Raw LLM Responses

I don't think more than a few people are going to see this, but I think I have a pretty interesting story to tell on the topic. (TL;DR - The rise of AI image generators kinda made me give up on my artist dreams) I was finishing highschool back in 2017-2020 (back when the most interesting AI thing was AI Dungeon) and struggling to decide what I wanted to do going forwards in life, considering things like what *KIND* of college I wanted to go to. I had a problem, though... I kinda wanted to go forwards with either visual art or writing, or a combination of the two, despite basically being a complete beginner in drawing, due to some personal circumstances that basically just meant I hadn't taken an art class since the third grade. Also, I knew that I would SUCK at actually focusing on practicing drawing due to strong ADHD (though I also knew that I was autistic and disciplined enough to be able to hyperfocus on it if I wanted to and had the passion), but, I eventually decided that it was the thing I wanted to do, so I started practicing and studying. Even though I kinda had an art-class-shaped hole missing in my education, I had personally studied the art of many great artists during my own personal time, so I knew more than just the very basics, and I think my practice was going okay for someone with my circumstances. Then, 2021 came around, and AI image generators started popping up that were capable of more than the horror blobs of Dall-e, and... I got discouraged. If I was going to go to college to pursue art studies, I wanted to be able to actually have the potential to profit off of the years of drawing practice I was planning on doing... and that future didn't seem likely to me, anymore. I figured that even if the copyright was protected and AI image generators were forced to stop stealing from people who didn't want to be stolen from, there was still enough content in the endless sea of the internet for them to be able to keep improving the quality to the point where, if someone wanted to see something like in an art commission, they would have an easier time just using one of the AI sites, making pursuing a career in visual art even harder than it already was. So, in the end, I didn't end up pursuing an art career like I was planning. I ended up going for a more normal programming focused education (apparently a bad idea in retrospect lol), while occasionally continuing to practice drawing in my free time, or, more commonly, practicing my writing skills (since I figured that good compelling writing would be something AI would never be capable of replacing the demand for, and I had an easier time doing it since it wasn't so glaringly obvious to me just how bad I was at it, unlike my art, which made it way easier to focus on practicing) I don't agree with the AI bros on pretty much anything, minus one thing: how much time it takes to practice the skill before you can get a satisfying result. I'm much better now than I was... 8 years ago... (not that I really practiced _that much_ during those 8 years) but I still can't accurately capture the visuals of what my brain is capable of imagining. The AI image generator hype kinda inadvertently robbed me of my dreams... until recently. Now I know just how foolish I was for thinking that the fall of indie visual art culture was inevitable. I'm never going to be able to go back to the original life path I was wistfully looking down, but I've continued to occasionally practice drawing the whole time (There is so little time for such an infinite world we live in), and recently a bit more passion and hope has been instilled into that practice.