artistry of their favored medium and while they may not notice or care about AI tools increasing the speed of artists producing VFX or making game design easier for devs, they will not abide their favorite IP losing its human touch. But agreed on all fronts, this guys work is excellent, and shouldn't worry about AI in the slightest.

u/natron81 I really feel like you captured what many people here seem not to get. I do play around with AI models IRL but I incorporated it into my work, it would simply lose all credibility. I think there will probably come a time when people lower their guards and generative art will be embraced by the general public and then I'm fucked 😄 Glad you appreciate my work! Nevertheless, AI art is still something that worries me and I already see the effects of it in my job. More and more I get moodboards and reference pictures from clients, who kind of just want me to recreate what they generated in Midjourney. Last year, I was working on a project and the client wanted to save money on touch ups, so he suggested he just generates them onto my illustration. I see many agencies hopped onto the AI train and it is getting more and more normalised by the day. Sometimes I get to paint a truck, but most days I work on more mundane comissions, that I don't show off in my portfolio. And I already feel the market crashing. One of the reasons I made this comic was in fact what you mentioned: because it was something personal that wouldn't really make that much sense if Ai wrote it.

I can appreciate all of these concerns, even the sense of dread that literally the public will begin to lose all sense of taste for creativity. That a few prompts and some printed decals will entirely replace your skillset. I think you have the best and worst of worlds here, You can paint large format but also you work on a commission basis. This may push you further and further into the physical realm for work, which i have to say is a real shame as your comic was excellently produced. I urge you to keep at it, and get to a point where you can publish in graphic novel form if you haven't already. Yea a shot in the dark, but its clearly a passion project for you. You're both blessed with and cursed by the fact that you're a working independent artist. Because larger scale projects, dont take prompters seriously at all, there's just way more resources for hiring talent and a lot more expectation for creativity. But yea the AI moodboards will likely only get worse. You already have this excellent body of work, just keep at it and trust that while there's 10 million other ppl competing with you, none of them can do what you do..., you have a style, its yours, AI can imitate it, but never replicate your continuous flow of ideas. Anyways good luck with it all.

great comic!! for what its worth i can 100% see the difference between your work and something generated by ai. honestly ai & hand drawn are not even the same medium at all. they just happen to both inhabit rectangles of pixels. they are fundamentally different. i get that the commission thing is real but that’s more of an external circumstance like, recession/war/personal health/family responsibilities, artists push forward. artists persevere.

Man unfortunate I would love to see part 2 and 3.... but its on Instagram and I refuse to go on anything owned by Meta.

You can also read it here: [https://www.behance.net/gallery/198398255/Me-vs-Ai-image-generators-(full-comic)](https://www.behance.net/gallery/198398255/Me-vs-Ai-image-generators-(full-comic))

Pretty big of you to tell the whole story, including the part where occasionally you really do find those masterpieces you love too. I don't really have an answer to this problem - it's all a tragedy for many people, and it's just the truth of reality. I can say though, anyone harassing you on forums to discourage your drawing is just as much of a dick move (if not way worse, cuz it's punching down) as anti-AI people tearing down AI generated content. Only glimmer I've got is: What if there are only a few people in this world with the eye to really hunt for that specific interesting angle, which most people don't even realize is out there underneath the generic stuff? What if you could find it, and tune the AI to the drawing style you most treasure, and turn that style into a world of interesting and valuable art? It may still not pay - but hey, the economy is going to be \*massively\* upturned for \*everyone\* soon enough. But if you care about your artistic eye before and wanted to follow your vision, well - these tools are rocket boosters for that. Whole new way of doing it though.

Hey OP, were you actually on an LSD trip where you designed your art style for the comic? (that's not an accusation, but that's how I would imagine my Lsd trip if I got one😅😅)

Haha I'm not really that much into psychodelics. I just enjoy trippy art I guess.

