<story><title>4.2 Gigabytes, Or: How to Draw Anything</title><url>https://andys.page/posts/how-to-draw/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>Back in the 90s I bought a book that came with some floppy disks.  The book was about 500 pages of clip art, and the disks were the actual images.  At the time, people said such things would put graphic artists out of business.&lt;p&gt;What actually happened is that it put mediocre graphic artists out of business and highlighted the difference between one that was mediocre and one that was good.&lt;p&gt;I feel like this will happen again here with digital artists.  The mediocre ones will be indistinguishable from AI, but the good ones will still stand out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>VoodooJuJu</author><text>I think that&amp;#x27;s a good way to put it, but there&amp;#x27;s still a problem.&lt;p&gt;The path of a digital artist is long and arduous. For a time on this path, the artist may be considered mediocre, or to put it better, they are an &lt;i&gt;apprentice&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Just as in other physical trades, an apprentice who is mediocre at their craft can still practice aspects of that craft well enough to be useful and earn some money. It is also through practice that the apprentice improves their skills. In this way, the apprentice is financially supported and even incentivized to improve at their trade, until one day they become truly good at it.&lt;p&gt;So what things like DALL-E and Github Co-Pilot and your clip art package do is displace the apprentice. With no path of mediocrity for the apprentice to walk, to earn a stipend for training, how then can they receive the financial support necessary to train until they&amp;#x27;re a master? They would need to already be independently wealthy or receive financial assistance.&lt;p&gt;In order to train more master artists and programmers, we would need to provide them with financial support while they train without us receiving anything useful in return.</text></comment>
<story><title>4.2 Gigabytes, Or: How to Draw Anything</title><url>https://andys.page/posts/how-to-draw/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>Back in the 90s I bought a book that came with some floppy disks.  The book was about 500 pages of clip art, and the disks were the actual images.  At the time, people said such things would put graphic artists out of business.&lt;p&gt;What actually happened is that it put mediocre graphic artists out of business and highlighted the difference between one that was mediocre and one that was good.&lt;p&gt;I feel like this will happen again here with digital artists.  The mediocre ones will be indistinguishable from AI, but the good ones will still stand out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>z3c0</author><text>While I&amp;#x27;m overall of the mind that nobody can really know what to expect, I think this may be a little more accurate of a reality than the aspiring Cassandras are trumpeting about. I&amp;#x27;m willing to bet that most of the people who are going to utilize these technologies are people who never could afford a graphic designer to begin with. I&amp;#x27;m sure some of the market will be lost to this tech, but a blackbox that shoots out passable images just isn&amp;#x27;t going to cut it for certain areas of the art market.&lt;p&gt;I also wouldn&amp;#x27;t be shocked if a big portion of the market for this technology ends up being the artists themselves. I personally know a painter whose creative process has been overhauled by DALL-E. Brainstorming the next project is easier than ever, and unlike the DALL-E images inspiring them, the resulting paintings actually have the &amp;quot;human-touch&amp;quot; necessary to illicit the deeper emotional response that a good painting should bring about. Adding depth to a model doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily add depth to the output.&lt;p&gt;But like I said, I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone really knows what&amp;#x27;s going to happen. We&amp;#x27;ll see, I guess.</text></comment>