Talked to a tattoo artist who uses AI for flash designs and it made me reconsider

I was at a shop in Austin last month waiting for a friend to get ink, and the artist showed me how he uses Midjourney to generate flash ideas. He said it helps him break out of his usual style, like he feeds it some keywords and gets 30 weird variations in two minutes. He still redraws everything by hand before tattooing, but the AI gives him a starting point he wouldn't have thought of alone. That hit different because most people I know say AI art is just theft or lazy, but this guy was clearly adding his own skill on top of it. He told me "it's just another tool, like a reference photo from Google, but faster." I'm still not sure where I land on the fairness side of things, but seeing a working artist use it without any guilt made me question my own hard stance. Has anyone else watched a pro use AI in a way that didn't feel cheap or wrong?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_wendy1mo ago

Did you happen to catch that article a few weeks ago about the guy who won a tattoo competition using an AI-designed piece? It was in some industry magazine, not a big news site. The judges didn't even know until after, and they said the final tattoo was pure skill because he had to adapt all the AI's bad anatomy and weird lighting. That story stuck with me because it showed AI is just a messy start, not the end product. Your artist buddy sounds the same way, using it like a fancy sketchbook prompt instead of a crutch. I think where it gets sketchy is when people try to sell the AI image as their own, but using it to break out of a creative block feels way different.

sean_green441mo ago

Buddy used it for a flash idea. Still drew the whole thing by hand after.

pat_stone1mo ago

Wait, @the_wendy, what was that magazine called? Sounds like a good read, and I'm curious if the artist got any heat for it after the fact lol.