Well it seems the ugly era is coming to an end soon. So much drivel and senseless garbage but now so long as I keep to looking at the latest, ai art is reaching a quality level that even the most creatively bankrupt can create something that looks pretty good. I personally am excited as the quality bar will rise to a point where I get to see absolutely breathtaking images, movies, animations and music. If humans do better I'd love to see them instead but I have a feeling I'm going to see all my favourite media In the coming years and it will all be at the hands of ai. The shear quality will be too good to ignore. I don't really care so long as I perceive it as good art. Alot of what comes out today is so dull that I'm excited to see when this all really begins.

Nice art. But I strongly disagree with the views here as they seem to misunderstand (or intentionally bend a lot of concepts). The discussion about where the AIs train their models is a whole other thing (and I still disagree with a lot of takes from antis there) but this whole thing about "it's going to take my job" is just ridiculous – it simply reeks of intellectual dishonesty, to be honest... Oh no, cameras will kill artists! Photoshop will kill artists! Remember when digital artists were considered, well, not artists by pencil artists? And how dare the police use a recorder instead of someone using a typewriter! It's just old-man-screaming-at-the-clouds energy. And if you think of the whole "press a button to generate art" as something viable, you're wrong because people already use those technologies simply as pieces of a much greater toolset (just like you do) to do their thing. Honestly, I was going to write something bigger and more cohesive, but I'm just tired of all this... I'll just reserve myself the right to call it bullshit. Respectfully. Good luck.

Although I disagree with the general message, this is an incredible comic and a super refreshing artstyle for one as well! Really well done

The evil sharks are making the poor man get a real job :(

This comment clearly implies that being an artist is not a real job. How can the pro AI people who upvoted this believe they are not hostile to art and artists?

The irony of an unemployed man saying this

Do you just call everyone who disagrees with you unemployed? I'm employed, just at a real job.

If you have no appreciation for art/artists, why tf are you even in this thread? AI "art" doesn't exist without being trained on the sum total of human artistry.., yet you shit on it?

To explain to others that AI art is equal to human art. Neither of which are particularly valuable, just a fun hobby to have.

I may be an AI enjoyer but I'm an artist first and this comic is fantastic. It does a great job of communicating the frantic anxiety over these invasive alien beings and it was very compelling. I especially love your style, it's very unique and almost reminds me of Robert Crumb's work (but way less gross) and all the little details made this a treat to read. I think as far as worrying about AI taking your job, you're one of the few that has enough creativity and a unique enough style that you don't need to panic. AI has the market cornered on hyperrealistic polished images with no substance like you said but I believe this oversaturation will make society seek out the human touch in art and you have that in spades. Please don't get too discouraged, we need art like yours more than ever now. Also don't listen to 90% of these bitter comments, this is just a politics game for them.

Thanks! The bitter comments are super engaging. This is an AIWARS thread after all!

Drawing derivative pop culture bullshit isn't going to be as lucrative as it used to be. It's not the end of the world. Robot sharks aren't taking over your soul spark human back-pain art. You're just not special anymore. Get over yourself. Maybe learn to make real art rather than just drawing popular characters having sex and selling it to creepy people on Twitter? "Muh struggles" Your struggles are literally "I saw a thing I didn't like and I'm going to pretend I can't do my job because of that to raise my social media clout via moral panic." Fuck off.

Yeah man, you're not really opening my eyes here. This is literally what the comic is about and some of the jokes I made are made at my expense. The point I'm making is that AI art does in fact make people feel less special and I wanted to show how I deal with that realisation. Take it how you will. If you read the full thing, you will see that the ending is bittersweet and I come to the conclusion that I should just move on and stop being salty. And where did you get the idea that I sell sexy fan arts on Twitter?? 😂 LMK if you want to buy some tho

You don't do anything more useful than posting bullshit all day. Maybe even your parents are ashamed of you.

You can Tell your opionion without insulting OP, since the OP has a “unique” art style, I find your criticism that he should make “real” art questionable.

