I (and my actual artist wife, whose opinion on this I value more) view AI image generators as a tool.

I'd say akin to a camera. Photography is still an art form today, but you see MANY pictures that aren't art too. Because it's now accessable and easy to use.

AI image generators is much the same, in that it's very accessable, and so you do see a lot of actual slop.

But I've seen some techniques that are either only possible with AI (functional QR code art) or use AI as only part of a process (fractals mixed in with perhaps Photoshop/Krita/Gimp and then hand printed or such).

Of course most importantly, I think, is that an AI image generator doesn't stop people from making art. You are free to do draw, make collage, create sculptures, etc. People who use it purely to make a thing they want to see, are nearly always, if not always, people who wouldn't have wanted to make it themselves in the first place (or can't). Much like how you might get a craving for a pizza but might just get a cheap frozen one rather than making one yourself from scratch (which can be very expensive too).

Unlike the example, if you want a picture of a painting, a piece of paper and a free pencil won't achieve that - you still do need the acrylics (assuming you're not wanting something that has specific colors outside of acrylic paints like tempera), canvas, a stand, and of course, months to years of skill depending on natural talent. Much like it you want a pizza from true scratch, you need to know not only how to proof dough and bake, but grow wheat, husking and milling it, grow tomatoes, turn milk into cheese, cure meat, etc.

Or you can but a frozen pizza created by a machine. It won't be as good, but it'll be pizza and takes a fraction of the time.

Oh, and he's an example of the QR code AI art I mentioned which a human can't do by hand:

Honestly if you as tamman2000 uses AI, eh whatever, it's out there, most likely you're not some rich asshole ceo pushing this to replace workers. I'll still be over like "hey there are a ton of great free programs out there with great communities around them and great learning resources." And yeah using non-ai tools isn't always easy, it takes time and practice to get decent, I still say that time spent learning how to make it is worth it.

That said, I have less of a problem with the concept of AI itself, at the end of the day it's just some college level mathematical theory thats been aroind since the 60s and 70s. For me, the big problems with it, is the widespread pilfering of everything on the internet to train these models, it's the huge energy expenditure to train the models and to generate with these models, it's the owner class using AI to replace human beings and knowing full well the environment is being torn apart to support AI, it's the shoving of AI into every little thing whether or not it even makes sense in the first place, it's the acceleration of enshitification, it's the absolute flood of AI generated spam everywhere online. My problem is not strictly with AI but basically capitalism ruining this and turning it into the most asinine profit extracting bs.