Well, AI is way better at drawing genitalia than it is hands. It's even maybe a bit better at hair and fur, actually. I'll admit the style AI is good at is appealing to me, and it's does that style well, but it lacks the variety of e621. Also, and you probably won't get the reference, but either the AI has learned to start Rob Liefeld-ing hands, or at the very least the human curators have. Lots of poses with hands behind the body, or just literally cropped out by the edge of the image.
Of course, this might still be a bit damning of furry "art" in general; we do make a lot of medium body shots with little to no actual artistry beyond some posing and the basic technique. You'll notice once again that there's not a lot of AI generated art that requires characters to do something. I don't see a lot of comics, for instance. If anything, this might be the real "revolution" of AI. Maybe we'll all realize, actually, how boring and lazy a lot of even really talented furry art is, if a robot can do it. And this is kind of my problem with the "furry art isn't just leisure." It's not that you're wrong, factually; a lot of furries do financially depend on making the same basic picture again and again as work, and AI could potentially be devastating for them. But, what I'm saying is this kind of thinking, this "furry art as product", makes furry art a factory assembly line product that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Like, we like to talk about "furry creativity", but really, a furry artist who actually does it as a full time job is just as beholden to their customer base as Disney is. Sure, if you work for Disney, your opportunities to draw graphic sexual content is limited, but in furry, you are kind of required to. But let's not even talk about porn, which can open its own can of worms, but, if you want to be a furry artist, you're going to have to draw a fox. Probably that's not a big sacrifice, but even if you just don't care about foxes, the time you spend drawing foxes your customers demand you draw is not time you're drawing the animals you actually want to draw (like an echidna or something; do people like echidnas?).
This statement, "I can assure you that games at least are enjoyable just to have and share with friends and a lot of work for those who make them, too", is muddying the waters a bit. There is a difference between sharing and selling the end result of the creative process. Yes, of course, "sharing" is a part of the creative process (perhaps the hardest part of all!), and also yes, there is real work required in the production of art (that's literally what I'm saying). It's the automatic commodification of this "sharing" that is the problem here. Like, obviously, if someone wants to pay you money for your "art", that's great, but what I'm saying is that a lot of the pro-AI people are only interested in getting paid. Like, the art should have value beyond just what you can get for it, and I think while most pro-AI arguments can be boiled down to the antithesis of this, I'm finding a lot of anti-AI arguments are, whether purposeful or not, also boiling art down to just an economic transaction. Of course, it's more complicated than "capitalism bad" or "if you get paid for your art, it's no longer art", I mean, it's so expensive to make a movie, for example, that it kind of has to be a product in order to pay for itself. I mean, maybe we'd be in a better place if we had all decided, as a species, that art and commerce should not mix, but that ship has long ago sailed. Now we just need to remember they are "mixed", not "inseperable."
I have no beef with a hobbyist AI "artist" who just thinks AI is neat, and can maybe make a pretty picture they want to share every once in a while if they take the time to look for it. There may be genuine ethical concerns about "scraping", but a genuine AI "fan" should actually care as much about those ethical concerns as anyone else, if not more so, and work on it. The fact that most proponents of AI response to these concerns have been dismissive tells me they may not be very good, you know, artists. A good artist responds to criticism; they don't say "well, you just don't get it."
I think an argument about AI replacing film/game creators may further not be productive between us, because I'm still not convinced AI can make good games/films. So, where artforms like movies/video games exist on the commerce/art spectrum is kind of beside the point. Alternatively, procedurally created content and AI bots already are a thing in games; but they still exist inside frameworks created by people. Likewise, AI tools probably are already used in VFX work and some CGI animated movies, and those are the film industries "workers" who have consistently been most exploited, but I guess I'm arguing that AI isn't dangerous to them because they're already screwed, which isn't a very hopeful position.
Like, honestly, if an AI could make an entire movie by itself, and I'd actually enjoy it, at that point, it's no longer a "tool" to create products; I think at that point it could be considered a person in its own right. And then we've opened up a whole new discussion.
