Visual artists, illustrators and graphic designers share their stories about how AI is being used to lower wages, degrade work and even replace it altogether, in this installment of AI Killed My Job.
Hopefully, as the bubble bursts, the quality of these outputs will plateau, and people will realize it was all slop to begin with. It’s disheartening how as a society we can go from celebrating paintings made thousands of years ago, studying each stroke, letting them tell us a story and move us, to being satisfied with soulless bunch of pixels and even just putting them in the same category.
The point of art, no matter the category-even something as simple as corporate illustration, is that it’s inseparable from the artist behind it. To an extent we can feel the quirks, the struggle and the love in every piece or at the very least the personality of the artist. And that’s what makes art unique and human.
No doubt AI art can be beautiful, after all it’s modelled on top of some of the best human art ever produced. But to me, it will always feel like you know when you’re taking a photo of the sunset or the moon with your phone and it never looks right? Those photos never compares to actually standing beneath it and taking the moment in with the sight. Both can impress, sure, but only one is able to make us feel something in our bones. And that’s what AI art will never be able to do for me
Really well put! The best corporate clients to work for are the ones that already understand this. The worst are ones just looking to fill the space on a page. In some cases, I think we may see people embracing human-made art as a way to stand out from all the slop. This will work for the exact reason you’re talking about: you can just feel something about it. That’s really valuable, but realistically some people always won’t care. 🤷
I am a master weaver, as in each inch of thread passes through my fingers at least twice. I worked as a sample weaver and textile designer. I made shit wages designing tacky plaids for cheap dentist office couches. On the side, I did craft fairs where the number 1 question I got was "How long did it take you to make this scarf?" Most people were polite enough to walk far enough away so I couldn't hear them talking about going to the mall or Wallyworld. Almost no one asked me how long I went to school, how much the materials cost me, or why what I was making can't be made in the mills.
Sorry, but the slop is here to stay, because people actually think it isn't slop. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that asshole Greenberg had a valid point about kitch.
As a medical transcriptionist, I went through the same story in the early 2000s when speech recognition software became a thing. I went from making good money, to training the speech engines, to being paid a pittance to edit SR-generated text, to leaving the field and having to reinvent myself - at 56. I finally retired because I was making less reviewing medical records full-time as an independent contractor than I would with Social Security, even retiring early. Rapid evolution of technology is more than our society is built to handle. Pursuit of insane profits by releasing iffy tech will destroy us from the bottom up. There are now disclaimers in every medical record to the effect that much of the text of reports is generated by speech engines and ***mistakes should be expected/can occur***. JFC. Oh, sorry the engine said 50 mg instead of 15 mg of drug and your dad died as a result. Whoopsie.
Thanks so much for sharing all this, Brian! There’s so much in here to respond to and it’s so interesting how consistent people’s experiences have been (especially with the management class embracing and insisting on using AI, seemingly without considering how useless they’ll be once there’s nobody left for them to manage).
I’m a designer/illustrator myself and have been lucky to sit in a niche mostly insulated from this, but I see it all around me and know how bad it’s getting. The most I bump into AI at work is with clients bringing us AI generated copy writing for marketing materials. Since we usually work on writing ourselves (and client-directed writing was rarely good to begin with) it’s pretty easy to tell them why it’s bad and write it ourselves. Especially when you are trying to help people market themselves clearly and authentically, pushing back at AI output is pretty simple. That only works if your clients respect you, though.
I see so many places where people are losing the, frankly, more disposable jobs in creative industries. Stock is obvious, as is corporate design and illustration. The fact is that most of the clients in these industries have never valued the people doing the work — they just didn’t have another option. At every step big companies or cash-strapped small businesses take the cheaper option: local print shops lose work to vistaprint, photographers lose work to Shutterstock, web designers to Squarespace (or even just Facebook or Linktree).
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the only clients we can rely on are ones who value us as people and want to support artists and to work with us. I try to make that a key part of the value proposition we offer: you get to work with me and be part of the entire process. The output of the job can’t be the only thing you’re selling anymore.
