Raw LLM Responses

I'm in the middle; I'm an end user of generative AI, but I don't consider it art, and I prefer to utilize it more as rough idea/concept crunching when search fails in a manner that rips me out of what I'm trying to do -- though this, too, has its frustrations when trying to generate something that requires a lot of generative "grinding" to get reasonably close to the idea to help connect a visual to it. There's a lot of failures on both side of that particular hunt. In terms of cost, I generally look for free offerings and am in a "take advantage of it while it's there, because it won't be there and/or free for long" mindset. When I'm ready to spend real money on something, I'll shop for a real person -- though that experience in and of itself has been exceptionally frustrating as well. Maybe I'm just not good at shopping for talent. Even then, it's anxiety-inducing wrestling with the idea of having to negotiate with someone for costs, express concepts, and then what if it doesn't work out and it doesn't match my vision? That's potentially a lot of money that just got wasted. Sometimes just throwing something at a (currently free, but acknowledged not free for long) soulless machine and letting it crunch for a while gets to "good enough" for basic purposes. It's not ideal. Nothing is ideal. Life is a mess. I do wonder what the landscape will look like in 3-5 years, though. As an aside, I'm not here to attack or defend for any particular side -- just expressing my personal experience at this particular point in time in case the insight is helpful. Posting this on some random video the algorithm fed me leaves me feeling vulnerable enough as it is, especially considering how inflammatory both sides of this fight get. I'm not even sure doing so was a good idea, but here you go all the same. Hope your day is a good one.