You’re right; and I do dismiss that opinion quite frequently and have learned at this point to just make no comment and continue the conversation forward.
On that note: I am a member of the art community, I make digital and physical art as a hobbyist. Occasionally I do some commissions for people but it’s not often. But, those commission requests are going down in number because people want instant art. One friend that made the comment of preferring AI art to me the other day said she does so because she doesn’t want to spend time practicing, so instead she likes to generate images and trace them as it’s more efficient and less taxing on her mind to make something. Assuming she’s doing this for fun or therapeutic reasons, why would you want efficiency? Why would making something(even if it’s a simple flower and sun in the corner of the page) be that taxing that you need to generate it? Let’s think of why it’s taxing first rather than skirting around that and using a generator that scrapes data from others illegally.
It’s a consumerist mindset that really leaks into a lot of the aspects I’ve mentioned in my previous comment. And honestly, I don’t think a lot of these people really believe AI art is better, I think they’re so used to instant gratification in almost every part of their life that they’re trying to get that dopamine hit regardless if it’s quality content(work, art, stories, etc) or not.
I feel like I always stumble on these topics too late.
I have trauma from my parents(namely my mother, dad died early and skipped out on this mess) and I held a ton of resentment for a long time, and I’m always a hair’s width away from cutting it all down. What stops me is that she’s disabled. Like, intellectual disability + borderline PD, but still able to hide it mostly, but also she should have gone to intensive therapy. My siblings and I drew the lucky sticks and have our faculties but we still have inherited disabilities; for instance I’m on the spectrum along with schizoid PD, and idiopathic physical conditions. A lot of my issues were ignored when I was younger in favor of my brother and sister, and now, 10-15 years later I’m stuck in a medical mystery loop. Even when I bring up the medical, physical and emotional neglect to my mom she just brushes it off as a joke and I’m just being dramatic. And with some of it, it’s like the regular abuser denial but I truly think for the majority of it she quite literally does not functionally understand what her actions did that hurt me and through extension my two siblings.
I am child free because I understand my deficits and how they would ultimately have a negative impact on an innocent person who didn’t choose to be here. I am glad to say I was able to get sterilized fairly easily. My mother has flip flopped between “you’re so selfish I won’t get grand babies” and “good I hate children”, so it’s safe to say I’m not even sure what her actual opinion is on my choices to be vehemently child free. I wish I could go no contact so badly, but I also feel like a heartless bitch because in her case she has the emotional and mental capability of a 15 year old, and she’s actually fairly genuine. But at the same time, why did I have to live the childhood I had, all because someone literally does not understand how raising children works? Sometimes it really is a rock and a hard place.