I staunchly hate AI-generated art. The artwork from the first few years was messy and uncanny, but the recent influx of AI art looks very (some might say uncannily) hyperrealistic. In fact, some companies have even laid off a majority of human workers from their design teams in favor of AI art. As a result, human creativity and employment have been sacrificed in favor of a computer program that copies off other images.I can't find the thread, but I remember a while ago I posted an idea somewhere on this site (probably somewhere in the late Firebot) about a hypothetical machine that would scan your brain to automatically draw whatever you imagined, removing the barrier for those with big imaginations but without the talent to bring them to life in illustrated form. When I typed that up, it was total science fiction to me, an ethereal concept centuries away.
I could've never imagined that dream device, or even something akin to it, was right around the corner.
This is the first of these AI projects to leave me truly floored and tingling with excitement. The implications of this are unreal and I myself probably haven't even scratched the surface of how this'll change creative work forever. Even the most artistically inept (myself included) will be able to craft picture books, detailed posters and graphic novels. If/when this thing is fine-tuned to recognize pop culture characters, fanfiction and fanart will enter a whole new era. The most riveting advertisements and trailers will be made by typing it up into a word document.
As a webcomic artist on DeviantArt, I must contend with the possibility that many digital artists worldwide spend several days pouring their heart and soul into masterpieces that they wish to display, only to be upstaged by something that took an AI a few minutes to generate.