This is mostly commentary on the state of Matthew's knowledge of AI tooling. You can use preprocessors, train your own text encoders, build pipelines to automat

This is mostly commentary on the state of Matthew's knowledge of AI tooling. You can use preprocessors, train your own text encoders, build pipelines to automate tasks that you might not want to dwell on so you can focus on art. AI is just another tool. Not everyone who uses a computer is an artist, but you'd be hard pressed to find an artist that doesn't use a computer who doesn't make it a point not to. When I think of the golden age of motion graphics (pfft), I'm not thinking about fleets of pale interns toiling in Adobe After Effects to produce choppy renders at the wrong resolutions because they're still clinging to their college MacBooks. I'm thinking about the analog system that After Effects was created as a digital, computerized abstraction of— Scanimate. And I think about the confluence of tech that enabled that and the people who seized upon a problem and solved it. It's entirely possible to do what these tools do completely manually and traditionally, but where are the high moral purists expressing disappointment in the spiritual weaklings who rely on computers to create art? When did doing become diminutive? I love that AI can break the individualization of struggle that some artists believe in, because what's really important is growth and evaluation. Matthew was successful, and now he's insulated and grumpy. He leaned into a strength that became his brand, and I think with how little he's left his comfort zone, this Ayn Rand phase was inevitable. He's not going to give it up and start over to prove he's a "real artist", but he'll tell people doing art in other ways (most of whom will not become successful or profitable but who still have done) that they're not legitimate for exploring differently. Art is still hard. You can't cram for art school. You have to be able to prove yourself, continuously, to your clients, your audience, your family, and yourself. Art is a pursuit in virtuosity of the fundamentals, even if other people don't like what or how you do it. And if Matthew stands by his message, then the people struggling under the disapproval of people like him who may not help you or want to see you succeed, and don't give up are doing exactly what forges an artist's spirit.