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this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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Slop.
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For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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Democratisation among who?
The people with actual motivation to improve at a craft are already applying themselves to practice. They are artists, writers, film makers, developers, etc. They're actually making and improving at something already and most of them are repulsed by AI, even among developers there's a derogatory attitude to "vibe coding".
Democratisation only means giving the ability to make shit to the laziest people, the people who have spent their whole lives too lazy to sit down and do the work necessary to get good at something. These people aren't going to be good writers, because they don't apply themselves to writing. They don't apply themselves to anything. They do not have the motivation.
So all it's really doing is giving the power to make this shit to the least talented and least motivated people. All the motivated people are already doing something with their motivation. They're already making art with their hands.
This magical "talent" that they think is a biological phenomenon that just exists in people is actually years and years of work and improvement through practice, in all arts.
Fr. None of this is an innate talent. It's a skill. I can draw well cause I did it for like 5 hours a day from age 3 to 14, that is because it's what I liked doing. I had no ambitions and as a younger kid didnt see the value in a finished drawing. I would just throw everything out that I drew when I was done. This confused the hell out of my parents who asked if there were ones I wanted to keep or whatever. I hadnt even considered that. I just liked drawing and when the paper was full I threw it out and got a new sheet. My folks also to this day dont get that art isnt easy to anyone when they firsr pick it up. My family was amazed I could draw and play music because 'no one in this family has been able to draw anything more than a stick figure and we cant carry a tune in a bucket.' Like it was a genetic trait. The difference was that when they noticed i was drawing a lot as a toddler, my mom stole stacks of printer paper from work and later they got me a cozy desk for my room. Im in my mid 30s and they'll still buy me a gunpla here and there cause they're stoked ive gotten into model building. They've bankrolled many of my endeavors very enthusiastically. But they still never really have internalized that it's because I practice and enjoy practicing this stuff that im good at it. My dad is willing to song along to songs but will deride his singing voice for no reason, its actually pretty solid for like rock music and stuff, both of us are really good at impressions and have good vocal control, I taught myself how to sing by recording myself and correcting what sounded wrong. My natural voice when singing good is a lot higher than my speaking voice so full singing I am a worse Davey havoc, talk singing i sound like Rozz Williams. I can also do a perfect Lemmy, and any kinda screamy vocals super easy aside from pig squeals. Just like...learn the thing. If you arent willing to do that, then you dont get to make stuff.
Its like the bullshit left/right brained thing. It's fatalistic and stops people from trying and also it's a bit insulting to have your work chalked up to inherent talent and not learned skill.
This is exactly what I'm trying to get across. The "talent" people apply to any of these arts is actually the product of hundreds if not thousands of hours spent practicing and improving at it.
I am convinced people do realise that this is the case but that making talent into some innate thing is a coping mechanism for feelings of inadequacy surrounding not being able to motivate themselves to do the same. The thing is that I don't think anyone should feel inadequate about this. I am a literal god when it comes to Smash Bros, playing at an extremely high genuine competition level. I have this ability because I have motivation for it, I can sit and practice it and feel motivated to do that. But even at times I'm like "cba" when it comes to the sheer number of hours I'd need to put in just to beat 1 more person who is above me. My progress in this skill and whether I could ever reach top 100 is ultimately hampered by motivation, even at this level. It's all practice. None of it is innate talent. I probably won't reach that level, but I fully understand and take responsibility for the fact that it's because I won't put the practice in, my motivation wall has likely been met. The point is that this is no different for sports, or music, or arts.
I'd quite like to have the motivation to draw, I am reasonably good at it having learned several techniques when younger. But I don't have anywhere near the motivation I do for competitive fighting games. Same story really. Motivation.
But that's ok. It doesn't make us inadequate and I'm not calling anyone inadequate for it. We all have different interests.
Do you have any smash footage online? I losr my music gundam models and art sll the time and i agree a good game of smash is an art. I cant do competitive smash but I know what is happening when I watch it. Id love to see how you play. I appreciate good smash
Yes but it would 110% dox me instantly because of events.
