To me, thins kinda screams of “I suffered so you should too”. There are good arguments against AI art, but this one doesn’t resonate with me in any capacity.
It is good that AI has made art more accessible. Art is meant for everyone, and anything that makes it more democratic is great.
I did read it to the end, I just don’t believe it’s quite the same argument.
The Oatmeal seems to insist that while AI is helpful to eliminate the boring tasks, art is still a product of effort and struggle. They even later make an argument that these “boring, administrative” tasks might be an important part of creative process, that taking it away means taking something away from the art itself.
And AI art is not just text prompts and pictures. There are AI tools that allow you to draw basic lines and the AI will fill in and complete the hard parts, so you could male your vision come true without proper artistic skill. This is good, because not everyone can dedicate themselves to art classes, not everyone is talented enough (and I insist that talent is part of building a good skill, unlike The Oatmeal who seems to emphasize effort over gift), yet everyone wants and needs to create beauty.
To me, the main purpose of art is to communicate our vision, our thoughts, our ideas. Until recently, the ability to do so was limited by the talent, by that skill ceiling. Those who excelled were heard, those who did not were not. By assisting people with things they don’t know how to do well, we can amplify their voices and their visions, which can help us build a more active and inclusionary dialogue.
It’s not as easy as it looks, and I bet you $100 that most people wouldn’t be able to recreate this work. Comic art is a bit of a separate discipline: it looks extremely simplistic, yet it’s not.
I don’t need anyone’s permission, least so from strangers on the Internet. Neither do I think someone owes me anything - your response is one of scorn, and honestly, I couldn’t care less.
But I’m arguing for why, in general, AI assistance in art is a good thing. I, for one, am an apt learner when it comes to nearly anything but painting - yet, I too have something to show and illustrate. And I’m not alone. For some people, it’s not a matter of effort but of genuine lack of abilities, and others just can’t afford spending thousands of hours learning how to draw well when all they need is to illustrate a point, or just create something beautiful for themselves and others to enjoy in the meantime.
Some artists see it as a threat, as a way to devalue their effort and contribution - but it’s not; nothing will ever replace manual art, and it will always be seen as more valuable. Also, only learning to do everything yourself can give you the ultimate control over what the outcome will be. But for people who can’t do it so well themselves, AI assistance is a good way of creative expression, of making the voices we never heard to be heard. You can, of course, plug your ears and ignore it - or you can listen. It’s up to you and your beliefs, and I’m not here policing your decisions.
I read the whole thing, and no it didn’t resonate with me. I’m not a middle manager who sees himself as a story teller. Neither am I an art afficionado.
I don’t have a visceral emptiness that overwhelms me when I learn an image that was interesting was generated by AI. It didn’t come from a talented human? Who cares? Does it help to better articulate a thought or idea than the person trying to create it could do on their own? Then it’s ok with me.
There was a very reasonable web comic that made a clear point today in the Palestine community and rather than agree with the message and see that it was much better presented as a comic, it turned into “this smells like it could be slop!” People say “oh I wish it was just MS paint or shitty ppt because at least then YOU made it” but I would have to disagree and say it can detract from the message when you turn out something that looks like shit.
There’s more to the utility of AI art than minutiae. I would be willing to entertain the argument that I don’t want to see AI art in a museum, but while I find the oatmeal’s take to be a well considered perspective, a fair bit of the blanket hatred surrounding AI art applications borders on deranged.
Its not really about the suffering, its about the journey that is unique to you that you cannot possibly share with others since you’ve never taken it, and so it reflects in the art you bring.
The thing about ai is that if it was perfect to make the image in your head appear on a screen, is that youd notice actually that the image in your head would be shit (its ok). Youd experience this if you did any art, and it takes both an artistic mind with good artistic skills to come up with an effective “medium” or “tool” “image” to transfer your idea to another human being’s mind. It takes a fluency that can’t be grasped unless you pick up one of the tools you’d use to make any art.
And the suffering part comes if you are forcing yourself do get the result you want. You can learn art without suffering, without feeling ashamed at your lack of skill if you arm yourself with patience, something that ai confirms to the audience and other people you don’t have, and so can’t possibly make any contribution to what we understand as art.
