> It has become standard to describe A.I. as a tool. I argue that this framing is incorrect. It does not aid in the completion of a task. It completes the task

> It has become standard to describe A.I. as a tool. I argue that this framing is incorrect. It does not aid in the completion of a task. It completes the task for you. A modern camera automates a lot of tasks that were manual for older cameras, which in turn automate a lot of tasks that would be involved painting the scene by hand. Sometimes it's useful to work at the higher level allowed by automation, and sometimes it's useful to have fine-grained creative control. These aren't mutually exclusive - you can/should mix approaches where appropriate. I think the author sees "AI" as solely "a button one can push that spits out images", which can be the case, but there's also image-to-image, ControlNets/T2I adapters, LoRAs, inpainting, etc. A lot of generative AI image creation workflows involve an initial solid-color sketch followed by image-to-image refining with a low diffusion strength, which allows exerting an arbitrary level of control.