Womp womp.
I love Melee and got it with a game.ecuve when it came out, it was the first thing I had saved up serious allowance money to buy as a kid. I didn't touch my 5 bucks a week for 2 years, my parents handled the rest cause they game as well. I never got tournament gud, im just at that barrier. I would love to be really good at smash cause I love the game but practicing it never really clicked with me and id rather spend my time elsewhere, so to this day I wish I was better at smash but also know I dont wanna put the work in. As a result I have gotten comfortable with only ever being okay at it. That's fine. There is no shame in not wanting to put the work into getting really good at something but its sour grapes to say someone is just a natural talent. I follow speedrunners and like to bear personal bests on games I play, but I know ill never be able to compete cause i just don't like doing it quite as much as the people who are really good. Thats fine. People latch onto different things amd almost everyone wishes they were better at something theyre bad at. You wither gotta try to get better or accept mediocrity, and mediocrity is perfectly okay. Id rather people do stuff they like doing and suck at it then be good at something they hate. AI ignores all of this because it is only art because my definition of art literally anything produced that doesnt serve a purely utilitarian function. So even a hammer is art if it has a colored handle or something. AI does technically cross thst criteria, I hate to call it art but if it does barely cross that line. But it is bad art. Awful art. The worst art I could conceive of and that is no matter how nice it may look. Its bad art because of the medium. The medium is the message. It is useless, its bad and it stinks
https://youtu.be/qYA5CFrNBLE
Completely agree.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
My biggest gripe with the “democratization” argument for AI is that we were already had a mass democratization of creative media. E-readers make self-publishing a breeze, Billie Eilish and Finneas proved you can make a hit record in your bedroom with some cheap to free plugins, plenty of free image editing and rendering software, you can get a drawing tablet for next to nothing. Not to mention the countless free tutorials out there mean the knowledge barrier isn’t there anymore.
I don't like this line of argumentation - it's essentially neoliberal. It has echos of - "Socialism means giving money to the laziest people, the people who have spent their whole lives too lazy to sit down and do the work necessary to get good at something."
But this erases the material conditions that determine so much of our lives.
In reality, sometimes, people don't have the years and years of free time they need to do the work. Sometimes they don't have the resources or teachers to learn from, don't have the tools they need to hone their skills, don't have a safe environment where they can learn and grow, or their fucking psychiatrist won't give them fucking ADHD medication because a parent got hooked on meth (I'm not bitter), or they were dysphoric for so long that their depression atrophied all of their talents (definitely not bitter)
Motivation, itself, isn't a choice. It's just something that happens to you. You just got lucky by having a brain that works.
There's some truth to their complaining about the unfairness of talent. We make our own talent, but we do not make it as we please.
I don't see how rephrasing things changes much. The situation is still that the people who gain the power to make shit are unmotivated people with no actual skill in the art. They don't magically make good content now that they have AI because they are still unmotivated people with no actual skill and giving them AI doesn't change that. They still require thousands upon thousands of hours of practice to understand and improve in the skill of writing to actually form a decent script, and if they really had such motivation for writing they would be putting it to use and practice without the AI.
I disagree. It's about having a brain that is interested in it, or having parents that can pay a tutor to whack a child's hands with a ruler every time they don't focus on the piano keys but that's a different kind of motivation through force. Real genuine motivation comes from interest, it stops being work and it is basically play for that brain. Not that this changes anything, interest and "brain that works" are still ultimately the same thing in practice, just different interpretations of the mechanism. I think what you're trying to suggest though is wrong, neurotypical people struggle with the motivational requirement to become artists as much as neurodivergent people, their brains still work, they just want to play instead of doing what they perceive as work because the interest isn't there. It's a little spark that makes the art activity into something as fulfilling and enjoyable as playing the videogame is for everyone else.
I take adhd meds too. They don't fix motivation, merely focus.
Depression, notably, saps all interest in doing anything. Interest isn't a choice either, it's just something that happens to you.