The reality is that there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs from people who don’t value what you do. In isolation, that statement seems fine (less work from shitty clients? Great!) but the amount of work people will lose is pretty fucking bleak.
So much to respond to in this piece, but I’ll wrap up by saying the thing I’m most curious about is how this will change once the loss-leading prices of these AI tools goes away. We know OpenAI isn’t profitable, and I doubt many of these companies are. How will things change if generating illustrations starts to cost as much as commissioning an illustrator? Hopefully we don’t all have short memories and keep this all in mind if the AI bubble bursts. Artists have always been very bad about undervaluing their own work and feeling lucky to do it at all. We need to remember how little so many valued our work and, if they ever do need us again, we need to make them pay.
Thanks for this, Simon, and good points. I wouldn't bet on the bubble bursting solving everything, however. For one thing, Midjourney is one of the few AI companies that is *not* over-leveraged wildly; it bootstrapped its way to 100k annual clients. I think you're right to about the importance of quality clients, but I also think organizing and pressure campaigns can play more of a role, too.
Simon, sadly, I agree with what you're saying about the people who never valued it in the first place. I'm a writer and editor, and in the past I've had the luck and privilege to collaborate with some incredible illustrators.
I was always blown away by what they came up with - things I could never even have imagined (never mind executed!) But there were times when, as part of my job, I ended up having to advocate with managers for them to be given more hours, for their meagre budget to be a bit bigger, or just for them to have creative control over what they did. And there were always those people who were like - can't they just knock it out in a couple of hours? Why do we need this fabulous illustrator in the first place? Or they wanted to give the illustrator a super-restrictive brief because they thought they (a non-illustrator) knew best what would work.
This attitude exists towards artists in many fields, and AI is really showing it up ... but yeah, for some reason it feels particularly noticeable in relation to illustrators. These testimonies are gutting.
Is there any hopeful news for visual artists, illustrators and graphic designers? Companies that are saying that they will continue to employ humans, even if it costs more?
The loss of the visceral for humans is a loss for all of us. That we are willing to give up our ability to take our time and savour, for the sake of speed and profit, is how we are in this soul-less life sucking mess to begin with. Not all technology is bad of course, this AI love affair is such a culmination of one after another of tech innovation. We just simply accept them all as "good" and inevitable. We do not fight....the "wave off" is what we get from others. We no longer think. It is intrusively on our phones (took me hours to get that summary off of it). The assumption is that we all want it. Therefore we all think we do. One person said how incredibly wasteful it is. It brings us nothing that I know of. Save it for medical advances and research please. Leave the rest of us out of it. Bring back our senses. I want to see, touch, feel, smell and hear the actual.
If the person who asked why so many people hate artists is not just exhibiting understandable paranoia---I have a theory. It's because artistic talent is not teachable or learnable, it's something some people are just born with, like some people are born with good looks. And the haters are people who don't have that talent, and wish they did, and are jealous of talented artists. In the past they may have hid this, because in their line of work they needed artists--but now they think they can just use AI instead, so they're free to let the animosity show. This does not mean that MOST people hate artists. I think most people admire good artists--but those in a line of work that depends on artwork may be people who aspired to be artists themselves, but turned out not to have what it takes.
That is a misconception. People are not born with artistic talent. It IS taught, that's what art schools, art classes, tutorials and so forth are. If we were born with it then where are all the 3-year old professional artists? It still requires a huge amount of practice and time. It's the fact that people want art to be instant that makes them give up the practice. It's like wanting to be a mathematician but not having the patience to go through the fundamentals of arithmetic first. The animosity comes from art being seen as a "fun" job and therefore not really "work." Which is part of a larger cultural atittude that glorifies STEM over the arts. That and artists being paid to do "fun" things is perceived as an insult and an unfair ease of life to those who do work that is not fun to them.
