Can't blame them for being disappointed in the AI bros.

They look sooo cute!!! >///////<

I think what's really disheartening as I've said before is seeing certain artists who -have- honed their craft just go for AI because "It's easier" and they "no longer have time to work on art". Like that's kind of a lousy excuse to sacrifice your integrity mate.

Word for word, what I heard when digital art started being a thing.

Show me stuff you drew using a tablet and I'll believe you.

Well you won't. Not the least of which because I can't draw. At all. Didn't have the patience for it when I was younger and these days my hands shake too much for it to be worth bothering. As I posted elsewhere though,

https://nbmaa.wordpress.com/2010/08.....he-supporters/

It's had people spouting either the exact same rhetoric as you just were, or close enough to make no difference.

And if you genuinely wanted good examples of digital art, I hate saying this because I hate hearing this from other people, just google Digital art. Safe search or no, you'll find PLENTY.

Okay cool. Nice of you to admit you just want to use AI to be lazy.

And you blocked me after talking crap about me. Wish I could say I was shocked.

AI "artists" are lazy AND massive dumbasses.

Shame them. Shame them into the ground.

You know, I remember when the exact same thing was said about the medium YOU'RE using. Just some food for thought.

I don't remember people being upset at 3D being seen as a lazy "one button press" gimmick to make images.

Not 3d exactly, buuuuttttt....

Digital Art: The Skeptics and The Supporters (2010 blog essay) Early articulate backlash to digital art — calls it “old art made easy.” https://nbmaa.wordpress.com/2010/08.....he-supporters/

Why Digital Artists Are (not) Big Fat Liars (essay on viewing digital art as lesser) On perceived inferiority and galleries refusing digital-only art. https://skinnyartist.com/why-digita.....big-fat-liars/

Digital Art and Traditional Art — Pros and Cons (more recent reflection) Talks about how digital makes art creation easier and maybe too common; fears that value of “real art” gets diluted https://medium.com/%40ramstudioscom.....s-96c76ccf2559

Any of the people arguing against digital art sound familar? Again, exact same arguments more or less. Perhaps not on 3d exactly, but digital art in general has carried a lot of the same controversies thrown at it. (Let alone the issues with 3D art where way, WAY too many people are just messing around with the same models. You don't and I respect you for that, but how many people have been re using the exact same Rouge the Bat models over and over again JUST on this website?

Also, I can tell you right now, if you want an AI generated pic looking GOOD and not just passable, it takes a LOT more than just a "one button press". Pressing the button is the easy part. Everything after that is actual work.”

Sorting through dozens or hundreds of bad outputs, Fixing mangled anatomy, weird hands, warped faces, and random artifacts, Repainting and editing details manually, Combining multiple outputs into one coherent piece, Adjusting composition, lighting, color, style, and mood, Running iterative refinement until the image actually works, Doing final polish, upscaling, and cleanup and god only knows what else if you want something that DOESN'T look like it crawled out of Dali's nightmares.

AI gives you a draft, but The artist still has to shape it into something worth looking at.

I mean a *real* artist would just create the draft themselves instead of needing to type in prompts. But as you said to me: You can't draw and don't have the patience or determination to want to learn. Sad. :/

And because Atma blocked me, not directed at you Tahlian...

Or, and hear me out, you use AI to cut out some of the grunt work and make life easier. I mean, I suppose we could go back to art at it's purest and most difficult by throwing out anything more advanced than sticks with mushed up berries.

From what I glanced at the posts you send me, these are not talking down on digital art but emphasize that art is art since a human made it, no matter the canvas. (I might be wrong as I'm doing this at 4 in the morning.)

The argument of using the same 3D model holds little weight and has been a heated discussion recently on Inkbunny to supposedly combat "spam". Which I find funny, since Inkbunny has heavily restricted 3D art now, but is perfectly fine with AI images being spammed. There are multiple images being uploaded that are using a slightly different prompt or seed and is somehow not considered spam according to the admins there. The speed that the AI can create and be uploaded is far higher than 3D, even for SFM thanks to render time and the minimal setup time to create an image.

Having 100 people use the same model for their art could be seen as spam, but 100 people that would draw Rouge the bat in the same canon art style with different colors is considered as spam too then. The only acceptable type of bad art in my opinion is the low effort renders where someone turned their program on and did little to no work on it and uploads it. No finger posing, barely or no lights, no camera adjustment like FOV or angle. And I'm not against the idea of having a quality control to combat these.

Onto your point, you stated that it could be a tool to get you somewhere started, but considering the AI's horrible track record of accuracy, it's much better to just do the groundwork yourself. You'll be able to pick out your own mistakes quicker than a random drawing that some "Simulated Intelligence" has made for you. Proper anatomy is required for art, you can bend the rules but in the end you still need to make it believable, which AI really fails at.
Maybe it's useful to finish the job for us? Why would I let a computer finish the thing I wanted to make? It doesn't have the same vision as I do and will not come to my standards of quality. I've seen a bunch of WIP's from artists being run through an AI and in the end the artist's own take was a lot more enjoyable as the AI messed things up such as color or understanding what a certain line was.