Or doesn't.
There is a fundamental unfairness to talent that I just don't think you're acknowledging.
What I do agree with is that AI isn't some instant-win cheat code to making great art. If they lack the interest, the motivation, to put in the work then their AI slop is only ever going to be slop. Though, maybe, they won't have to put in quite as many thousands of hours. It can be like the difference between being talented with hand sewing vs being talented with a sewing machine. Making a beautiful dress requires hard work whether you do it by hand or with a machine, but it's certainly a lot easier and faster with a machine.
Also, executive function disorder is hell. It doesn't matter if you have interests and want to do things. You just don't do them, and hate yourself for it.
I don't see what there is to acknowledge here? The argument is semantics, we're saying the exact same ultimate thing in terms of outcomes. Every point I've made about AI remains the same. These people still remain bad at creating because they do not practice and improve due to their lack of "talent" as you put it, I feel that I put in the much friendlier terms by saying it is lack of practice due to motivation and I very much dislike this "talent" shit because it feels like bioessentialism.
It doesn't matter which wording is used here either way, the outcome is literally the same, a bunch of hacks being given AI doesn't produce good content. The people with the "talent" to improve are already producing content and improving their skills without it.
I dont see how AI makes any if this better
I am having a rainy arts and crafts day after a busy yesterday of working in fancy restaurant on mother's day. I am building models and painting display stuff for ones ive already built. It is fun and relaxing. I do some painting and then do some building while the paint dries and im watching movies at the same time. Its a good day. At the end of the day, putting in prompts for an AI all day instead would probably kill my soul. Making art is fun. This tskes away the fun part. I made a post earlier in the thread that as a toddler I just filled a page with drawings and then threw it out and started the next. My parents had to tell me that I should be saving the good ones which implies I should be trying to make a good one each time, at 34 I can say they were wrong as hell. The finished product is a brief moment of moderate satisfaction cause you will always see the flaws no one else will. The best part is making the damn thing. I am altering the real world to match or express my imagination as best as I can. AI can never ever do that. I like digital art and like playing with it, but even that feels a bit removed from real tangible stuff for me. Photoshop is fun, editing film and music digitally is just way easier, but I have done the analogue version of both and theyre a lot more fun. It stinks.
Yeah, we should create a society where that isnt the case. Until then you do what you can with what you have. You dont need ai to make art. The barrier to entry there is a lot more than paper and pencil. Anyone can make art. You maybe cant make a Pixar movie yourself but no one can. That's why they hired people.
Still this idea that making a vending machine spit out the work of other people slightly remixed doesn't sound like democratization, but just pointless masquerading as someone else's achievements. By generating work based on other people's work one is taking valuable time from them.
What is the point of making visual media if the maker doesn't want to engage in anything that is visual about the media? What is the point of making music if the person making it doesn't want to engage with anything musical? they just want to just write a prompt. There is no vulnerability or personality. There is nothing that feels tangibly human behind it.
during the start of the internet, the social convention was created that entering a chat or an online space in order to spew unwanted mindless information was aggressive disruptive behavior that needed to be moderated off. I am starting to see AI generations in the same vein: producing mindless material and filling the internet with it is a new form of spamming and i hope more people will start to push back on it. Using precious resources to have a vending machine produce media without thought or process sounds the same as pressing the enter button over and over again on the same message on a chat room to get attention.
Also this argument erases centuries of achievements made by neuro divergent and disabled artists. People who painted without hands or had serious disabilities and still made art. I invite you to look into outsider art, and transgressive writing and art. You will find a lot of disabled and neuro divergent people putting work and effort into their art in those spaces. The worse part is AI slop could potentially hurt those people because it homogenizes and clogs the creative industries. AI generation dampens valuable voices that bring much needed diverse perspectives to our shared human subjectivity. Because these creators are working in more fragile conditions. These are people that are poor, have disabilities, or come from fragile backgrounds. The spam of AI generations might be killing their opportunity to get their work out there in the first place.