> As a counterpoint, though, I note that I've done some work on language generation and that, too, is something that can engage the user, and can be almost as r

> As a counterpoint, though, I note that I've done some work on language generation and that, too, is something that can engage the user, and can be almost as rewarding as e.g. writing a story. Though that's much more so if the language generator is your own piece of work. Writing fiction is my thing, and I've seriously considered using AI to generate descriptive passages and other relative "filler" as a force multiplier. Either way, I'd be interested to see how well I could get a model to imitate my style. I think I'm waiting until it's easy to run a GPT-3-class thing locally, which IIUC isn't currently the case. I don't like building workflows that rely on "cloud" stuff. "Force multiplier" is the key, though. Another example might be somebody writing a story and then using AI to generate illustrations for it. I can also imagine future image generation AI allowing much finer control over the results, which would (IMO) make it much more akin to photography (and legitimize some of those arguments that have been popping up everywhere, including in this thread). Letting the computer provide the vision and direction as well as the technique is fun, for sure. I had a lot of fun with Stable Diffusion. But it's as you say—the current state of the art is highly imitative, and I think these capabilities will ultimately frustrate serious creators of art and serious consumers of it.