Sure it takes a great deal of ,and study can help--but it seems to me that things like music and art also involve a talent that some people ARE born with--so does math. To say anyone could do the work of Michelangelo if they just work hard seems dubious to me. But you're likely right about resentment of people who get to do what they love, on the part of people who love only the paycheck and hate Mondays.
If you say that math also requires a talent, then there's no reason for people to have resentment towards artists for talent but not scientists or mathematicians.
Ma'am. I remember being in highschool and meeting an amazing artist. She was 2 years older than me. Maybe 17 at the time, producing disney level work. I was floored. I called myself an artist at the time but all I could really do was stick figures. Everything i did was terrible.
I kept reasoning, if art is created with just physical lines and my hands can create those same types of lines on a page, I can do this if i try hard enough.
Fast forward 10 years in the future. I'm still pretty terrible. So I resolve to lock up every distraction and practice every day. Over many years, 4 hours a day on average, miserable doing nothing but drawing and i start making work I'm proud of. In my 30's. People start calling me "talented" and don't understand why its such an insult. It's not something you're born with. That's what people say so they can justify stealing the work because it's "not something everyone can do". It absolutely is. Sure, some people are born with more of a predisposition for a great number of things than others. But most of it is just doing the work. And its HARD. So most people give up and decide they just "aren't talented". I have worked manual labor jobs and just about every other type of labor under the sun. Teaching myself to draw is the only thing I will maintain was hard work.
It's more sweat and labor than talent. I can promise you that. The thinking that it's just talent is exactly how billionaires propagandize to the general public that stealing the work of others is justifiable.
Every “overnight success” is built on years of practice and failure. Every “natural talent” is the same. Glad you pushed so hard at doing something you value! That’s really admirable.
Thank you. Art was really one of the last things in life that really put a fire in me. It's why I was so committed. These last few years watching this whole thing happen have been rough. But I appreciate you, and I'm wishing the people going through it with me the best.
People are not at all just "born" with it, though. You can teach and learn it. The reason that talented artists are "talented" is because they love art enough that they have spent countless hours practicing it, which then might come off as "talent" to someone who hasn't been privy to all the time spent studying others' art, trying out different approaches, and drawing what they love over and over and over again.
Art is labour! It's one of the most misunderstood & undervalued forms of work there is. Most people have not seriously attempted a long-term artistic practice, so they don’t understand what it involves. (Weirdly, art-making is also heavily romanticised & there are a lot of dumb myths, like the idea that struggle leads to good art.) I do think some people start out more gifted but that doesn't really get you far— basically what makes you good at art is thousands of hours of labour.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea of talent, but agree 100% with you about this being why people are embracing generative AI for artistic output. The fact is that many of us artists carry a lot of responsibility for this misconception in the first place. It’s hard to admit that you aren’t gifted and that someone else could do what you do if they worked hard at it. But that’s the truth.
The people who are “naturally talented” are more often just privileged. They’re born with connections or economic means that facilitate the development of their skills. I know many people told me I was a naturally talented artist as a kid but the truth is just that my dad was an illustrator, his mom loved fine art and took me to art galleries all my life, and my entire family encouraged my pursuit of drawing. In another family I may have been discouraged and stopped drawing before I finished primary school (a typical experience for a lot of people, I think).
But all that is to say that this misconception is very widely believed and I think it is a huge contributing factor to the rise of generative AI. I think a lot of people resent that they feel shut out of creativity and see this as liberating. The sad thing is that, in a fairer and more equitable society, they may see themselves as artists already.
