April 2026
AI art vs Human made
A hotly debated, and controversial, topic is the use of AI to either generate art entirely or to employ its use to assist with pieces (i.e. refining linework, rendering, backgrounds, generating ideas...). On the one hand the term 'Ai slop' and 'deceptive content' is thrown around and largely being blamed for the recent ram price spike. To the other, which purports to increase creativity, reduce prototyping time, democratising and making art more competative and accessible and simply being a technological marvel.
As a budding professional artist and a student AI developer I'm very much on the fence but leaning much more toward pro-ai use. I think the level of anger toward AI use stems from the fear of becomming irrelevant; what would have take a person weeks or months of hard work can now be done in a matter of seconds, for a person trying to make a living out of digital art that would be quite threatening.
As I'm doing this as a paid hobby, I can't say I feel this anxiety toward AI, not even when it comes to my career aspirations of becoming a data scientist. If AI can perform the majority of the grunt work, then all the better? That means customers can get their findings significantly cheaper and quicker, whilst we apply our knowledge to administrative and managerial roles.
In terms of AI generated art... Had I of paid for a commission and it turned out the artist had used AI in some form to complete the piece,
I would likely feel quite cheated even if they had informed me because it begs the question "Well, what am I actually paying for?"
So... Where does AI sit?
Personally, I like using it to critique my work, quickly generate concepts that I'm not sure on or try out new ideas quickly.