As an independent digital artist who works with a combination of stop motion, 3D animation, photography and film, I have found AI a useful tool to aid and enhance my work, the problem is that there seems to be a huge amount of fear in the digital art world about AI. I have even been attacked on line for work that had not used AI but some stupid people assumed it was. The borders are becoming blurred and confused. AI is not going away, I would recommend independent digital artists think about using these tools to speed up their workflow and help them produce work faster. The future will be full of people who ignored AI tools out of fear and people who used it to help them be competitive, who do you think will last? I still plan to create original art, photography and film and I also plan to use AI to help me survive against the big corporations who do not value original art and will opt for the cheapest source of content. So in summery let AI help you as a tool to enhance and accelerate your workflow but let your true artist be the ultimate creator of what you produce.

My thoughts on AI: AI has its place. But we need to be aware that using it does limit our creativity and thinking, and the need to learn on our own. Manual digital art requires learning and putting more effort (physical and mental). On top of this, AI doesn't have impressions of the real world. Only we observe it directly and make our impressions of what something makes us feel and how we perceive it. AI doesn't have any access to this currently. It only takes people's art or pictures, and after processing them it would attempt to alter them to look like something else. It simply glues together various paintings or pictures (not ideally at all) and often you can still see them there, everything is just 'digested' by the AI. But without understanding. For example, we know what human hands do and what they are used for, but artificial intelligence sees them only as shapes, not physical objects, so it often twists them in unnatural ways. The same thing it does with books or articles. It takes what people made and digests it to look like something else without understanding what they speak about. The core is still man-made. AI can't create. We don't produce the substance (we aren't God), but in our minds we create new things that aren't there, impressions of what we see. And it's not based on just copying others. For example, Tolkien was inspired by the harsh world surrounding him most likely, or his life in general, so he started creating his own original world & lore. It started as something he knew from real life perhaps, but later he refined it, expanded it, and started to create & build lore on his own, far beyond simply copying and smashing things together (what AI does). A whole new world with complex details and continuity. We also combine things we see in creative ways. Like we make fairies out of human bodies and insect wings. But we aren't just producing products, as we are creators. And unlike AI, we attach meaning and try to understand the work we work on. Sometimes we give it its own life and biology (like with fairies) and lore and all. Above all, there is one main issue with AI, and it may never change. AI work looks artificial and is going to look artificial. Most won't tell, but there is a difference. If you draw on your own using lines guided by your hand, then there are going to be additional elements and imperfections. Our lines are influenced by various chaotic factors, and we make so many of them. This way something unique is made, even if we tried to copy someone else's work (whereas AI would just copy it 100% perfectly). Over time, as the AI grows more popular, people are going to value this imperfect part just as "handmade" quality is valued more already. It can actually become more pricey in the future, with not many putting the effort needed to create on their own. Everything AI made is going to end up feeling alike (through the popularity and commonness of it), whereas purely man-made work is going to start standing out. Currently, better results are going to come from a mixed approach (handmade + costly AI programs), not just pure AI. But I don't believe that 100% handmade would be gone; artists would simply have to focus on making their work distinct from the artificial and 'proper' looking AI stuff. Personally, I'm using some AI to make a few parts of my work easier. It is nice to upscale reference pictures, for example. But I'm putting effort into making most or all lines fully manually, with no settings to straighten them or make certain shapes "perfect". As there is a value in drawing imperfectly and the final result is appreciated more. Perfection has its place in clothing designs, but in other areas, manual work can pay off as well.

I am thankful that when AI got its big boom in the past year or so that I already had a few years worth of paintings under my belt. I saw a lot of my peers get discouraged or even just straight up quit around that time. One thing that stuck with me out of all the AI doomposting conversations i've read is that I think it will affect the next generation of artists a lot more than it will affect us. When you don't have a paper trail of proof that you've took the time to learn your craft than anything you post could come into question if it's legitimate or not. As of right now it's still pretty easy to tell apart AI art from human drawn artwork but that may not always be the case. I worry for future generations of artists even if I'm not necessarily all that experienced myself in the grand scheme of things. Thank you for sharing your thoughts I think it'd be really cool to have a place like the old forum days. I know discords are really popular right now and you can get a lot of people to group up pretty easily in there. Or even just bringing back those old forums would be nice. I know a lot of artists, myself included, don't always have the time for discord so having a forum that's slower might be more ideal I think that moving forward there will be more value tied to the artist and their personal creations than to commercial work. That might be the new wave is to pursue those ideas you've always had in the back of your mind and show people something that they never knew they wanted Side note I remember back in around 2016 I saw A9 and always wanted one but never had the means to get one. Plus I was way too much of an amateur to justify getting one back then lol I got one this Christmas and it's already been pretty invaluable to me. Thank you for all your hard work on these it ended up being everything I hoped it would

Well, I'm not afraid by AI as I already choose to move out of art as a professional field in 2015 😂 reason : working for independant studios as a jack-of-all-trade made me less valuable on the market as every field become more and more specific. That broke my spirit more than I want to admit it, in a way the industry I loved made me outdated and unable to catch up. Too many unfair opponent. I really turned my back to art for a few years but a creative mind cannot deny its nature. Then with my non-artistic job paying the bills, I could afford the time and spend money were I wanted without stress. Magically I returned to my first goal, got big improvment after a couple years of training, now I am finally in position to produce for myself and by myself but very slowly. And bim, AI become a thing and suddenly I'm not a jack master of none, but master of all ! Definitely looking forward what AI is going to become. Oh, also my non-art field is one in first line to be replaced by AI 😂 and I think it's a good thing. Because software development is everywhere but cheap labor and cheap quality is a threat to anything. If AI can prevent data leaking, or stealing, by doing a better job than humans, all for the best !

I was talking to my coworker about ai. And unfortunately everything is heading towards automation. Not just with art but alot of high paying jobs are being replaced by ai. Anybody who writes, codes, draws, mathematicians, CEO's anyone who uses a computer for work because ai can do those jobrs cheaper. My coworker told me most likely in 5 to 10 years we will see mass unemployment. And people who were making 50 to 100k a year will have to settle for jobs making 20k a year. They will probably introduce ubi universal basic income. Because people wont have to work anymore. It will be like the movie Wally were machines do everything for us. And it will be considered unsafe to use humans when machines can do the job more safely.

Honestly I hate AI, i just graduated from college with the intent to get into the art side of the game industry. And having AI show up RIGHT when i graduated has caused me to have a fair number of existential crisises. I think AI is fundamentally different then the introduction of photography. Photography still takes alot of work to create and capture good photos. With lighting, composition, arenging the subject matter, etc. Its faster then a painting for sure, but its still a human doing it. Ai on the other hand doesnt have human input in creating. At most its far closer to the relationship between a comissioner and an artist. Where the comissioner tells the artist what they want, the artist makes it, then the comissioner potentially asks for revisions. The art was not made by the comissioner even if it was prompted by them to the artists. So having AI user say they created the art feels disingenuous to me. This also doesnt touch on how much shady buisness practices went into the creation of the data sets for most AI. Scraping images without permission of the artist to then make something for a profit is abhorent to me.

I think A.I. is cool but just because i think its cool doesn't mean im going to ignore the problems that it brings and the people how would benefit from such mass amount of theft in the name of progress.