No. People are not born with it some people may have a slight aptitude but that is not make them born for it. YOu have to practice it like anything else SO you're half right. The animosity is there because they think that we are some sort of higher class some bourgeoisie bullshit some sort of rich people doing what we want and having fun when they want us to toil and they see us as somehow escaping Modern Life. Like we don't work and that's what they hate us for they perceive this as some sort of genetic predisposition for a talent that is not there discounting environmental factors, who supported us, our financial situations, our friends, families. They find a way to excuse suffering or work or labor we have or even romanticize our own suffering. It is a job it is something that you learn it is something that you practice it is something that can be taught that's why they are classes that's why there's tons of online material and even before the internet there's tons of books and physical media that's been teaching people for Generations how to do this there were apprenticeships people following others learning it because it is a trade. For years people liked to dismiss digital art as just having the computer do it for you and now when there's something that is actually doing it for you those who dismissed us instead now embrace it because the problem was they never liked us. Not everyone is like this but there's enough people who have animosity towards creatives for various reasons it's a lot of hard work and practice and luck and a ton of people fail all the time some people get lucky and understand it faster practice good habits and have a good work life balance others don't. I'm taking your comment as something done in naive ignorance because I do not read it as something meant to be insulting. I hope you take this to Heart
Maybe naive ignorance as I am not an artist--although I am a failed novelist. I think about my 10 year old grandson and the artwork I saw yesterday by a younger child and I think I see talent that isn't present in everyone. Do you really think anyone could turn out masterpieces if they worked at it hard enough?
Not everyone can be Einstein either, but what people are trying to communicate is that there is nothing that makes art more prone to being an innate talent than any other type of work or trade. It all requires practice. We have all spent hours every day practicing art.
Well I have no such resentment--I'm glad some people can do work they enjoy, that they're good at, that they feel is a genuine contribution and not just a bullshit job. Only...according to this thread, that's going away. Artists will be replaced by AI slop because it's cheaper, and because like everything else AI does, it's not done as well as a human would do it but THEY DON"T CARE. If you try to sign up for Social Security when you retire, and you keep making calls and talking to a robot that makes no sense and you make call after call--they don't care. The billionaires don't need Social Security.
I'm sorry I couldn't finish it cause it hits too close to home. I'm a multimedia designer and recently I was send an AI logo by a coworker instead of doing it myself (it was a new section for social media that suddenly needed a visual identity of it's own and they suggested trying AI). Of course we didn't use it, of course the logo didn't fit the brand identity, of course it didn't work as a logo!! But I felt so undervalued and violated somehow. The way the whole thing happened was just so disrespectful to my profession. They were like "hey look! i just tried making a logo with ai can we use it?" um fuck no, it looks awful and nothing like us. I truly hope there's light at the end of this tunnel. I love design but lately real life has been a struggle.
Art is the only thing that remains when civilizations crumble. It literally defines who we are today and who we were... it informs our ancient history and shapes our futures as a society. But there will be a historic gap between the 2020s-2080s of original art, music, writing, photos, etc. – like a blackened tree ring documenting a past forest fire...
Few families delight in their children declaring they are going to be artists. :-) Historically, making a living as such has always been tough... The global theft of all original works to create the very AI that kills your job? I suppose it feels very on brand for the times...
But when society becomes bored with the empty calories of endless Ghibli profile pics, Jesus embracing Charlie Kirk, or Trump dressed as superman – and craves something real?
We will have taken our art – and moved on. And it will take another generation to replace us...
Of course this has something to do with class and visibility in society. The replacement of cashiers with self-checkout systems does not spark public debates about the future of work. However, as soon as #AI threatens highly visible and well-paid professions, a societal discussion suddenly emerges. This illustrates how power and status shape public perceptions of automation: as long as only invisible workers are affected, society remains silent. Only when the elites face potential losses does the debate grow loud.
Maybe! Have seen comments on social media confirming similar things happening to them in erotic art communities. My read was that it contained truth, but the writer was self-effacing about it.
Like Brian states there's a whole subgenre of NSFW artists who made their money making those kinds of commissions and the Furry Community is not excluded. A lot of ordinary artists also made most of their money on NSFW art, because that's what many people wanted to pay for. That didn't mean it was their main focus.
To people who partake in the furry community fursonas etc. is a very personal thing. So it might very well be real. Not a furry btw, just interacted adjacently with that community.
Hopefully, as the bubble bursts, the quality of these outputs will plateau, and people will realize it was all slop to begin with. It’s disheartening how as a society we can go from celebrating paintings made thousands of years ago, studying each stroke, letting them tell us a story and move us, to being satisfied with soulless bunch of pixels and even just putting them in the same category.
