Can we talk about how AI art got a bad name before anyone even tried it?

Three years ago my friend Dana set up a booth at the Portland Saturday Market and sold hand painted pet portraits for $80 a pop, and last week she showed me an AI tool that does the same thing in about 40 seconds. I keep seeing people say it's not real art, but Dana uses it to make the first draft and then fixes the eyes herself, and her sales are up 30 percent since March. So is the problem the tool, or is it that we decided it was cheating before we ever watched someone use it well?

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the_drew8d ago

Man, I gotta disagree here. Dana fixing the eyes herself is doing most of the work, the tool just saves her some time on the rough draft, and that's a big difference from saying AI makes art. The bad name didn't come from nowhere either, people watched it get trained on artists' work without asking and then flood the market with cheap knockoffs, so the pushback was about real stuff, not just a vibe. Your friend sounds like she's using it smart, but one person using a tool well doesn't erase why folks got mad in the first place.

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