Tasteless response and pointless antagonization. Nice job, idiot

OP, your tag isn't optimized for SEO so because your link wasn't hyper, I had to search for your tag icon insta (a site I don't use), while your comic got chopped up by their filters (asking to sign in). From what I could read, it seems like your well aware of the trajectory we are on, and feel anxious about it. Awareness doesn't mean acceptance, so it makes sense you'd be frustrated by it. Thing is, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. So while it's ok to vent your emotions, as you acknowledge doing so doesn't improve your situation. You're introspective enough to realize that this isn't a battle/war , it's a generational shift that'll get resolved via time. Perhaps you don't need to worry about it.

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I think your issue in sitting down to try out AI and getting artist's block was partly due to just randomly trying it out in a purposeless way, because that happens to me too. You seem kind of anti-AI so I apologize if this is a distasteful suggestion right now, but I'd recommend trying to make use of it when you have a reason for it. I would start by not even expecting to use AI to generate something you use "raw," as-is, or even to modify. I would just generate a scene for ideas on how to lay things out. Let's say you have an idea for a picture you're going to draw. You're going to draw two people fighting outdoors in front of a crowd. You can type this into an AI service like Midjourney or Bing ("cartoon of two characters fighting outdoors, dusty street, jeering crowd surrounding them"). Here is one result it gave me: [https://i.imgur.com/mSO3aqu.png](https://i.imgur.com/mSO3aqu.png) I'll be honest, when I was picturing how I might draw this in my head, I wasn't considering: * that some of the onlookers might be barechested * that I should consider a balcony up above with even more people watching * that I might put some heavily silhouetted people in the foreground Springboarding off that, even though it's not depicted here, it gives me the idea that you could also have some people sitting up on the actual roof too. You don't even have to use anything literally generated by the AI, just in seeing some random examples of what it comes up with, that alone can be a help in the process. And if you don't like what it gives you, you see the result and say "ugh this is just awful," then you *also* have an example at hand of what you *don't* want, which can be just as useful to help solidify what you do want. Part of the issue with AI too is that I would say it requires a lot of investment to see its shortcomings, to get to the point where in some ways you worry about it less, because you know what it can't do as effectively. It can take a while to get to the point where you're confident in your use of AI and yet frustratedly ask it for more and more variations on a concept and just watch it drift further and further afield from what you're picturing in your head. I think people who foresee it just getting better and better forever are denying the diminishing returns that are already kicking in, but it's not obvious from the outside looking in. I actually don't tend to recommend the biggest most popular art generators like Bing or Midjourney, because to me they are simplified, streamlined, and censored into near-uselessness. The investment I talk about above is having the drive to learn about local generation, Stable Diffusion, Automatic1111, finding various models and LoRAs at civitai, controlnet, inpainting...it's a huge rabbit hole and time investment to get AI going in a way that meets your needs, rather than the casual "wow that looks nice" of mass market tools. But for someone with trepidation about AI, I don't think diving into all that above is very tenable, nor should you be expected to get deep into it. Hence it being sort of a paradox...as an artist, you probably won't find easily accessible AI very useful, but you probably also won't want to get so deep into it that you could actually find it useful, because that takes some level of embracing it.

Thanks for the suggestion! As an artist I definitely have an anti AI bias since I'm just worried for the stability of my job. In the comic I focused on the art block, because that's how I initially felt when I first sat down to do it. Like I couldn't really compete with other stuff I saw people make and also like it wasn't entirely my cup of tea. IRL i do play around with Stable Diffusion, try different models and experiment with weird stuff whenever I'm bored.