The point of art, no matter the category-even something as simple as corporate illustration, is that it’s inseparable from the artist behind it. To an extent we can feel the quirks, the struggle and the love in every piece or at the very least the personality of the artist. And that’s what makes art unique and human.
No doubt AI art can be beautiful, after all it’s modelled on top of some of the best human art ever produced. But to me, it will always feel like you know when you’re taking a photo of the sunset or the moon with your phone and it never looks right? Those photos never compares to actually standing beneath it and taking the moment in with the sight. Both can impress, sure, but only one is able to make us feel something in our bones. And that’s what AI art will never be able to do for me
Thanks for this, Fabrizia, and beautifully put.
Really well put! The best corporate clients to work for are the ones that already understand this. The worst are ones just looking to fill the space on a page. In some cases, I think we may see people embracing human-made art as a way to stand out from all the slop. This will work for the exact reason you’re talking about: you can just feel something about it. That’s really valuable, but realistically some people always won’t care. 🤷
I am a master weaver, as in each inch of thread passes through my fingers at least twice. I worked as a sample weaver and textile designer. I made shit wages designing tacky plaids for cheap dentist office couches. On the side, I did craft fairs where the number 1 question I got was "How long did it take you to make this scarf?" Most people were polite enough to walk far enough away so I couldn't hear them talking about going to the mall or Wallyworld. Almost no one asked me how long I went to school, how much the materials cost me, or why what I was making can't be made in the mills.
Sorry, but the slop is here to stay, because people actually think it isn't slop. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that asshole Greenberg had a valid point about kitch.
As a medical transcriptionist, I went through the same story in the early 2000s when speech recognition software became a thing. I went from making good money, to training the speech engines, to being paid a pittance to edit SR-generated text, to leaving the field and having to reinvent myself - at 56. I finally retired because I was making less reviewing medical records full-time as an independent contractor than I would with Social Security, even retiring early. Rapid evolution of technology is more than our society is built to handle. Pursuit of insane profits by releasing iffy tech will destroy us from the bottom up. There are now disclaimers in every medical record to the effect that much of the text of reports is generated by speech engines and ***mistakes should be expected/can occur***. JFC. Oh, sorry the engine said 50 mg instead of 15 mg of drug and your dad died as a result. Whoopsie.
Apologies to the last couple people, this was too depressing to finish
This is a devastating series of anecdotes. I’m immobilized with despair.
It's tough. But there's always hope.
Thanks so much for sharing all this, Brian! There’s so much in here to respond to and it’s so interesting how consistent people’s experiences have been (especially with the management class embracing and insisting on using AI, seemingly without considering how useless they’ll be once there’s nobody left for them to manage).
I’m a designer/illustrator myself and have been lucky to sit in a niche mostly insulated from this, but I see it all around me and know how bad it’s getting. The most I bump into AI at work is with clients bringing us AI generated copy writing for marketing materials. Since we usually work on writing ourselves (and client-directed writing was rarely good to begin with) it’s pretty easy to tell them why it’s bad and write it ourselves. Especially when you are trying to help people market themselves clearly and authentically, pushing back at AI output is pretty simple. That only works if your clients respect you, though.
I see so many places where people are losing the, frankly, more disposable jobs in creative industries. Stock is obvious, as is corporate design and illustration. The fact is that most of the clients in these industries have never valued the people doing the work — they just didn’t have another option. At every step big companies or cash-strapped small businesses take the cheaper option: local print shops lose work to vistaprint, photographers lose work to Shutterstock, web designers to Squarespace (or even just Facebook or Linktree).
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the only clients we can rely on are ones who value us as people and want to support artists and to work with us. I try to make that a key part of the value proposition we offer: you get to work with me and be part of the entire process. The output of the job can’t be the only thing you’re selling anymore.
The reality is that there are going to be fewer and fewer jobs from people who don’t value what you do. In isolation, that statement seems fine (less work from shitty clients? Great!) but the amount of work people will lose is pretty fucking bleak.
