Years before AI image generators became the focus of artist's outrage, I could go to any of several image archive sites and find more furry art than I could possibly view in my remaining lifetime, all of it free to view. So having free art to view for those of us who are good with that can't be the issue. Possibly the ability to get a certain amount of customization in said images without paying an artist could be irritating. It's been useful being able to generate images for my D&D characters as needed. The images are good enough for that. The problem I think is they are good enough for a lot of other things as well. Need an image of a wolf howling at the moon for use on a t-shirt, well now you don't have to pay anyone or (just as common) steal an image outright. No copyright issues or limitations to deal with. Now for a truely special and well done piece of art, human artists are and will remain the go-to, but that's not most artist's bread and butter. How many artists are there selling $50 character drawings? Sure they are decently done, but without extreme detail added, image generators can do those now just as well in some cases. The bar for the level of artist you have to be to earn a living at it has gone up significantly in the digital domain. The generators will continue getting better. So digital only artists are going to have to learn to compete with them, or use them as tools for hybrid art pieces (which can be amazing). Alternatively, put away the mouse and stylus and pick up paint brushes, markers, pastels, etc and switch to physical media. So far AI's can't do anything with those.
Years before AI image generators became the focus of artist's outrage, I could go to any of several image archive sites and find more furry art than I could possibly view in my remaining lifetime, all of it free to view. So having free art to view for those of us who are good with that can't be the issue. Possibly the ability to get a certain amount of customization in said images without paying an artist could be irritating. It's been useful being able to generate images for my D&D characters as needed. The images are good enough for that. The problem I think is they are good enough for a lot of other things as well. Need an image of a wolf howling at the moon for use on a t-shirt, well now you don't have to pay anyone or (just as common) steal an image outright. No copyright issues or limitations to deal with. Now for a truely special and well done piece of art, human artists are and will remain the go-to, but that's not most artist's bread and butter. How many artists are there selling $50 character drawings? Sure they are decently done, but without extreme detail added, image generators can do those now just as well in some cases. The bar for the level of artist you have to be to earn a living at it has gone up significantly in the digital domain. The generators will continue getting better. So digital only artists are going to have to learn to compete with them, or use them as tools for hybrid art pieces (which can be amazing). Alternatively, put away the mouse and stylus and pick up paint brushes, markers, pastels, etc and switch to physical media. So far AI's can't do anything with those.