Raw LLM Responses

I've been genning with ai since the start of the covid era, and I've learnt a few things. I'll start with that you're honestly better off just learning to draw. I thought genning ai art would be easy, but it was very hard in the beginning with a lot of misinformation on how ai art models and prompting actually work. It starts off being about as hard to learn as programming, and that's only talking about the start. Towards the middle the skill quickly plateaus to where you stop learning. You *can* learn to use more tools and new technologies, but it's not like you get better at the core skill of prompting, it just stays the same. Drawing is a skill that you can forever enjoy improving at, as well as being a physical tactile activity, connecting the physical world with your internal imaginations. Genning with ai is also relatively expensive. I've paid hundreds of dollars over the years for this (maybe a thousand+), more if I want to gen more. Drawing with pen and paper costs barely anything, and if you do digital sure there is an upfront cost with tablet, stylus, and software, but after that it's free (don't pay for subscription model software for gods sake). There's hidden costs too. Art as a career is 99% *infeasible* now because of the inundation of ai art saturating the market. Now it seems only artists for big companies can survive off of drawing as a career, with independents quickly evaporating. Also ai genning costs very real electricity and water resources, nobody seems to mention that. Genning ai art is also rather impotent and finnicky. You don't have real control over the process and it can be very difficult to achieve what you want, at least that's what I've found. Many times I've fantasized about creating manga but know it's not something I can do unless I learn to draw myself. Sure learning art is very painful, with the image in your mind being so much more beautiful than what you can create with pen to paper for many years, and that really is demoralizing, but there really is no easy way out. There seems to be this pervasive myth that ai art is an easy way to make art. It's really not. Not good art anyways. You *can* do it with genning but it takes time luck and money, and at that point you're better off just learning to draw. Genning with AI art will never fully satisfy your creative urges, it just leaves you frustrated and down a few hundred bucks. I'd also like to address the thievery. It is happening because the law is weak and allows it to happen. There is no suitable legal framework protecting digital art. Profit driven companies will do whatever is permitted, and if the laws do not define ai art scraping as theft then it will continue. Art is not being protected in the same way that music is with DMCA laws. It needs to change and become targeted and robust. You're gonna hafta get together, talk to some really good motivated lawyers, and draft a plan to make a class action lawsuit against a specific company, idk who. It probably won't work, but it will expose the gaps in the law. If it does work, it'll be because a judge or jury uses an existing legal framework and interprets it as applying to digital art and ai art scraping, which will also set a precedent in the law for further decisions to follow. Even if it doesn't entirely succeed straight away in this manner, it'll be a step forward. Until then, keep using whatever protections you can, such as nightshade. Good luck.