So much to respond to in this piece, but I’ll wrap up by saying the thing I’m most curious about is how this will change once the loss-leading prices of these AI tools goes away. We know OpenAI isn’t profitable, and I doubt many of these companies are. How will things change if generating illustrations starts to cost as much as commissioning an illustrator? Hopefully we don’t all have short memories and keep this all in mind if the AI bubble bursts. Artists have always been very bad about undervaluing their own work and feeling lucky to do it at all. We need to remember how little so many valued our work and, if they ever do need us again, we need to make them pay.
Thanks for this, Simon, and good points. I wouldn't bet on the bubble bursting solving everything, however. For one thing, Midjourney is one of the few AI companies that is *not* over-leveraged wildly; it bootstrapped its way to 100k annual clients. I think you're right to about the importance of quality clients, but I also think organizing and pressure campaigns can play more of a role, too.
Simon, sadly, I agree with what you're saying about the people who never valued it in the first place. I'm a writer and editor, and in the past I've had the luck and privilege to collaborate with some incredible illustrators.
I was always blown away by what they came up with - things I could never even have imagined (never mind executed!) But there were times when, as part of my job, I ended up having to advocate with managers for them to be given more hours, for their meagre budget to be a bit bigger, or just for them to have creative control over what they did. And there were always those people who were like - can't they just knock it out in a couple of hours? Why do we need this fabulous illustrator in the first place? Or they wanted to give the illustrator a super-restrictive brief because they thought they (a non-illustrator) knew best what would work.
This attitude exists towards artists in many fields, and AI is really showing it up ... but yeah, for some reason it feels particularly noticeable in relation to illustrators. These testimonies are gutting.
Is there any hopeful news for visual artists, illustrators and graphic designers? Companies that are saying that they will continue to employ humans, even if it costs more?
Yes! There are AI-free companies and communities, class action lawsuits, and groups organizing against this. More details in the Bluesky thread I did about this: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j7tdfjsbop2oq7cghfbdwvqq/post/3lz2cscncts2u
The loss of the visceral for humans is a loss for all of us. That we are willing to give up our ability to take our time and savour, for the sake of speed and profit, is how we are in this soul-less life sucking mess to begin with. Not all technology is bad of course, this AI love affair is such a culmination of one after another of tech innovation. We just simply accept them all as "good" and inevitable. We do not fight....the "wave off" is what we get from others. We no longer think. It is intrusively on our phones (took me hours to get that summary off of it). The assumption is that we all want it. Therefore we all think we do. One person said how incredibly wasteful it is. It brings us nothing that I know of. Save it for medical advances and research please. Leave the rest of us out of it. Bring back our senses. I want to see, touch, feel, smell and hear the actual.
If the person who asked why so many people hate artists is not just exhibiting understandable paranoia---I have a theory. It's because artistic talent is not teachable or learnable, it's something some people are just born with, like some people are born with good looks. And the haters are people who don't have that talent, and wish they did, and are jealous of talented artists. In the past they may have hid this, because in their line of work they needed artists--but now they think they can just use AI instead, so they're free to let the animosity show. This does not mean that MOST people hate artists. I think most people admire good artists--but those in a line of work that depends on artwork may be people who aspired to be artists themselves, but turned out not to have what it takes.
That is a misconception. People are not born with artistic talent. It IS taught, that's what art schools, art classes, tutorials and so forth are. If we were born with it then where are all the 3-year old professional artists? It still requires a huge amount of practice and time. It's the fact that people want art to be instant that makes them give up the practice. It's like wanting to be a mathematician but not having the patience to go through the fundamentals of arithmetic first. The animosity comes from art being seen as a "fun" job and therefore not really "work." Which is part of a larger cultural atittude that glorifies STEM over the arts. That and artists being paid to do "fun" things is perceived as an insult and an unfair ease of life to those who do work that is not fun to them.