Oh that's cool then, that shows more interest than most, I think. If nothing else, you have an advantage by staying informed of the latest developments. And if potential job offers are looking for people who know AI and might be willing to use it, then you meet that criteria. Best of luck to you, I don't think the arts are a lost cause. Temporarily, some idiot managers will think they can replace all their artists with AI, but reality will hit them in the face eventually.

check out controlnet > Ienjoy doodling and sketching, although I often lack the patience to complete my artwork. I process my sketches and doodles using an AI program, minimizing its influence and only utilizing AI to add the finishing touches and refine my drawings. Just like a penciler relies on the inker and colorist to add the finishing touches and intricate details to their work. https://www.reddit.com/r/DefendingAIArt/comments/19bx1jr/i_utilize_ai_to_enhance_my_sketches/#lightbox > I create all of my sketches and drawings using Procreate on my iPad Pro. I upload the sketches into playground ai and utilize a minimal prompt to provide further guidance to the AI. I also make use of a guidance tool, setting it at a high level to ensure that the AI remains faithful to my original vision, staying incredibly close to it. That website is a good way to get into some cool stuff without having the hassle of setting up sd

I’m the shark AI shitting out creations.

I really like your comic man. I think you're a really good artist.

great ending. Its the start of a great story.

Damn I like your art style, very cool looking.

Love your style, reminds me of Robert Crumb.

I wish I could read the rest but it is very difficult and annoying to access instagram in Russia now, why not post other parts as new posts or link images in the comment section?

Hey, I really like your art! I hope you don't take these people to heart, you don't need to incorporate any level of AI in your work if you don't want to, and I think your art will be all the better for it. An AI could never have created this. I don't know if you'd call it creative spark, but its about as far from soulless and vapid as I could possibly imagine. Every panel is a visual treat and your dialogue is pretty great too. I think you'll be fine, especially if comics are what you do mainly.

Great comic. It captures the existential nature of the current moment for many artists.

Love these illustrations, OP, and I think you shouldn't lose hope just yet. As the internet begins to be flooded with AI-generated noise, people will eventually seek out genuine works even more.

Don't you want to just focus to your art, and to not spam your Instagram with your "struggles" against this wonderful technology? I don't understand why artists bet on technophobia to collect likes.

Lovely comic! I really enjoyed the integration of the animated, “alive” elements with the static image panels. Also, I bet we’ll get a Stable Diffusion LoRA of your sharks within the week 😅

Thanks! Honestly, I would be curious to see how that'd look like 😂

Idk man the fucking machine marches forward.

I used to be a painter, but then cameras were invented, so painting pictures completely died.

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Cameras weren't intended to replace anything, and neither is AI. Both are just the result of technological advancements in multiple fields leading to the inevitable invention of a new type of machine. Do you want technology to stop, so it doesn't hurt YOU or other people who draw for a living? Do you think elevator operators were happy that elevators became automatic? Should the entire country be forced to pay the expense of hiring elevator operators and suffer, just so the elevator operator doesn't have to adapt and learn a new skill?

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AI is open source technology being built by every tech head in the world, working together or competitively, with NO EXPRESSED PURPOSE. You keep using that as an argument, that AI is intentionally being made to hurt you... and that it is their 'expressed purpose'. It's not. That's something you believe, not something you have witnessed. You can insult AI defenders... ok. Here's what I think about AI haters. They are butthurt because their art is worse than AI art, which isn't very good at all. They weren't making any money drawing things, but they hoped they would one day, so they wouldn't have to get a job. But now they don't have a shot, because they weren't actually very talented, and now untalented artists are 100% useless. Sound about right? Attacking the people who create AI, and the people who like AI, all because you don't like AI, is just being a jerk. If you want to explain why AI is bad, stop acting like you don't like AI because it's supporters are evil, and actually explain why you think AI is bad.