Well, AI is way better at drawing genitalia than it is hands. It's even maybe a bit better at hair and fur, actually. I'll admit the style AI is good at is appealing to me, and it's does that style well, but it lacks the variety of e621. Also, and you probably won't get the reference, but either the AI has learned to start Rob Liefeld-ing hands, or at the very least the human curators have. Lots of poses with hands behind the body, or just literally cropped out by the edge of the image.
Of course, this might still be a bit damning of furry "art" in general; we do make a lot of medium body shots with little to no actual artistry beyond some posing and the basic technique. You'll notice once again that there's not a lot of AI generated art that requires characters to do something. I don't see a lot of comics, for instance. If anything, this might be the real "revolution" of AI. Maybe we'll all realize, actually, how boring and lazy a lot of even really talented furry art is, if a robot can do it. And this is kind of my problem with the "furry art isn't just leisure." It's not that you're wrong, factually; a lot of furries do financially depend on making the same basic picture again and again as work, and AI could potentially be devastating for them. But, what I'm saying is this kind of thinking, this "furry art as product", makes furry art a factory assembly line product that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Like, we like to talk about "furry creativity", but really, a furry artist who actually does it as a full time job is just as beholden to their customer base as Disney is. Sure, if you work for Disney, your opportunities to draw graphic sexual content is limited, but in furry, you are kind of required to. But let's not even talk about porn, which can open its own can of worms, but, if you want to be a furry artist, you're going to have to draw a fox. Probably that's not a big sacrifice, but even if you just don't care about foxes, the time you spend drawing foxes your customers demand you draw is not time you're drawing the animals you actually want to draw (like an echidna or something; do people like echidnas?).
This statement, "I can assure you that games at least are enjoyable just to have and share with friends and a lot of work for those who make them, too", is muddying the waters a bit. There is a difference between sharing and selling the end result of the creative process. Yes, of course, "sharing" is a part of the creative process (perhaps the hardest part of all!), and also yes, there is real work required in the production of art (that's literally what I'm saying). It's the automatic commodification of this "sharing" that is the problem here. Like, obviously, if someone wants to pay you money for your "art", that's great, but what I'm saying is that a lot of the pro-AI people are only interested in getting paid. Like, the art should have value beyond just what you can get for it, and I think while most pro-AI arguments can be boiled down to the antithesis of this, I'm finding a lot of anti-AI arguments are, whether purposeful or not, also boiling art down to just an economic transaction. Of course, it's more complicated than "capitalism bad" or "if you get paid for your art, it's no longer art", I mean, it's so expensive to make a movie, for example, that it kind of has to be a product in order to pay for itself. I mean, maybe we'd be in a better place if we had all decided, as a species, that art and commerce should not mix, but that ship has long ago sailed. Now we just need to remember they are "mixed", not "inseperable."
I have no beef with a hobbyist AI "artist" who just thinks AI is neat, and can maybe make a pretty picture they want to share every once in a while if they take the time to look for it. There may be genuine ethical concerns about "scraping", but a genuine AI "fan" should actually care as much about those ethical concerns as anyone else, if not more so, and work on it. The fact that most proponents of AI response to these concerns have been dismissive tells me they may not be very good, you know, artists. A good artist responds to criticism; they don't say "well, you just don't get it."
I think an argument about AI replacing film/game creators may further not be productive between us, because I'm still not convinced AI can make good games/films. So, where artforms like movies/video games exist on the commerce/art spectrum is kind of beside the point. Alternatively, procedurally created content and AI bots already are a thing in games; but they still exist inside frameworks created by people. Likewise, AI tools probably are already used in VFX work and some CGI animated movies, and those are the film industries "workers" who have consistently been most exploited, but I guess I'm arguing that AI isn't dangerous to them because they're already screwed, which isn't a very hopeful position.
Like, honestly, if an AI could make an entire movie by itself, and I'd actually enjoy it, at that point, it's no longer a "tool" to create products; I think at that point it could be considered a person in its own right. And then we've opened up a whole new discussion.