1: AI doesn't even make art well. This isn't an argument, this is a fact. Ask *any* artist or designer or hell even an engineer will be able to tell you that AI doesn't do art well. Anatomy mistakes, bizarre design "choices," missing or out-of-place details, physical impossibilities, historical inaccuracies, eldritch abominations that man can't truly understand just casually in the middle of a garden. The list goes on. AI *can't* make a good, polished piece of art. It just can't.
2: AI art is soulless. The "artist" didn't pour their soul or effort into the piece they "made." They just put some text into a box. Why does this matter? Because they didn't actually make any fundamental decisions. Those micro decisions you make in the process of art, the ways your muscles tend to draw a particular line, the little pieces of effort and soul that you imbue into the piece, none of those are present. And those things are essentially an artist's fingerprint. They make art more than just lines on a page, it makes it art. Emotions, feelings, intentions, decisions, all of these things are what makes art, art. AI isn't comparable to using the circle tool on procreate, because the circle tool is a choice, and knowing when to use it and why you have to use it is also a part of your soul. Not to mention all of the other aspects of the art piece that is wholly yours. This isn't even comparable to commissions, because you typically have a level of communication with the actual artist and are able to make decisions during the process. No, this is more comparable to typing a comment on TikTok, and then a random artist sees that comment and then replies to that comment with their art. And then, you have the fucking audacity to call it yours? It's not your art, it's not your soul, it's not your effort. And if it's not your soul, than who's? Not a person, that's for sure. AI isn't making "decisions" or "choices." It's just an overly complicated function. You wouldn't say that your calculator "imbues soul" when it adds 2+2. So, if the AI isn't adding soul, and the one inputting text isn't either, than the piece of "art" must be soulless. And if it's soulless, it's not really art. You don't have to be good at art to give it soul, you just have to try, to feel, to desire, and to choose. And AI art, doesn't do any of that.
3: AI art is stealing. The actual artists getting used to make an algorithm to replace them isn't getting paid. "What about humans? They look at art and get inspiration!" Your first mistake was comparing AI to humans. Don't worry, I made this mistake once too. In actuality, AI is just an algorithm. It isn't "getting inspiration" like an actual artist might when they scroll through Pinterest. No. AI isn't a person. AI is an algorithm that takes an input. When a factory needs wood to make chairs, they pay the people where they got the wood from. When the AI needs art to make mere imitations of human ingenuity, they should pay the people they got that art from. This isn't rocket science, this is theft. AI shouldn't be opt out. You don't just cut down trees from some dudes house to make chairs just because, "they didn't opt out." That's obviously an invasion of rights. AI should be opt in, otherwise it's just mass theft.
4: AI is redundant. AI can't innovate, not really. By definition it can only copy other artists, and make a form of average of them. If you image art to be a circle, with all of the styles of art on the circumference, then AI can only ever pick from inside that circle. AI couldn't really make an image in the style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse before that movie came out. You could try to list all of the different attributes of that style, but the more specific you get with AI the consistently worse AI performs. So, what crazy and innovative styles are we going to miss out on, because tech bros are hell bent on using AI for everything? We still need artists to create art, to innovate, to invent, because otherwise AI can't improve. If no one makes art because they're too scared of AI, then AI is just going to eat itself up and blip into obscurity, because humans are creatures of variety. We can't have too much of the same thing, the same style, the same world, because we get bored. We get antsy. We get annoyed. So AI fundamentally cannot exist without artists.
And here's the thing, if you still need artists, why even have the objectively worse quality, soulless, morally dubious, piece of redundant middle man? Anyone that doesn't have cash for brains would recognize that AI is objectively the worse option for anything trying to actually be good.
