The thing people get wrong about AI art is the "effort" argument

I keep seeing people say that AI art takes no effort, but that's just not true from what I've seen. My buddy spent 3 hours tweaking prompts for a single image of a cat in a diner, trying to get the lighting right. He went through 40 versions before it looked halfway decent, and then he still had to fix the paws in Photoshop because AI can't do hands. Meanwhile I've watched digital artists spend 10 hours on a commission, so effort is relative. I think the real issue is people comparing raw AI output to finished human work, which isn't fair to either side. Why do we act like typing a few words is the final step instead of the starting point? Has anyone else noticed the same thing where people ignore all the trial and error behind a good AI piece?

3 comments

3 Comments

phoenix_bailey1mo ago

Does the trial and error part still count as real effort if the AI is doing most of the actual image-making work?

taraross1mo ago

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean by that. I had a buddy who spent a weekend messing with one of those AI art generators, trying to get it to make a picture of a cat in a space suit riding a unicycle. He must have typed in forty different prompts, tweaked the colors, the pose, the lighting, all that stuff. He was sweating over it, getting annoyed when it kept giving him a cat with eight legs or a weird background. Finally after three hours he got one he liked, but he was exhausted and barely felt like he did the work at all. So yeah, it still takes real effort even if the AI does the heavy lifting, just a different kind of effort.

paulw531mo ago

Effort on an assembly line still counts as work, right?

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