"Listen." (Art by Maddiebiscuits)

Honestly, LinkedIn influencers aside, AI art seems to be dominated by two types of people

Techies. Not "tech bros", like people genuinely excited about the technology. They often create AI art as a way to better understand the technology, push the limits of what is possible, and produce art that exists in their head, but they wouldn't otherwise have the skill to create.
Degenerate gooners. Basically they've spent so much of their life gooning that they've come to hate the current state of online porn. Not like in a "I need a weirder fetish" sort of way, but in a "modern porn is often low effort, and you have to sift through a lot of crap to find something you like". They work tirelessly to adapt AI image models that weren't meant for any sort of nudity into their own personal spankbank generators. They are also extremely willing to share all their tricks and tuning, because their idea of a perfect world is where everyone has their ability to casually generate personalized porn.

The two things those groups have in common is that they aren't making money, and they put in hours and hours a day to perfect their craft. I don't know if I would call it art, but I would definitely say those people can do things a layman can't.

and I'm glad that neither of those groups are in it for the money and mostly just treat it as a hobby (or pastime) and acknowledge that sharing information freely helps themselves and others.

This same argument happened 200 years ago after the invention of photography.

They saw photography merely as a thoughtless mechanism for replication, one that lacked, “that refined feeling and sentiment which animate the productions of a man of genius,”

Photography couldn’t qualify as an art in its own right, the explanation went, because it lacked “something beyond mere mechanism at the bottom of it.”

https://daily.jstor.org/when-photography-was-not-art/

And where are we today? 99.999999% of photos are taken by people with their own phones for free, when they want something cheap and quick.
It's the same with AI. If I want AI generated art, I'll just do it myself. And it's only getting easier and cheaper and better.
To say there's money in the future of AI art is like saying there's money in photography. I.e very infrequent, very specialized, where quality is a premium.
- Yep! That was my point.
  I was going along with the other poster who said the argument was a straw man. Because no one thinks there is easy money in AI art.

No, but it does empower solo indie creators to do something beyond that. Like a dude who’s a solo programmer can now make a reasonably okay looking game without dipping into “programmer art”.

Obviously once their game gets enough traction they should pay a real artist to do it right but it’s not a bad idea to prove the concept first using low effort AI art.

As someone with a game collection so large I won't able to finish in two lifetimes, game art is important enough to make me decide for a game and not for another one.
It is so true that certain games do not reach wider audiences because their art style is not as skilled as in other projects.
I find AI art derivative, mediocre and dull. It IS of surprising quality and at the same time incredibly boring. And I feel this blob of grey will increase as it becomes standardized and more AI art games become the norm.
Corollary: If someone shows you a picture made by AI and tells you nothing but to rate it, you'll probably just shrug.
- Yes, but you can’t have professional art during the whole process of development. It’s far more efficient for a solo dev to test first before paying an artist to make the final assets.
  Game development is so chaotic, I’ve seen people throw away thousands of dollars of art because it turns out the game never needed those assets in the first place.
Show me an example of even an okayish solo made game with ai "art".
- I think we are still waiting for those, and let's see how much ai AAAA games will end up using. I expect it will be much less than the hype says.
No, but it does empower solo indie creators to do something beyond that. Like a dude who’s a solo programmer can now make a reasonably okay looking game without dipping into “programmer art”.
Source (Bluesky)
https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-consumers-turned-off-products-ai

AI is a glorified paint bucket in MSPaint. If there's an automated task, it can help.

Tools for coloring, shading, even cleaning up sketches are all things digital artists have had at their disposal. Adjusting hues, contrast, saturation, etc. Drawing in blue and just screening it out with a filter is a nice technique.

That's the stuff AI can actually be useful for.

That said I don't think good works of art tend to feature prominent use of the MS Paint bucket.

Good post but I don't see how it is anti ai at all