The suffering is brought on by this lack of patience about thinking HOW every stroke has to be measured and precise in like a Van Gogh’s painting (pointillism) to the pov and line art of that famous dio vs jonathan confrontation in jojo’s bizarre adventure, each form of art taking inspiration of art before it that an art enjoyer might be familiar with. But it doesn’t have to be, but it is since time in this world time is money, and less is afforded to us for every waste.
I am not shaming btw, I only learned to communicate in an adversarial way soz.
Oh, I know the struggle - it’s not that I never made any art whatsoever. What’s in the artist’s head is less of an image and more of an impression to be put into words or lines.
And I believe that, given more truly free time and less of the simple mind-eating distractions, much more people would embark on an artistic journey, even in the age of AI. It’s just a very human thing to do.
But while we’re at it, we have what we have, and sometimes having a medium to express yourself right now is better than only having hope to get the tools you need.
There are different kinds of accessibility. While I admire people with disabilities who were so dedicated in the pursuit of art, there’s more to it than pure desire.
Art takes gift. It takes a lot of time to make it into talent, skill. It commonly takes a lot of money for the courses, materials, etc. And in the modern world, not everyone can realistically have or afford all that.
When I talk of accessibility, I don’t mean “with a ton of effort, every person can technically become at least a bad artist”. I mean “everyone needs to create, yet not everyone can dedicate their life to it”.
AI art allows us to communicate our visions and ideas, which is to me the most important parts of art overall, without having to grind through art classes. This, in turn, means we can hear and see new voices, ones that previously were never heard.
Art does not take gift. The myth of the naturally talented artist needs to die because that’s never been true. It takes effort, like you said, but it does NOT take courses and classes, especially in the modern world. There’s everything you need to learn right there on the Internet and in books. You just have to try.
And that’s the thing, you used to try and know that it was fun to make stuff, but at some point you wanted to make something that looked good and didn’t have the skill for it, so you gave up instead of having fun with it anyway.
But here’s the thing you forgot: the process. When you draw, you make choices. Where to put sister and brother, there to put the sun, how many windows are in your house, etc. The choices being made while making art are where you actually get creative. That’s where the happy accidents happen or the changes you decide on. It’s where the actual express happens, between wanting the picture and having the picture.
AI eliminates that crucial step. It eliminates choice. It makes those choices for you, cribbing notes off of other people’s choices, not yours.
So no, it doesn’t communicate anyone’s voice. Ai repeats static based off of other people’s voices and choices, not yours.
It’s very sad and somewhat indicative of our society that you only care about the finished product, and not the part that actually nourishes you.
It’s absolutely true. All you have to do is spend any amount of time around someone that has never drawn before that has the talent and you’ll be just devastated at how good they are on their first attempt. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people that have been drawing for a couple decades that never have been able to make it past crude representations.
There are various levels of talent and it’s possible to maybe become a bad artist by grinding, but you cannot become a good artist with a complete lack of visual art talent. I’m not sure why visual artists are unable to see this until you tell them okay so everyone can sing and then they quickly admit. “Okay, not everybody can sing.”
Everyone can sing. Even if they sing badly that’s at least their own voice, and no one is fooled into thinking they are singing when they hit play on their phone, so why think someone’s an artist when they get a computer to make an image?
I’m telling you that “artist talent” is literally just when someone likes drawing enough they keep going even when they aren’t at the level they want to be and they practice it. Anyone can be an artist, and anyone can be a good artist, if they put in the effort to try. Even you.
Absolutely untrue
If you don’t have the spark your ceiling is quite low
I have it for other arenas so I’m not making excuses, I know there are people that will never match me on those arts because they don’t have it. People are different and that’s okay but let’s not pretend everyone can do everything because that’s not really true.
That’s a well thought out response, and I appreciate it. There is certainly something important between what you want and what you end up creating, but any kind of AI art that is harder than “make an image by a simple text prompt” still has that step.
What I’m saying is, AI is not just one thing. When people hear it, they think of text prompts and automatic responses - yet I think of AI being the assistant in the creative process. You provide the vision, and AI tools help illustrate it the way you wouldn’t be able to.
