Will AI Art Take Careers Away From Artists?

As AI technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, it's future in our 
society and the future of human artists can feel a bit more uncertain, and it 
can certainly feel discouraging when a robot makes art as good as you can or 
better in the blink of an eye. It might make you wonder, is it even worth it to 
be an artist anymore? For me, the short answer is yes! We shouldn't let AI 
discourage us or let it take our career away. My long answer is written below. 



In just a couple of years AI art has advanced to the point where anatomy can be 
mostly correct, the colors and details are good, and people can blatantly rip 
off the art styles of popular artists and pump out content faster than the 
artist themselves can draw. And as AI technology improves, this becomes easier 
to do day by day. One saving grace however is that at least currently, on 
closer inspection of these AI pictures, while looking impressive, they tend to 
have similar camera angles and repetitive content with no deeper meaning (like 
no dialogue, story, etc). So AI can go after the "low hanging fruit" so to 
speak, simple ideas like one to two characters doing a simple action or a 
simple landscape, but specific details and stories are almost impossible to 
generate. But who knows when this might change, AI can already generate text 
based stories, poems, music, pictures, and more. Maybe one day it will be able 
to generate entire films? 

And so as a young adult trying to become a freelance illustrator this has 
weighed down on me heavily at times and negatively affected other artists I 
know as well, from beginners struggling with their lack of skill to veterans 
struggling with AI generators monetizing their art style and niche. But 
personally, despite what the future may hold I still don't want to give up. Not 
only do I want to continue creating, but I believe that human-made art is 
inherently valuable and I want to promote that and keep that value strong in 
our art community and society as a whole. It's up to us to continue valuing 
quality over quantity, and to value a human's creation above a machines, 
especially when it comes to someone's income and livelihood. This sort of thing 
is happening in many different sectors of our economy, like cheap sweatshop 
products that are sold for next to nothing on storefronts like Temu and Shein. 
These days it's easy to go for the fast and cheap... but at what point does our 
society as we know it and our human experience end up as fast and cheap? 

It is certainly a punch in the gut when your an amateur artist, or even a 
veteran artist and you see people with no prior art experience posting tons of 
AI drawings out of nowhere, and seeing that people are even paying for them on 
sites like Fanbox and Patreon! But that doesn't mean we should give up, in fact 
at this time it's probably more important than ever to stand up for ourselves 
and let others know our career is valid. It can be easy to say that being an 
artist will never be irrelevant because we do art for the experience and the 
journey, which is true, but an experience alone only gets you so far in life 
when bills need to be paid ;). The harder it is to make a career out of these 
sort of creative endeavors, the more our creativity is suppressed and left to 
just be a mere hobby in our lives. And personally I'd love to see more creative 
careers pop up over time, not less!

So for me, giving up doesn't feel right at all, and I'm writing this blog post 
just to rant about that a bit, and also because I don't want other artists to 
give up either! And perhaps AI will bring us even closer together, now knowing 
that it's now more important than ever to support human artists. I believe a 
creative job like being an illustrator is a great career that shouldn't be 
snuffed out by AI. Being an artist is a dream job for many people and they love 
doing it, unlike most basic entry level jobs. I know that personally I wake up 
every morning and I am excited to learn more about art and make my ideas come 
to life, and I don't want that to ever change.

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