Is there anything AI can do to help me with my art? Yes, it would be nice if it could do the dishes for me and clean the house, keep that thing away from my hobby.

"You'll be able to pick out your own mistakes quicker than a random drawing that some "Simulated Intelligence" has made for you. Proper anatomy is required for art, you can bend the rules but in the end you still need to make it believable, which AI really fails at."

By what standards? I've seen PLENTY of AI art that has proper anatomy. If you've used it and it didn't, that just hammers in the point I made about how you have to do ACTUAL work after the AI does it's thing. It's basically dealing with the gruntwork, something plenty of artists who've used AI alongside their normal work will state.

Also, may I be allowed to laugh about the idea of using "proper anatomy" as an anti-ai argument on THIS website? I'm not trying to make fun and I'm sorry if that's how I come across, but that's like using Plan 9 from outer space as an example of hard sci-fi. The sheer amount of characters who have to be made of rubber REALLY made that line make me laugh.

Just because a furry fetish artist throws proper anatomy out the window it doesn't mean he doesn't understands how a body would look like. It might not be the best thing they'll create as they're more used to anthropomorphic bodies, but the knowledge is there. AI just mimics and estimates what could look like anatomy and will create a general shape of it. It might do it well but only because of the information it got fed. The same AI that gave you a picture of the most anatomically correct human may fail the same image if you ask it to do something it hasn't trained for, like making it human nude. It might give the character the Barbie/Ken treatment, or still produce something but it'll a mess since it barely got genitals in it's database.

I like to compare all this with cooking. Making art is like making a meal, if you do good you'll have a good meal. And depending on the recipe it can take a long time to make a masterpiece.
AI is basically fast/junk food. You take your prompt to the intercom/microwave and press the button to let someone/something else do the food for you. You wait and you'll have your food. Depending who was at the kitchen that moment (the seed) it'll be a meal you'll probably like, but you know that they've put stuff in there that isn't great and homemade would be so much better, you just lack the motivation.

People don't like AI "artists" because they take the fast/junk food and present it as their own cooking. I bet you would be upset if I were to come over to your house, charge you a 5 star course meal (150 dollars lets say) and then bring you a couple big mac's and fries with some nuggets. Sure, I added my own twist to this by changing the package to a plate and put a flag on one of the burgers because it looked sad and a bit damaged.

And yes, there are chefs out there that use this technique of already prepared meals and adding their own twist to it to make it better. I've spend 9 months with such a chef in the hospital, I love that he was there since the premade meals suck as they were just mass heated up by a giant microwave before being served. But despite his work, the food still tasted "meh" most of the time since it's hospital food. Low taste with barely any kind of seasoning and fake meat because they wanted to include vegetarians.

“People don’t like AI ‘artists’ because they take the fast/junk food and present it as their own cooking.”

That analogy only works if someone is charging money for low-effort AI and pretending it's handcrafted. In that case? Yeah, absolutely, that’s shady, and everyone agrees it’s shady. But that’s not the general use of AI today. If I’m generating art for free and not claiming, “behold my masterful brush technique,” then the junk-food analogy breaks down. I’m not paying $150 for McDonalds, I’m getting McDonalds for free because sometimes I just want fries, not a five-star steak.

And even your analogy admits something important: “There are chefs who use pre-prepared bases and improve them with their own twist.”
Right. And we call that fusion, shortcuts, workflow assistance, tooling, etc. Nobody accuses a photographer of being a fraud because Photoshop has a “Sharpen” button. AI is the same, The quality depends entirely on how much actual work happens after the button press. That’s the part people keep glossing over.

“You’ll notice your own mistakes faster than AI’s mistakes.”

That actually supports my point, AI isn’t replacing artistic skill. It’s replacing the gruntwork: poses, starting shapes, thumbnails, lighting drafts, backgrounds, color tests, etc. Artists who use it well aren’t letting it “finish the piece.” They’re using it the way illustrators use 3D block-ins, photo bashing, or composition tools. If anything, AI gives you more time to do the part of the work only a human can do, style, intent, storytelling, expression, emotional clarity.

“AI doesn’t understand anatomy, it just mimics shapes.”

Every art student mimics shapes until they learn anatomy, Every 3D artist relies on pre-made rigs and topology they didn’t hand-sculpt, Most SFM posters on this site is built from models they didn’t personally create. This isn’t a gotcha, it’s just how art workflows evolve. If the standard is “you didn’t generate every pixel atom from scratch,” then 3D would also “not count,” photography would “not count,” and digital art certainly wouldn’t “count.”

We all use tools that abstract part of the process, AI is just the newest version. And yes, AI can botch anatomy so do human beginners, and so do plenty of fetish artists on here who deliberately ignore anatomy. The argument “AI sometimes draws bad hands” hasn’t held water since early 2023.

“Why let AI finish something for me? It doesn’t share my vision.”