Sure it takes a great deal of ,and study can help--but it seems to me that things like music and art also involve a talent that some people ARE born with--so does math. To say anyone could do the work of Michelangelo if they just work hard seems dubious to me. But you're likely right about resentment of people who get to do what they love, on the part of people who love only the paycheck and hate Mondays.
If you say that math also requires a talent, then there's no reason for people to have resentment towards artists for talent but not scientists or mathematicians.
Ma'am. I remember being in highschool and meeting an amazing artist. She was 2 years older than me. Maybe 17 at the time, producing disney level work. I was floored. I called myself an artist at the time but all I could really do was stick figures. Everything i did was terrible.
I kept reasoning, if art is created with just physical lines and my hands can create those same types of lines on a page, I can do this if i try hard enough.
Fast forward 10 years in the future. I'm still pretty terrible. So I resolve to lock up every distraction and practice every day. Over many years, 4 hours a day on average, miserable doing nothing but drawing and i start making work I'm proud of. In my 30's. People start calling me "talented" and don't understand why its such an insult. It's not something you're born with. That's what people say so they can justify stealing the work because it's "not something everyone can do". It absolutely is. Sure, some people are born with more of a predisposition for a great number of things than others. But most of it is just doing the work. And its HARD. So most people give up and decide they just "aren't talented". I have worked manual labor jobs and just about every other type of labor under the sun. Teaching myself to draw is the only thing I will maintain was hard work.
It's more sweat and labor than talent. I can promise you that. The thinking that it's just talent is exactly how billionaires propagandize to the general public that stealing the work of others is justifiable.
Every “overnight success” is built on years of practice and failure. Every “natural talent” is the same. Glad you pushed so hard at doing something you value! That’s really admirable.
Thank you. Art was really one of the last things in life that really put a fire in me. It's why I was so committed. These last few years watching this whole thing happen have been rough. But I appreciate you, and I'm wishing the people going through it with me the best.
People are not at all just "born" with it, though. You can teach and learn it. The reason that talented artists are "talented" is because they love art enough that they have spent countless hours practicing it, which then might come off as "talent" to someone who hasn't been privy to all the time spent studying others' art, trying out different approaches, and drawing what they love over and over and over again.
Art is labour! It's one of the most misunderstood & undervalued forms of work there is. Most people have not seriously attempted a long-term artistic practice, so they don’t understand what it involves. (Weirdly, art-making is also heavily romanticised & there are a lot of dumb myths, like the idea that struggle leads to good art.) I do think some people start out more gifted but that doesn't really get you far— basically what makes you good at art is thousands of hours of labour.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this idea of talent, but agree 100% with you about this being why people are embracing generative AI for artistic output. The fact is that many of us artists carry a lot of responsibility for this misconception in the first place. It’s hard to admit that you aren’t gifted and that someone else could do what you do if they worked hard at it. But that’s the truth.
The people who are “naturally talented” are more often just privileged. They’re born with connections or economic means that facilitate the development of their skills. I know many people told me I was a naturally talented artist as a kid but the truth is just that my dad was an illustrator, his mom loved fine art and took me to art galleries all my life, and my entire family encouraged my pursuit of drawing. In another family I may have been discouraged and stopped drawing before I finished primary school (a typical experience for a lot of people, I think).
But all that is to say that this misconception is very widely believed and I think it is a huge contributing factor to the rise of generative AI. I think a lot of people resent that they feel shut out of creativity and see this as liberating. The sad thing is that, in a fairer and more equitable society, they may see themselves as artists already.
