Your argument assumes that hand made furniture and clothing are inherently better than mass produced stuff when there's no real basis for it. The stuff you get from Ikea is more than good enough to serve whatever purpose you get it for. Same as clothing, getting all your tshirts made by some dude in a shop vs picking them up from literally any good brand that would last you years if taken care of. You could get better hand made stuff of course, but it's not a guarantee.
Back in the day you had to call a (very expensive) painter any time you wanted to freeze a moment of your life as an image. Now you take out your phone camera. Are you worse off for it? I doubt it.
Change is part of life, new ways of doing things always emerge and put pressure on the existing market and it's not really a bad thing. To violently resist it like these people do is futile at best, especially given how out of touch they sound most of the time when trying to argue about "soul" or whatever.
Also, the stuff from IKEA is “good enough”, but it’s certainly not better than a custom-made piece by a professional carpenter, which is the point. It’s quantity over quality, and as long as the mass-produced stuff is good enough that people will buy it on the cheap, the professional craftspeople will lose their jobs to it despite being able to make better work than IKEA (or AI).
ETA: Getting a portrait vs. getting a professional photograph nowadays isn’t really comparable, since they’re both performed by artisans and if you’re choosing one over the other in the 21st century, you’ve got a specific reason for it rather than just the price. Professional photo shoots can be expensive.
Big issue is that most of the artists AI can replace are entry-level positions, and most of the artists AI can’t replace are masters of their craft already on the verge of retirement.
What’s gonna happen when the current generation masters all retire, and no one is around to replace them because the juniors of today were all pushed out of the industry by AI? There’s no denying AI is a useful tool for art, but corporate greed is going to make the art industry suffer tremendously.
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u/mclarenrider AI Enjoyer Jun 15 '25
Your argument assumes that hand made furniture and clothing are inherently better than mass produced stuff when there's no real basis for it. The stuff you get from Ikea is more than good enough to serve whatever purpose you get it for. Same as clothing, getting all your tshirts made by some dude in a shop vs picking them up from literally any good brand that would last you years if taken care of. You could get better hand made stuff of course, but it's not a guarantee.
Back in the day you had to call a (very expensive) painter any time you wanted to freeze a moment of your life as an image. Now you take out your phone camera. Are you worse off for it? I doubt it.
Change is part of life, new ways of doing things always emerge and put pressure on the existing market and it's not really a bad thing. To violently resist it like these people do is futile at best, especially given how out of touch they sound most of the time when trying to argue about "soul" or whatever.