Personally, painting is just something that never clicked for me. I can draw a line, an exact shape, I understand perspective and shadows, but the second it moves to “let’s draw that irregular line”, everything gets messy no matter how many hours I put into this. Back in the school years painting and choreography were two only things I failed at, because it requires a lot of intuitive behavior people never care or are never able to put into algorithm. Later, as I tried again and again, I always stumbled with the same thing - circles and squares are all fine, but how am I supposed to draw THAT? For me every break out of basic geometry feels like a good old meme about drawing a horse:
And for me, AI tools are essential to make my vision into something more complex than a stickman figure. It is still a creative process - AI gets something wrong, some ideas are physically impossible and can’t fit the composition, etc. etc. Any struggle a competent artist faces is still there.
If only you were making your vision. You are simply getting a computer to do it.
I’ve said it before, AI destroys the creative process, it doesn’t enhance it. Making the mistakes and choices are essential to you expressing yourself. Even if it’s flawed.
It’s regrettable that you only care about the end result, and feel like you’re incapable of getting where you want with your art. If you genuinely wanted to learn to draw I have suggestions on what to actually do.
Again, I’m not saying you should prompt AI to draw everything for you. There are tools that allow you to enhance the quality of your work using AI as a “make this, but properly” option. The person is still there, making the drafts.
Learning to draw again is not my current priority (focusing on other aspects of self-development at the moment), but I always appreciate the resources and revisit them once I come to it. I do not abandon the idea, and if you have resources that work well with the issue of being able to produce random shapes, I’d always welcome and appreciate them.
To me, thins kinda screams of “I suffered so you should too”. There are good arguments against AI art, but this one doesn’t resonate with me in any capacity.
It is good that AI has made art more accessible. Art is meant for everyone, and anything that makes it more democratic is great.
You must have stopped reading halfway, because he makes your argument, too.
He acknowledges that it makes art more accessible, by removing the tedium so that artists can do the creative work.
If their “creative work” begins and ends with prompting the AI, the prompter is basically saying that all of the work of art making is tedium.
Does that not resonate with you ?
I did read it to the end, I just don’t believe it’s quite the same argument.
The Oatmeal seems to insist that while AI is helpful to eliminate the boring tasks, art is still a product of effort and struggle. They even later make an argument that these “boring, administrative” tasks might be an important part of creative process, that taking it away means taking something away from the art itself.
And AI art is not just text prompts and pictures. There are AI tools that allow you to draw basic lines and the AI will fill in and complete the hard parts, so you could male your vision come true without proper artistic skill. This is good, because not everyone can dedicate themselves to art classes, not everyone is talented enough (and I insist that talent is part of building a good skill, unlike The Oatmeal who seems to emphasize effort over gift), yet everyone wants and needs to create beauty.
To me, the main purpose of art is to communicate our vision, our thoughts, our ideas. Until recently, the ability to do so was limited by the talent, by that skill ceiling. Those who excelled were heard, those who did not were not. By assisting people with things they don’t know how to do well, we can amplify their voices and their visions, which can help us build a more active and inclusionary dialogue.
My dude, I have never seen someone shoot their argument in the foot so hard.
Have you seen The Oatmeal drawings?
You can put out creative effort and be successful without having to churn out a Sistine Chapel every time.
It’s not as easy as it looks, and I bet you $100 that most people wouldn’t be able to recreate this work. Comic art is a bit of a separate discipline: it looks extremely simplistic, yet it’s not.
I never said it was easy. You keep saying you read and then demonstrating that you haven’t.
I think you just want permission to use AI and get your voice “amplified” without having to put in the effort of learning how to do art of any kind.
It’s fine to want that. You don’t need permission to use AI. Do it.
But no one owes you amplification or even a positive reception when you do.
I don’t need anyone’s permission, least so from strangers on the Internet. Neither do I think someone owes me anything - your response is one of scorn, and honestly, I couldn’t care less.
