As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

Transfer learning to emulate artistic style [0] has been around for the better part of a decade and has had zero impact on artists’ livelihoods.

People consume art because they enjoy admiring the human talent that creates it, celebrating that some individuals are capable of extraordinary feats the vast majority of people are incapable of. It’s the same reason people watch sports—they enjoy admiring the top echelon of human physical ability. Very few people would watch Olympic Games performed by realistic androids.

I do agree that tools like this could eliminate mediocre graphic designers, or anyone else creating visual products that are so mundane that their viewers never bother to consider the artist. Corporate Memphis [1] designers’ days are numbered.

[0] https://blog.paperspace.com/art-style-transfer-neural-networ...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis

> Very few people would watch Olympic Games performed by realistic androids.

Why not? a cyclist is a "realistic android" to a runner. It would just be different, more like F1.

It won't get rid of the bad ones, it'll hollow out the middle just like similar processes have everywhere else. There will be a few superstar concept artists making ridiculous amounts of money, a lump of often barely-competent copypasters/LLM-prompters doing it for $5, and no more space at all for people to have a career to comfortably grow and train their skills.

Presumably many remarkable artists did or maybe even still do have unremarkable day jobs where they can get paid to refine their skills.

People celebrate F1 drivers a lot more than the automakers. Senna and Schumacher are far more famous as individuals than the teams they drove for.

I guarantee that if there is ever a self-driving cup, people will be mostly focused on the human engineering talent.

The danger of tools like this is eliminating those margins. This type of automation will eliminate junior graphic designer roles and add new requirements for the experienced graphic designers. Both of these affect the job market by making it harder to get started and stay. There will always be the high end and boutique jobs. The picassos and rembrandts will continue to find work.

The starving artist who sells out to create ads or create content for commercial entities will find those opportunities dried up

A single agency using this tool effectively could "in theory" produce 500 times the artistic output from a single artist. Vastly shrinking the market for a decent paying career.

> Why not? a cyclist is a "realistic android" to a runner. It would just be different, more like F1.

But the human element is the main thing. This is the crucial part. Take us out of the picture and there's nothing very meaningful left for other humans to see.

Yes. The journey to master artist begins with finding a place to crank out a lot of apprentice/journeyman level art. You get a little bit better at some aspect of the craft with every piece you make; eventually this makes a very visible difference from your early work. Regular critique from your peers and mentors helps a lot too.

Rembrandt started out as an apprentice, with about four years starting around 13 before he opened his own studio. Picasso was trained by his art professor father from the age of seven in what sounds like a very traditionally hardcore fashion.

Definitely - they would watch androids play because they'd root for a team and the people involved.

Not only that, but your average person is not able to asses the quality of an image. Just like the average person could not discern your code (or it’s quality)

best comment.

Why would that be a problem? They can either pay an expert (if they want someone to assess the "quality", whatever that may be) or just be happy with their pretty picture.

Problem is that the entry-level stuff is going to be done by the AI and fewer people are going to have the chance to go through the steps of becoming a master artist.