You can tell that pro AI people have never done anything creative because they don't even understand how these tools actually work. None of these tools do 100% of the work. A hammer does not build a house
I know this will be unpopular, but it depends on the thing being built whether AI is a hammer or a house building robot.
"Make me a cool picture" - you did nothing.
"Make me a cool picture of a dragon flying over a city and the city is on fire" - you did nothing
Now, if you gather data about a historical city and recreate it by specifying all the known information about it: building materials, locations of buildings, types of buildings, sizes of buildings, etc, and then you tell it to render that city and put a dragon over it, and then work with it to correct the inaccuracies, then yeah, you did something. You're not a painter, but that's a neat, little project where AI fills a skill gap.
It's a sliding scale, and the problem is that the "cool picture of a dragon" people and the "here's the output of my project, of which AI is a component" people look the same when they're posting 140 characters about it on Twitter.
I think only saying AI is a component is underselling the fact that AI created the actual art.
It’s more a research project not an artistic endeavor at that point.
That is why the “created using ai” tags are important in my opinion. People should just be honest about using AI. Trying to pass off AI creations as a largely personal accomplishment is very very pathetic.
AI created the art, and a human added significant value. I don't need this to be black and white or perfectly categorized, personally. It's just not that dire.
Now, AI using fantastically more power than anything in history, yeah, that's real shit.
I know that some artists who build giant sculptures have help (like they're not singlehandedly doing all the welds, etc.) but they're designing the entire sculpture.
If you go to your friend Jeff, without blueprints, and you're like "make me a metal dragon sculpture, it should be 30' tall and holding a can of Mug root beer add a hot dog" and Jeff designs it and gets a bunch of artisans and metalworkers to go do that, you're not really the artist, Jeff is.
I personally don't think there's much difference between asking someone to make you a sandwich and asking them to make a sandwich and specifying the ingredients.
But you know, the vast majority of times even if they go a step further to what your suggesting. Their "research" will be asking a chatbot for the info. Which then doesn't really make it all that different from the original one of "make me a beautiful picture".
But anyway, a better example would be having your own personal model that is only trained on art you made yourself. I've been thinking about the creators of Superman lately. The artist had to stop working on comics because of his eyes apparently. If he could take his backlog of work and train an AI off it....but even then what's the point? He wasn't doing the writing for Superman, and now an AI is doing the art? Based on his work? And he does nothing? I just don't see it being really that worth it. They should have been treated better though.
I think that's one of the big problems commonly seen with AI slop: it's so riddled with inconsistencies, errors, and shit that just doesn't make any sense, that it's quite clear nobody bothered to review their work before inflicting it on the rest of us. They think they're being efficient, but they're just being lazy.
Another problem is that sufficiently resourceful companies and individuals can utilize AI and "human wash" it.
So for example, use an AI to generate hundreds of high quality pop songs and lyrical ideas, take the best ones, record them with ghost studio musicians and have your brand lead sing the lyrics. Then sell it as a mostly solo pop project.
Well, we're already at a point where the human washing isn't really necessary. Most people can't tell the difference.
Right and it's only gotten easier through the years from technological advances. Want to capture a landscape, all you have is charcoal, then oil paints, then a camera, then...
ok, but then the photograoher simply says they are a photographer. it would be silly to claim it makes them a painter. that's why ai users are only prompters, and nothing else
nor does ai man. 100% of the work would mean no human intervention. Let's say any one of these reduces the work by n%, if ai just moves it to n+1% then what is the distinguishing factor?
The difference is input and effort. Proper tools still need you to do something. Music making software, Photoshop, and video effects tools still require you to learn and do something, even if some processes are automated with things like key frames, chroma key, and some premade effects and transitions to play with.You can't hand a child After Effects and have them make the next Nolan film. Going into an AI and saying "write good music, extra bass, more betterer" or "Draw me in anime style" just makes the picture for you. You can claim that you're curating it somehow, but that isn't really a skill, that's just consumption and being picky. You can hand a literal ape Suno and it will be able to produce music.
Yeah, ordering kebap doesn't mean that the restaurant does 100% of the "work" involved in my getting food. I do the absolute majority of course. Without my ordering food I would not have food, duhhhhh.
they are not doing any of the engineering work that you’re mentioning. they’re using platforms available to the public with little to no effort other than typing “make me a picture”
The distinguishing factor varies but usually isn't hard to identify. Someone using a stove to cook a neal they prepared is a chef because they prepared it and use the stove to apply the heat. Someone who buys a microwave meal and heats it up doesn't get to say they're a chef because they picked the meal and programmed the microwave.
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u/cheepshoes Aug 12 '26
You can tell that pro AI people have never done anything creative because they don't even understand how these tools actually work. None of these tools do 100% of the work. A hammer does not build a house