That’s exactly why most artists don’t let it finish anything. They use it to speed up ideation, generate references, fill backgrounds, test lighting setups, fix noise, upscale, generate variants, create textures, produce moodboards, experiment with styles, help with thumbnailing
None of that replaces the part of the work that is you, It just removes the part that’s hours of repetitive labor.

“AI art is fast-food art — it’s low effort and cheap.”

Sure, when used lazily. But that’s not the tool’s fault. SFM has the same problem:Tons of low-effort spam, same models, same poses, same lighting.
You even pointed out that yourself. Yet no one says “3D isn’t art; it’s all the same model of Rouge reused a hundred times.” People judge the artist, not the tool, The existence of lazy SFM doesn’t invalidate good 3D artists. The existence of lazy AI doesn’t invalidate good AI-assisted artists.

And lastly, about my motivation: I don’t lack motivation, I lacked the patience before and I lack the physical ability now. Tremors make drawing an exercise in self-torture. AI lets me make things again without pain. That’s why I defend it. Not to replace artists, not to steal work, but because it lets people like me participate in creativity again.

Bit of a lot of text so I'm going to shrink this down a bit.

>And even your analogy admits something important
The result was still bland but more personalized, in essence it was just slop but with a bow on it.

>That actually supports my point, AI isn’t replacing artistic skill.
My point is that AI does a bad job, that you need to fix stuff in order to make it work, therefor you could've done it yourself and saved time and electricity.

>lacked patience
Ah, the instant gratification part. Part of the art is the journey to the finished product, you're just skipping over it. It feels so much more rewarding to have done all that work towards the image.

>lack physical ability
No offense and I'm sorry that your body has been betraying you, but it's not an excuse. People without arms have been able to create art in their own way. I know someone who suffers from strong arthritis in his hands, yet he works on making his own art without the help of a robot. The "I have a disability so AI is my way of making art" is a poor excuse that a lot of AI bros come with.

All in all AI to me is this snake oil thing that supposed to solve issues that were never an issue before. The push from big tech to include this in almost everything now is proof. I don't need a browser to have an AI agent in it to do the stuff for me if I'm required to type or speak to it. By the time I'm done typing the question I could've already gone to the website and written the name down.

“The result was still bland but personalized — just slop with a bow.”

That’s true of some AI outputs, sure, just like some 3D renders are low-effort, some sketches are beginner-level, and some paintings are rushed.
Low effort exists in every medium, so that part isn’t exclusive to AI.

The difference is quality is determined by the artist, not the tool. Some people make slop with AI. Some people make art with AI. That’s how it works with every medium.

“AI does a bad job, so fixing it means I should’ve just done it myself and saved time.”

That depends entirely on the piece and the person. For me, the choice isn’t Fix AI output’ vs. ‘draw it myself, It’s: Fix AI output’ vs. ‘not make art at all and for a huge number of artists, the choice is Spend 8 hours on gruntwork’ vs. use a tool that does the base faster so I can focus on the creative decisions.

Different artists, different workflows. There isn’t one valid way to make art.

“It’s instant gratification — you’re skipping the journey.”

Somehow I can't help but think this was said to the first caveman to try spreading mushed up berries on the wall with a stick with hairs tied to it rather than just the stick

The journey you enjoy isn’t the journey everyone can access. Some artists love labor-intensive work. Some artists hate the repetitive base setup and love polishing details. Some artists have physical limitations, time constraints, or different goals. All valid.

AI removes labor you personally enjoy. That doesn’t make it invalid. It just means it doesn’t fit your workflow. It’s literally the same argument traditional artists used against digital art 20 years ago: “You’re skipping the journey! That tablet makes it too easy!”


“People without arms can make art” is not the rhetorical win you think it is. It’s actually REALLY dismissive.

I respect anyone who overcomes huge physical hurdles to make art. But saying ‘others have it worse so you don’t get to use tools’ isn’t a fair standard. Different disabilities affect people differently.

My goal isn’t to win an endurance contest, it’s simply to create in a way that doesn’t hurt. AI gives me access to something that would otherwise be off-limits to me. That’s not an excuse, that’s literally what tools are for.”

No one gets to police how others make art, or what tool you need to do it.

“AI is snake oil — big tech is forcing it everywhere so it must be bad.”

That’s a separate argument from “artists shouldn’t use it.” Browsers, operating systems, ads, corporate nonsense, sure, that’s annoying (And given the flood on Deviantart I can understand those frustraited with it). But that’s about corporate implementation, not the validity of the tool itself.

Photoshop, 3D, digital cameras, all went through “big tech hype cycles.” None of that made them invalid art tools. If AI vanished from Google Search tomorrow, artists would still use it as a paintover base, a reference generator, a thumbnail tool, a concept sketch engine, a source of variants and texture ideas, a way to test lighting, outfits, or poses, or an accessibility tool.

Corporate hype does not determine artistic value.

I hate AI so, so much right now... Nice pic, here.