Being able to create art “mentally” but not having the ability to physically do so is such a ridiculous concept.

Just being able to imagine something does not make you an artist.

First of all, I‘m not your mister. Your foreseen outcome is not only cult-like, but also a short-sighted pipe dream, bound to blow up in anyones face pigheaded enough to truly believe this. Anyone who only believes that, just like the original poster, is either blissfully unaware or purposefully setting aside reality. These programs are backed by huge corporations, who, like corporations usually do, tread over anyone and everything to get their wanted results.

While this scenario is admittedly (and hopefully will be) still far away from reality, but certainly in it’s birthing stage; the end result will not be „being freed from slavery“, the end result will look dystopian, where a constant, ai-generated and curated feedback loop of your interests are fed back to you by a megacorporation, to distract you from working and contributing and making you a mindless blot that infinitely consumes media from a privately owned station at will. You are not in slavery for having to work, but ironically, you will be put into slavery by the very thing you attempt at trying to play off as a „good“ thing. The Bourgeoisie like the World Economic Forum have already made their intentions clear with statements like; „You will own nothing, and you will be happy.“

In a perfect world, AI could serve to improve the artists work, serve to aid them or prove to make certain tasks easier, possibly for handicapped or otherwise disabled people. But you and your peers do not aim for this sort of outlook. Like the original commentator, you also would tread over your own colleagues, blinded by the consequences of overindulgence, it is embarrassing, really.

What is more embarrassing however is your total lack of understanding what a meritocracy is, but trying to downplay an artists struggle. To view a „merit“ in arts is cynical at best, and in your case, downright malicious at worst. „Just as it is pointless to criticize people for their lack of meritocracy in choosing their lovers, merit has no place in fine arts. A price of an artwork does not point to anything but to itself.“ Art in its purest form is not meritocratic, it is the people around them who value art as it is. And more commonly now, in modern forms of social media like Twitter, art communities have formed creative fields, whose base is not on its merit, but because of its subjective beauty. Sure, you could argue that by gaining likes and followers through recognition this can also seen as a merit, but all it serves it to prove the talented craftsmanship of the artist. And also very often salesmanship, as artist usually are most aware, and get rewarded for being exceptionally well at something (as anyone with a talent should).

But to return to your previous statement about being unhappy about having to pay $100 for each drawing. This only goes to show that you are possibly either a child, or you have never had experience in working a real job in the first place, neither of which would surprise me considering how bafflingly egotistical and crude you have to be to make such a statement. Receiving personalized art is a luxury. There is no gain except personal gratification. This luxury also comes with the fact that mosts artists that charge these prices are spending more than several hours per piece, and most of the time are well open to changing particular things you might not enjoy. Paying $100 is not only acceptable for a personal luxury, but prices can differentiate per artist. However I know this comment came out of a point of malicious intent, so I don‘t blame you for trying to make something as basic as „being paid for your hard work“ seem ill-intentioned by the artists, especially since you probably have never worked a talent-oriented job yourself.

There is no such thing as „mentally“ being an artist, it just proves you are not only creatively, but also morally bankrupt, as you have never felt the rewarding review of your own art, and want to replace your lack of sense with a robot to generate a bunch of scenarios in brutalist architecture for you to call „liminal“, and for some reason, trying to desperately push this fake sense of completion onto everyone else. My personal recommendation to you, personally; pick up a pencil and just draw whatever is on your mind. It might not look as great as your little AI imagery, but it will certainly feel nice!

To imply that the artist „steals“ from others like the AI does is simply not true. The fact that nothing is created from 0 is infact true, it is a statement that can be made for any sort of scenario, whether it be technology or any other mechanical advancements. You however, fail to realize the fact that the profit organizations behind the AI programs are not using imagery in the same way an artist is possible to, legally or even virtually accessible to, as the datasets used have proven to have personal images of peoples faces, private medical images and pictures normally hidden in said datasets. But on an arts and nature based response, AI is only able to replicate images by its exact datasets and its nessecary references. The artist uses reference to collect and transform images and use it to create original pieces. No matter how many pieces of Picasso the artist has to look at, he will never be able to exactly recreate Picasso without confusion. AI is trained on this exactly, to replicate and memorize. Whilst the human artist uses other images to transform and create in their own very often original means. To call it „stealing“ is a disoriented statement on its own. Within context of your comment, it is once again demeaning.

Your techno-utopian future is one that is held by companies, shady businessmen and „capped profit“ organizations, who when given an inch, will take a mile. You see artmakimg as this tedious, expensive chore, however anyone with enough experience understands that it is not. You are distracting yourself with the impossible idea of a future where people have to suffer so YOU can get what you want. But in the end, it is not ever about the replacement, it is about the people behind the replacement. and their agendas.

Many forms of media like Wall-E and Cyberpunk 2077 (to name the most well known ones) have already proven technological overadvancements lead by ill-intentioned corporations and its dystopian consequences. You should brief these medias before making badly thought out statements, or sign Equity‘s petition to make AI an even playing field for everyone, hopefully in the future aswell.