Then you don't have a clue how AI art works. You're also utterly blind to the state of art today versus art in the past. Find me an artist alive today better than Repin. Go on, try. We're not getting anything better than the old material that already exists, and haven't been for a very long time.
I've written quite a few posts on this very forum about various types of art, be it of the modern degenerate kind or otherwise. I'd venture a guess that I know more about art than you do and I certainly appreciate it enough to not want it replaced and even regurgitated by AI generated facsimiles. Even if it were true that we don't get anything good nowadays, the decimation of paying jobs for artists may lead to us not having anything NEW worth looking at ever again. Many of the most recognisable and best works of art were commissioned and while it is certain that painters won't disappear there will be fewer of them and most of the "art" will be supplanted by output and trapped in an endless cycle of repeating patterns and styles drawn from digital noise.
As for artists of formidable skill, Giovanni Gasparo comes to mind even if I don't really like most of his paintings he definitely is a talented painter. And on top of that he causes a lot of drama among progressive types, so there's also that. I don't know if he is better than Riepin but you don't know that either so it's fine.
Rather a lot of input is required, actually - you need to figure out a very specific prompt, you need to try it a lot of times until you get the right output, and in most cases you're going to need to provide a sketch, because it (currently) doesn't understand language well enough for you to describe the composition of the scene in words. Moreover, expressing your creativity is not knowing how to draw a straight line, it's taking what's in your head and putting it into a visible image. Whether that be by hand or by interface.
Oh yes, writing a prompt (there are already generators for those) and making a napkin doodle is extremely taxing. The problem is you're not creating a visible image, it's only a result. As far as the amount of skill is required this is exactly like giving a commission to an artist. You describe what you want, make a doodle and ask him nicely to make it. It's not YOUR creativity realised, because you didn't create shite.
That's nice. I don't have the time to spend hours every day grinding art skills, I spend that time programming, grinding programming knowledge, grinding music composition skills (actually I've had to put that one on the shelf lately, sadly), and wearing out mice in Adobe Illustrator. The mechanical skills are precisely what AI replaces. Composition, determining what the scene should portray, that's still on you. Between the two, you have everything you need to produce Art. All the subsequent seething about it not being "real art" has nothing to stand on.
Why do you spend time programming and trying to compose music? They're already making generators for both of these "mechanical skills". Especially the music seems to be advancing rapidly. If painting is to be considered as a work of "art" it has to have an artist who painted it. As for the rest, like I said before, you're just commissioning an artwork. Instead of an artist a script generates it. You're not the creator, you're not an artist and since the image does not have an author who used his skills to make it's not art. Having said that, I do not deny that it may look very compelling and I do not deny it will be useful. What I do claim is that it will lead the decline of the arts even further as droves of completely unskilled, tasteless and downright incompetent "idea guys" will flock to these tools and shit out industrial levels of absolute drivel.
Cool. There's no downside here except for people who made a living off art, but that's equally an advantage for the people who had to pay them in the past.
Sure, devaluation of creative skills or the so-called "democratization" of jobs previously requiring a solid base of knowledge and practice, devaluation of art, creation of a closed cycle of AI generated nonsense, the potential death of that middle-tier art market, rise in the kitschy garbage because most people simply have no bloody taste. The last part sounds pretty long-nose-small-hat and reeks of entitlement. You want free art so to hell with skill (that particular skill you don't want to learn of course, not the ones you already know), to hell with art (no potential Riepins in the future for you, but then again you probably know the guy because he's popular in prompts so it's no skin outta your hooked nose) in other words to hell with everything that does not serve your particular need in that given moment. Like I said, idiotic, ignorant and shortsighted. And so very modern unfortunately.
Of course I see the benefits of these generators, I use them myself. But I also see these absolute pillocks coming out of the woodwork and touting themselves as artists because they plonk sentences into a textbox. Proper artists are mostly an obnoxious bunch but they do have a few skills to back that up. These AI touting cunts have as much skill as a hipster in a slam poetry competition, if not less than that. Being uncritical of these image generators makes as much sense as putting them in only negative light. It's a tool and it will be used but it does not elevate anyone above their meager skill and it brings about a set of problems whole industires will have to contend with, because soon 3D modelling will be obsolete, programming will be heavily assisted at least, prototyping, post-production, translation and many other job niches will be cut down. As companies are concerned it's fantastic, more shekels in the pocket but I do not envy the people in these sectors. Most of them are not journos who deserve to loose their jobs.
AI is only going to ruin some shovelware companies.
Au contraire mon frère, the seemingly high quality of the artwork will legitimise any shovelware project and give it a respectable veneer.