But I’m arguing for why, in general, AI assistance in art is a good thing. I, for one, am an apt learner when it comes to nearly anything but painting - yet, I too have something to show and illustrate. And I’m not alone. For some people, it’s not a matter of effort but of genuine lack of abilities, and others just can’t afford spending thousands of hours learning how to draw well when all they need is to illustrate a point, or just create something beautiful for themselves and others to enjoy in the meantime.
Some artists see it as a threat, as a way to devalue their effort and contribution - but it’s not; nothing will ever replace manual art, and it will always be seen as more valuable. Also, only learning to do everything yourself can give you the ultimate control over what the outcome will be. But for people who can’t do it so well themselves, AI assistance is a good way of creative expression, of making the voices we never heard to be heard. You can, of course, plug your ears and ignore it - or you can listen. It’s up to you and your beliefs, and I’m not here policing your decisions.
I read the whole thing, and no it didn’t resonate with me. I’m not a middle manager who sees himself as a story teller. Neither am I an art afficionado.
I don’t have a visceral emptiness that overwhelms me when I learn an image that was interesting was generated by AI. It didn’t come from a talented human? Who cares? Does it help to better articulate a thought or idea than the person trying to create it could do on their own? Then it’s ok with me.
There was a very reasonable web comic that made a clear point today in the Palestine community and rather than agree with the message and see that it was much better presented as a comic, it turned into “this smells like it could be slop!” People say “oh I wish it was just MS paint or shitty ppt because at least then YOU made it” but I would have to disagree and say it can detract from the message when you turn out something that looks like shit.
There’s more to the utility of AI art than minutiae. I would be willing to entertain the argument that I don’t want to see AI art in a museum, but while I find the oatmeal’s take to be a well considered perspective, a fair bit of the blanket hatred surrounding AI art applications borders on deranged.
Its not really about the suffering, its about the journey that is unique to you that you cannot possibly share with others since you’ve never taken it, and so it reflects in the art you bring.
The thing about ai is that if it was perfect to make the image in your head appear on a screen, is that youd notice actually that the image in your head would be shit (its ok). Youd experience this if you did any art, and it takes both an artistic mind with good artistic skills to come up with an effective “medium” or “tool” “image” to transfer your idea to another human being’s mind. It takes a fluency that can’t be grasped unless you pick up one of the tools you’d use to make any art.
And the suffering part comes if you are forcing yourself do get the result you want. You can learn art without suffering, without feeling ashamed at your lack of skill if you arm yourself with patience, something that ai confirms to the audience and other people you don’t have, and so can’t possibly make any contribution to what we understand as art.
The suffering is brought on by this lack of patience about thinking HOW every stroke has to be measured and precise in like a Van Gogh’s painting (pointillism) to the pov and line art of that famous dio vs jonathan confrontation in jojo’s bizarre adventure, each form of art taking inspiration of art before it that an art enjoyer might be familiar with. But it doesn’t have to be, but it is since time in this world time is money, and less is afforded to us for every waste.
I am not shaming btw, I only learned to communicate in an adversarial way soz.
Oh, I know the struggle - it’s not that I never made any art whatsoever. What’s in the artist’s head is less of an image and more of an impression to be put into words or lines.
And I believe that, given more truly free time and less of the simple mind-eating distractions, much more people would embark on an artistic journey, even in the age of AI. It’s just a very human thing to do.
But while we’re at it, we have what we have, and sometimes having a medium to express yourself right now is better than only having hope to get the tools you need.
There have been painters who are blind who made great paintings. People without hands who learned how to paint with their feet.
Art was already accessable to everyone, ai drones say that it wasn’t to feel better.
There are different kinds of accessibility. While I admire people with disabilities who were so dedicated in the pursuit of art, there’s more to it than pure desire.
Art takes gift. It takes a lot of time to make it into talent, skill. It commonly takes a lot of money for the courses, materials, etc. And in the modern world, not everyone can realistically have or afford all that.
When I talk of accessibility, I don’t mean “with a ton of effort, every person can technically become at least a bad artist”. I mean “everyone needs to create, yet not everyone can dedicate their life to it”.
AI art allows us to communicate our visions and ideas, which is to me the most important parts of art overall, without having to grind through art classes. This, in turn, means we can hear and see new voices, ones that previously were never heard.
