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You're projecting, and there are plenty of people in crafts who are using AI output as an input to their own works who are having a blast. AI images make amazin

You're projecting, and there are plenty of people in crafts who are using AI output as an input to their own works who are having a blast. AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs, and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on. These people just keep quiet about their use because of the witch hunts being persecuted by people who are afraid of change. AI use in creative fields is similar now to PEDs use in sports, except more ubiquitous.

dofm 21d ago
> You're projecting, No, I'm actually not. I'm an active creative portrait photographer and I take part in photographic communities with people much, much better than me, I am surrounded by dozens of gigging and working musicians, songwriters and composers in my friend group (and play a couple of instruments myself); I know painters and illustrators of great ability (though I am not that kind of artist). I listen to what people say and I talk with them about how they feel about it. > AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs, I fully, fully disagree. I think using AI images in this way — for collage or moodboard — is ruining the point. It dilutes the value. I do know some photographers who haven't yet figured this out, unfortunately, but they will. Letting an AI image into your collage or inspiration for another piece of work is just opting out of a creative choice; you might as well place a grey rectangle, because that is what it is. > and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it. AI content might have some value as placeholder but even then you have to be careful that the prototype does not go into production. I'm also aware of someone who used AI images to generate a series of test prints for her new alternative process printing practice, precisely to make sure that her test prints never had any accidental value — it makes it essentially compulsory for her to destroy them when they have served their purpose. I have no particular problem with them being used as a more varied alternative to a step wedge like that, but the point is this: AI generated creative works have zero value. Anyone who is seriously involved in creativity knows that even replacing something that is working against you with something that has no value either way is probably a bad idea. And putting out work that has this absolute zero value does you more harm than bad work. It's way better to try and fail than not to try. Think for example of all the ambitious, earnest failures of movies you've seen; would any of them have been materially improved by AI? > AI use in creative fields is similar now to PEDs use in sports, except more ubiquitous. You were saying that you thought it was an "amazing" tool, and now you are saying it's like drug-assisted cheating? I think you still have some of the internal work to do.
- CuriouslyC 21d ago
  > AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it. So, your answer to "people are doing a thing" is to just say "no they're not! NANANANA can't hear you!" Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds, so your claim that AI outputs can't inspire artists is farcical. You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up.
  - dofm 21d ago
    > Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds I don't think you really understand how this very concept undermines your argument. If I saw an artist making creative non-AI work critiquing AI, or even using AI to pointedly critique AI, I would feel differently about that. But I don't think you understand the core concepts here at all. > You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up. This AI industry wizard-of-nihilism tosh gets so old. I am sure you think you're wise and informed and on some kind of nihilist high ground for saying it, though.
    - CuriouslyC 21d ago
      No wizardry involved friend, it's pretty clear to see from the way things are playing out now and the history of technological innovation/automation. You are 100% an old man waiving his fist at clouds/time, you will go down just like the scribes and the luddites and the buggy drivers and the portrait painters and the elevator operators. You can make arguments for preferring life before the change, but the change is happening and not accepting it is only self destructive.
      - dofm 21d ago
        And you thought you could criticise me on bias? :-) This is little more than tropes fresh from the blender. (If you read many of my other posts, you will perhaps see that I am a bit more pragmatically engaged with AI than you suggest.)
moron4hire 21d ago
I go to a lot of craft fairs and I've been seeing people using AI to make their banners or book covers or detail designs on mugs and such. Here are people playing a "support local creators" line and they won't support their own local graphic designers. There was one booth two shows ago that I particularly remember as it was selling "paintings" of pastoral scenes and wild life, "painted" on to log slices. This is a fairly common craft you might see at such events, but this particular booth was gluing an AI generated image printed on some kind of paper and then slapping it with a coat of texturing medium to give it a paint brush effect. Disgusting. Selfish. Dishonest. Churlish. This is what craft is becoming. A pink sludge chicken mcnugget of cynical capitalist exploitation.
- dofm 21d ago
  I am a 3D printing maker type nerd (I make my own tools for other creative tasks, rather than as their own outcomes) and I saw an incredible youtube video about 3D printed (flexi-dragon etc.) slop at US craft fairs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDPzHLDjYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDPzHLDjYY She is so exasperated by it that she's unable to draw a conclusion, and I think that is actually the biggest problem with creative dishonesty on this scale. It is numbing. Everyone knows that it is happening, everyone is clear that it is bad. But there is a paradox: serious-minded artists do use tools, of course. They also have an instinct about ways tool use would be dishonest. But they are introspective and they are often aware that their pragmatic use of a tool might be another's dishonesty. And they want to be inclusive, to build their "scene". So actually there is less speaking out about it directly than there might be. And what that enables is this ever worsening bad-faith use of low-effort tools. The fact that the people selling the flexi dragons at craft fairs just bought them in bulk on Temu is the hilarious exasperating end point of it. I think AI has made it more urgent for artists to speak out, sooner. It has made me even more acutely aware that even though I make my own tools for my own creative projects (lo-fi and niche photographic tools, mostly), the fact that bits are 3D printed is probably interesting only to me or to others who want to make their own tools for their own work; the fact that CAD and 3D printing liberated my idea from its prison in my brain is something I must not let myself think is an end goal. The end goal is elsewhere.
- someguynamedq 21d ago