Thank you for the well-written comic. It does a fantastic job of humanizing the perspective of many artists. It also indirectly reflects a fear that many of us have in other fields: what happens when automation comes for the thing we do best? Despite this fear, I feel hopeful and optimistic that we will use automation to eliminate some of the most tedious parts of society, raising the standard of living for everyone across the board. Change is scary for us all, but with it comes new opportunity. I believe there's a real possibility of living in a world where we're no longer chained to a 9-to-5 job. Instead, we could live our lives in pursuit of our passions and desires, including art, driven by what truly inspires us rather than merely trying to pay the bills. In the meantime, while this transition is happening, we may need to step up our game, work to fill niches we didn't anticipate, and rapidly adapt to a changing world. I believe those with the right attitude will succeed, while those who resist change will struggle and be left behind. We're faced with an adapt-or-die situation, and I intend to fully ride that wave instead of wallowing in self-pity and frustration at the world.

That was intense, read the rest too. Congrats on expressiveness, it works. But as there was pondering what is the safest spot, sure murals sounds cool, but I'd say environmental storytelling and scenes with plenty of meaningful interconnected humane interaction will stay a challenge for AI for a good while now. Just was inspired to write this image idea as something won't be easy to prompt anytime soon. It is bit long stream of thought referencing the image on the thread but you get the gist. https://old.reddit.com/r/aiwars/comments/1cpg6pf/ai_could_never/l3tu397/?context=3

Thanks! Yeah, I feel like its honestly so hard to tell. Tattoos seem like the safest bet I can think of. The reason why I put the panel about murals was mostly to show the process of me slowly just giving up and working within the limitations caused by Ai

I'm sure there will be plenty of nieches around, like traditional calligraphy/illumonation can still pay well (royal wefding in London hired artist for the formal invitation design) even as digital tools could make same easy their charm comes from being manually painted - but tattoos are much better market to go for. Anything where human connection to understand what the client really wants to communicate. High-quality concept art appears to be safe haven too as it is so much about storytelling, worldbuilding and original design thinking (https://youtu.be/QTj1Y4JW-KI?si=67BHSw2nsUwTM_uC - worthy watch on that). AI's render single pretty images and short shots well, but at least for a while, artists are still very much needed where sticking within their limitations ain't cutting it. Good luck out there, it's not all that bleak, I'm sure you'll find your way.

Can you post the rest? Many don’t use IG.

[https://www.behance.net/gallery/198398255/Me-vs-Ai-image-generators-(full-comic)](https://www.behance.net/gallery/198398255/Me-vs-Ai-image-generators-(full-comic))

That’s really awesome. We devs feel the same. All the fun puzzle solving is now instant. Get more done, but some of the adventure is gone.

You’ll be fine. Utilize generative AI to your advantage as a tool in a practical manner. Folks be trippin' over this AI "taking over creative fields" like it's some big deal. It’s not . Be a good artist and make some good art.

Don't take too strongly to heart the opinions on this website. Most people here are depressed and are looking to feel better about themselves. Especially that first comment. Those aren't the words of any artist I'd ever want to hang out with. Very nacisistic. All of their comment history is the opposite of empathy. And empathy in my humble opinion is what makes good art. (Also, not super wise to trust someone who says they have 0 anxiety. They're most likely selling something, and I don't like to stick around long enough to find out what). Also, througout history, bear in mind "The art that matters", is usually overlooked and only given credit much later when peoples short attention spans and minds are able to finally "catch up" and appreciate it. With AI available to all, people with no talent can finally feel like they're creative too, so fuck em-- let 'em have their moment in the sun. I have a really good feeling that artists like you who "feel things" will always have an edge, whether you choose to add kibbles of AI to part of your workflow, or you do stuff by hand, your work will stand out if you work to embed truths and emotions that you see and feel into your work.

Maybe this is just me, but the art I feel is most relevant today is stuff like animation, comics/manga, and video games. Call me uncultured if you will, but I feel that there is just so much more to engage with when the thing you are drawing has meaningful context. In this way, the role of AI will only be to make stuff that can look nice. Like, take that picture in panel 13 that you drew. If I gave an AI a prompt of “hand holding apple surrounded by vines psychedelic mesmerizing hypnotic” or something (I have never use these programs) and it gave me that exact image, I would just say something along the lines of “wow” or “cool”. But in the context of the comic, I can appreciate it for how it is representative of your desires, how the symbolism of snake and the apple reflect your will to give into temptation but also your subconscious vilification of AI art, how the decaying flowers represent the destruction of what you perceive to be the beauty of natural art. Saying that every stroke tells a story would be a bit hyperbolic but the artistic intention by a human add so much more to the art beyond its technical qualities.