Art does not take gift. The myth of the naturally talented artist needs to die because that’s never been true. It takes effort, like you said, but it does NOT take courses and classes, especially in the modern world. There’s everything you need to learn right there on the Internet and in books. You just have to try.
And that’s the thing, you used to try and know that it was fun to make stuff, but at some point you wanted to make something that looked good and didn’t have the skill for it, so you gave up instead of having fun with it anyway.
But here’s the thing you forgot: the process. When you draw, you make choices. Where to put sister and brother, there to put the sun, how many windows are in your house, etc. The choices being made while making art are where you actually get creative. That’s where the happy accidents happen or the changes you decide on. It’s where the actual express happens, between wanting the picture and having the picture.
AI eliminates that crucial step. It eliminates choice. It makes those choices for you, cribbing notes off of other people’s choices, not yours.
So no, it doesn’t communicate anyone’s voice. Ai repeats static based off of other people’s voices and choices, not yours.
It’s very sad and somewhat indicative of our society that you only care about the finished product, and not the part that actually nourishes you.
It’s absolutely true. All you have to do is spend any amount of time around someone that has never drawn before that has the talent and you’ll be just devastated at how good they are on their first attempt. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people that have been drawing for a couple decades that never have been able to make it past crude representations.
There are various levels of talent and it’s possible to maybe become a bad artist by grinding, but you cannot become a good artist with a complete lack of visual art talent. I’m not sure why visual artists are unable to see this until you tell them okay so everyone can sing and then they quickly admit. “Okay, not everybody can sing.”
Everyone can sing. Even if they sing badly that’s at least their own voice, and no one is fooled into thinking they are singing when they hit play on their phone, so why think someone’s an artist when they get a computer to make an image?
I’m telling you that “artist talent” is literally just when someone likes drawing enough they keep going even when they aren’t at the level they want to be and they practice it. Anyone can be an artist, and anyone can be a good artist, if they put in the effort to try. Even you.
Absolutely untrue If you don’t have the spark your ceiling is quite low
I have it for other arenas so I’m not making excuses, I know there are people that will never match me on those arts because they don’t have it. People are different and that’s okay but let’s not pretend everyone can do everything because that’s not really true.
That’s a well thought out response, and I appreciate it. There is certainly something important between what you want and what you end up creating, but any kind of AI art that is harder than “make an image by a simple text prompt” still has that step.
What I’m saying is, AI is not just one thing. When people hear it, they think of text prompts and automatic responses - yet I think of AI being the assistant in the creative process. You provide the vision, and AI tools help illustrate it the way you wouldn’t be able to.
Personally, painting is just something that never clicked for me. I can draw a line, an exact shape, I understand perspective and shadows, but the second it moves to “let’s draw that irregular line”, everything gets messy no matter how many hours I put into this. Back in the school years painting and choreography were two only things I failed at, because it requires a lot of intuitive behavior people never care or are never able to put into algorithm. Later, as I tried again and again, I always stumbled with the same thing - circles and squares are all fine, but how am I supposed to draw THAT? For me every break out of basic geometry feels like a good old meme about drawing a horse:
And for me, AI tools are essential to make my vision into something more complex than a stickman figure. It is still a creative process - AI gets something wrong, some ideas are physically impossible and can’t fit the composition, etc. etc. Any struggle a competent artist faces is still there.
If only you were making your vision. You are simply getting a computer to do it.
I’ve said it before, AI destroys the creative process, it doesn’t enhance it. Making the mistakes and choices are essential to you expressing yourself. Even if it’s flawed.
It’s regrettable that you only care about the end result, and feel like you’re incapable of getting where you want with your art. If you genuinely wanted to learn to draw I have suggestions on what to actually do.
Again, I’m not saying you should prompt AI to draw everything for you. There are tools that allow you to enhance the quality of your work using AI as a “make this, but properly” option. The person is still there, making the drafts.
Learning to draw again is not my current priority (focusing on other aspects of self-development at the moment), but I always appreciate the resources and revisit them once I come to it. I do not abandon the idea, and if you have resources that work well with the issue of being able to produce random shapes, I’d always welcome and appreciate them.