dofm 21d ago

> You're projecting, No, I'm actually not. I'm an active creative portrait photographer and I take part in photographic communities with people much, much better than me, I am surrounded by dozens of gigging and working musicians, songwriters and composers in my friend group (and play a couple of instruments myself); I know painters and illustrators of great ability (though I am not that kind of artist). I listen to what people say and I talk with them about how they feel about it. > AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs, I fully, fully disagree. I think using AI images in this way — for collage or moodboard — is ruining the point. It dilutes the value. I do know some photographers who haven't yet figured this out, unfortunately, but they will. Letting an AI image into your collage or inspiration for another piece of work is just opting out of a creative choice; you might as well place a grey rectangle, because that is what it is. > and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it. AI content might have some value as placeholder but even then you have to be careful that the prototype does not go into production. I'm also aware of someone who used AI images to generate a series of test prints for her new alternative process printing practice, precisely to make sure that her test prints never had any accidental value — it makes it essentially compulsory for her to destroy them when they have served their purpose. I have no particular problem with them being used as a more varied alternative to a step wedge like that, but the point is this: AI generated creative works have zero value. Anyone who is seriously involved in creativity knows that even replacing something that is working against you with something that has no value either way is probably a bad idea. And putting out work that has this absolute zero value does you more harm than bad work. It's way better to try and fail than not to try. Think for example of all the ambitious, earnest failures of movies you've seen; would any of them have been materially improved by AI? > AI use in creative fields is similar now to PEDs use in sports, except more ubiquitous. You were saying that you thought it was an "amazing" tool, and now you are saying it's like drug-assisted cheating? I think you still have some of the internal work to do.

CuriouslyC 21d ago
> AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it. So, your answer to "people are doing a thing" is to just say "no they're not! NANANANA can't hear you!" Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds, so your claim that AI outputs can't inspire artists is farcical. You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up.
- dofm 21d ago
  > Musicians have claimed to take inspiration from things like water dripping from a leaky faucet and machine sounds I don't think you really understand how this very concept undermines your argument. If I saw an artist making creative non-AI work critiquing AI, or even using AI to pointedly critique AI, I would feel differently about that. But I don't think you understand the core concepts here at all. > You're obviously biased beyond the point of being able to share in a nuanced discourse, the next few years are gonna be SO rough for you, sorry to say. Buckle up. This AI industry wizard-of-nihilism tosh gets so old. I am sure you think you're wise and informed and on some kind of nihilist high ground for saying it, though.
  - CuriouslyC 21d ago
    No wizardry involved friend, it's pretty clear to see from the way things are playing out now and the history of technological innovation/automation. You are 100% an old man waiving his fist at clouds/time, you will go down just like the scribes and the luddites and the buggy drivers and the portrait painters and the elevator operators. You can make arguments for preferring life before the change, but the change is happening and not accepting it is only self destructive.
    - dofm 21d ago
      And you thought you could criticise me on bias? :-) This is little more than tropes fresh from the blender. (If you read many of my other posts, you will perhaps see that I am a bit more pragmatically engaged with AI than you suggest.)

moron4hire 21d ago

I go to a lot of craft fairs and I've been seeing people using AI to make their banners or book covers or detail designs on mugs and such. Here are people playing a "support local creators" line and they won't support their own local graphic designers. There was one booth two shows ago that I particularly remember as it was selling "paintings" of pastoral scenes and wild life, "painted" on to log slices. This is a fairly common craft you might see at such events, but this particular booth was gluing an AI generated image printed on some kind of paper and then slapping it with a coat of texturing medium to give it a paint brush effect. Disgusting. Selfish. Dishonest. Churlish. This is what craft is becoming. A pink sludge chicken mcnugget of cynical capitalist exploitation.

dofm 21d ago
I am a 3D printing maker type nerd (I make my own tools for other creative tasks, rather than as their own outcomes) and I saw an incredible youtube video about 3D printed (flexi-dragon etc.) slop at US craft fairs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDPzHLDjYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDPzHLDjYY She is so exasperated by it that she's unable to draw a conclusion, and I think that is actually the biggest problem with creative dishonesty on this scale. It is numbing. Everyone knows that it is happening, everyone is clear that it is bad. But there is a paradox: serious-minded artists do use tools, of course. They also have an instinct about ways tool use would be dishonest. But they are introspective and they are often aware that their pragmatic use of a tool might be another's dishonesty. And they want to be inclusive, to build their "scene". So actually there is less speaking out about it directly than there might be. And what that enables is this ever worsening bad-faith use of low-effort tools. The fact that the people selling the flexi dragons at craft fairs just bought them in bulk on Temu is the hilarious exasperating end point of it. I think AI has made it more urgent for artists to speak out, sooner. It has made me even more acutely aware that even though I make my own tools for my own creative projects (lo-fi and niche photographic tools, mostly), the fact that bits are 3D printed is probably interesting only to me or to others who want to make their own tools for their own work; the fact that CAD and 3D printing liberated my idea from its prison in my brain is something I must not let myself think is an end goal. The end goal is elsewhere.
someguynamedq 21d ago