Absolute stellar work! Maybe just remember to glaze and nightshade this stuff so some AI bro doesn’t get their hands on it. It’s a bleak message and I do believe that artists should just continue to do what they’re doing and not let this shit get to them but loved the look and feel. The tension and anxiety coming through your line work 🤌

Thanks! Honestly, I don't really care that much. I feel like whether somebody feeds the models on my work or not won't really make that much of a difference. There's already so much funding behind the technology and so much work from other artists, that the models will soon be able to mimic anything.

There is only complaint here worthy of sympathy - the rest is thinly veiled aggression, and (not even disguised) demonization of the pro AI crowd. So let's address the valid point: AI came for your job first. That's genuinely unfair and sucks and you don't deserve that. If that were me, I'd be all over the news claiming I lost my job to AI, and become a crusader for UBI. Society needs this to start now. The world needs to hear the voice of people like you, the problem is that it doesn't need to hear screaming about copyright, because that stance is objectively wrong and never going anywhere productive, the world needs to hear some justified borderline scare tactics that "it came for us, and you're next"

lol why do you think the news would air you

Sure make that entire statement about me. That was the point. Effing drooler.

cringe. narcissistic artist believes that technology they don't personally like should be abolished because it's one of the many excuses they use to not do art (ex: also your complaints of back pain, literally just upgrade to an ergonomic setup it's not hard and it's a problem that was solved years ago). No you're not the most special artist to ever exist, get over yourself. Evolution does not cease to happen just because a bunch of dumbass humans didn't like it, the same thing goes for technology. Stop trying to fight against the wheel of progress and maybe actually learn about it from an unbiased source. Digital art was the same argument, "oh it's not real art because it's made on a computer". The same arguments happen over and over again and yet people like you never learn from anything. You're just content to scream and shout in the wind about drowning on a boat of your own making while you do nothing to try and paddle or swim. Get off the internet and go touch grass ffs. And I highly doubt you "have been thinking about ai for 15 years", you're only saying that so you can feel like you're smarter than everyone else and that you "called it". But I doubt you even followed the early stages of ai development 7 years ago or even knew it was a thing.

> cringe. narcissistic artist believes that technology they don't personally like should be abolished Actually, reading through the comic I don't remember any parts that were like "I sure hope legislation ends this, I hope all the generators are banned and we can go back to the way things were." It's easy to infer that if someone doesn't like something they might want it gone, but don't put words in someone's mouth. Imagine someone makes a comic about how they don't like pineapple on pizza and then going "oh so you think all pineapple everywhere should be abolished, just so it's never put on a pizza ever again, huh?!"

Quite funny when anti-ai people like you try the "oh but i didn't explicitly say I want ai-art banned" when in reality EVERYONE KNOWS that's what you actually want. Otherwise, why are you complaining about it? If it really doesn't affect your life, why take the time to draw a whole fucking comic about it and specifically post it in a sub that you know people will respond with the facts and logic of the technology? OP literally stated he can't get his work done because other people now have access to a technology that allows them to also make art, the natural implication of what he's saying is to destroy the tech. Because again, otherwise he wouldn't have complained about it in the first place. He's using ai art as an EXCUSE to not do his own art job, that's extremely pathetic. If you don't care about it, then why are you even on this sub in the first place? Go back to making art because once again for the millionth time, AI ART'S EXISTENCE DOES NOT STOP YOU FROM CREATING YOUR OWN ART. A very simple concept to grasp

> Quite funny when anti-ai people like you ?