100% agree with this assessment Simon
No. People are not born with it some people may have a slight aptitude but that is not make them born for it. YOu have to practice it like anything else SO you're half right. The animosity is there because they think that we are some sort of higher class some bourgeoisie bullshit some sort of rich people doing what we want and having fun when they want us to toil and they see us as somehow escaping Modern Life. Like we don't work and that's what they hate us for they perceive this as some sort of genetic predisposition for a talent that is not there discounting environmental factors, who supported us, our financial situations, our friends, families. They find a way to excuse suffering or work or labor we have or even romanticize our own suffering. It is a job it is something that you learn it is something that you practice it is something that can be taught that's why they are classes that's why there's tons of online material and even before the internet there's tons of books and physical media that's been teaching people for Generations how to do this there were apprenticeships people following others learning it because it is a trade. For years people liked to dismiss digital art as just having the computer do it for you and now when there's something that is actually doing it for you those who dismissed us instead now embrace it because the problem was they never liked us. Not everyone is like this but there's enough people who have animosity towards creatives for various reasons it's a lot of hard work and practice and luck and a ton of people fail all the time some people get lucky and understand it faster practice good habits and have a good work life balance others don't. I'm taking your comment as something done in naive ignorance because I do not read it as something meant to be insulting. I hope you take this to Heart
Maybe naive ignorance as I am not an artist--although I am a failed novelist. I think about my 10 year old grandson and the artwork I saw yesterday by a younger child and I think I see talent that isn't present in everyone. Do you really think anyone could turn out masterpieces if they worked at it hard enough?
Not everyone can be Einstein either, but what people are trying to communicate is that there is nothing that makes art more prone to being an innate talent than any other type of work or trade. It all requires practice. We have all spent hours every day practicing art.
Well I have no such resentment--I'm glad some people can do work they enjoy, that they're good at, that they feel is a genuine contribution and not just a bullshit job. Only...according to this thread, that's going away. Artists will be replaced by AI slop because it's cheaper, and because like everything else AI does, it's not done as well as a human would do it but THEY DON"T CARE. If you try to sign up for Social Security when you retire, and you keep making calls and talking to a robot that makes no sense and you make call after call--they don't care. The billionaires don't need Social Security.
I'm sorry I couldn't finish it cause it hits too close to home. I'm a multimedia designer and recently I was send an AI logo by a coworker instead of doing it myself (it was a new section for social media that suddenly needed a visual identity of it's own and they suggested trying AI). Of course we didn't use it, of course the logo didn't fit the brand identity, of course it didn't work as a logo!! But I felt so undervalued and violated somehow. The way the whole thing happened was just so disrespectful to my profession. They were like "hey look! i just tried making a logo with ai can we use it?" um fuck no, it looks awful and nothing like us. I truly hope there's light at the end of this tunnel. I love design but lately real life has been a struggle.
Art is the only thing that remains when civilizations crumble. It literally defines who we are today and who we were... it informs our ancient history and shapes our futures as a society. But there will be a historic gap between the 2020s-2080s of original art, music, writing, photos, etc. – like a blackened tree ring documenting a past forest fire...
Few families delight in their children declaring they are going to be artists. :-) Historically, making a living as such has always been tough... The global theft of all original works to create the very AI that kills your job? I suppose it feels very on brand for the times...
But when society becomes bored with the empty calories of endless Ghibli profile pics, Jesus embracing Charlie Kirk, or Trump dressed as superman – and craves something real?
We will have taken our art – and moved on. And it will take another generation to replace us...
Of course this has something to do with class and visibility in society. The replacement of cashiers with self-checkout systems does not spark public debates about the future of work. However, as soon as #AI threatens highly visible and well-paid professions, a societal discussion suddenly emerges. This illustrates how power and status shape public perceptions of automation: as long as only invisible workers are affected, society remains silent. Only when the elites face potential losses does the debate grow loud.
The murder of quality has triumphed. The mechanization and homogenization of humanity has brought this about. Sad……..
That “once sacred art form” furry anecdote is clearly trolling.
Maybe! Have seen comments on social media confirming similar things happening to them in erotic art communities. My read was that it contained truth, but the writer was self-effacing about it.
Like Brian states there's a whole subgenre of NSFW artists who made their money making those kinds of commissions and the Furry Community is not excluded. A lot of ordinary artists also made most of their money on NSFW art, because that's what many people wanted to pay for. That didn't mean it was their main focus.
To people who partake in the furry community fursonas etc. is a very personal thing. So it might very well be real. Not a furry btw, just interacted adjacently with that community.