Yes. Honestly, it feels like a witch hunt where every misstep gets you pointed at. (To put it as mildly as possible.)

It's quite sad and tiring to see that on the pro-AI side (not the gullible "AI bros," but the actual users or artists who support AI) there's a genuine attempt at debate or dialogue, while on the anti-AI or "Luddite" side there's no attempt at dialogue, just pure and simple confrontation.

(I think this whole thread sums up the global situation.)

Many AI tool users are simply (well, in my case, I don't know about you) trying to adapt to an ever-changing market.

Yes, technology isn't perfect, and it can open the door to discussions. But nothing that can't be fixed through dialogue. Emphasis on "dialogue" because, as I said before, that's what the anti-AI people don't seem to want.

I'm not saying their complaints are unfounded or completely wrong, but they are taking it out on the wrong people.

Neither AI nor AI users are the enemy. AI is a tool. If anyone is afraid of losing their job in the future, it's most likely that they won't be replaced by AI itself, but by someone who has learned to use it efficiently.

I think the anti-AI stance itself is like shooting yourself in the foot. AI isn't the future; it's the present. It's not only increasingly used in companies/professional, but also necessary.

The problems many artists have with low-quality content, work reused without consent, clients expecting cheap or free work, etc., are valid concerns, but they existed long before generative AI. (And ironically, it's AI itself that could help them fight against that, I don't know, I think.) But I get the impression that they're taking it out on other people's users and work because that's a more "real and tangible" enemy than something abstract like the job market and consumer habits or preferences.

I think many have bought into the idea that AI will do everything with a prompt, and at first it might seem that way, since it's not very difficult for AIs like Dall-E or Nano Banana to return pretty images with a simple prompt. But a pretty image isn't the same as a useful image. A generic landscape image isn't the same as a sprite, a character sprite sheet, or a texture. Just to give a few examples. (This is where a professional's knowledge and experience carry more weight than anything else.)

My advice for artists who haven't yet incorporated AI into their workflow is to try it out little by little. Not so much chatGPT or Gemini; the world of AI tools is much larger and more varied. And there are many that (this is a personal opinion) I think they'll feel more comfortable with, allowing them to use all the knowledge they've acquired over time, just as they have been doing until now.

This is all like the Industrial Revolution, or the rise of the home PC, or the rise of the internet. The world changes; there's no other option but to adapt. After all, life goes on.

so i don't straight up hate ai. it has it's places in things like aiding in research, helping to find new compounds for medicines for example that we would have otherwise missed. it's really helpful for things like data analysis and organization, to help in speeding up tasks that would have taken days or weeks into minutes or hours. 

what it's becoming instead is something for people to use as a way to shove out things that are low effort and low quality by having it generate images, code things, or straight up write for them. i completely understand not having the knowledge of certain areas, i don't know how to code, and my art skills are lacking, to be generous. but even then, i have no desire to bring to life any projects i have in my head if i don't have the skills, or the help from a human to help me put that forward. 

art is inherently human, and how we express our emotions and ideas. to allow a machine to take that from us is just wrong. people are going to like what they like though, and my objections to the use of ai in this way isn't going to close the box; that will never happen. but i personally would rather live and die never seeing anything i want created being made before i ever use image generation. i'll also never play an ai game or watch any media pushed with ai in it. 

ai is a tool, yes. but people are using a wrench to hammer a screw. 

One of the things is, I cannot draw art, and I am in fact terrible at it.

But I have an idea, so I describe the strange idea to A.I, and then it draws it out, sometimes it takes its liberties as long as it exists or its seen it before, and what comes out can be very creative. Having said that, I am aware that it is nowhere as competent as a human, all the walking animations all gone wrong for spritesheets, it can only generate mostly concept arts or stills and even then, the eye expressions are always off or like dead fish

It also ignores instructions. It's not that I don't want to pay for a team to do my game or rp, more like I can't afford to without going all in and bankrupt if the project tanks.

When it generates right, you get really happy, but most of the time, it trips over itself and u get frustrated prompting it again and again XD.

Some of you might say, "learn to draw". My reply to that is, u think I didn't try? Man people laughed at my drawings, or how fat and out of shape sonic was when I did it. I copied pokemon from the pics, and everyone laughed man when I kept those pictures and manga in a special folder though they looked like crap.

I think the part of your post that hit me wasn't even the AI discussion itself. It was the feeling of spending years supporting a creative community because you genuinely believed in it, only to discover that support doesn't necessarily translate into understanding or acceptance when your work falls outside what some people consider acceptable.

Whether people agree with AI tools or not, having your work dismissed as "slop" without any meaningful engagement is frustrating. Especially when you're talking about using AI as one tool among many in a larger creative process rather than trying to replace creativity altogether.

I also think a lot of independent creators can relate to the financial side of what you're describing. Many of us have spent years supporting artists, developers, musicians, and creators because we wanted to contribute to an ecosystem we cared about. Realizing those communities may not see you the same way you see them can be a painful experience.

For what it's worth, I don't think you're alone. There are probably plenty of creators quietly experimenting with these tools while trying to make art, tell stories, build games, and express themselves. Most of them aren't looking for a fight. They're just trying to create.

Even if people disagree with your methods, nobody deserves to have years of effort, enthusiasm, and support reduced to a single dismissive label.

Hello.

1st. Similar to Sirius, I'd suggest you find a community. My personal opinion is that you won't. You'd think that pro-AI people would want to have a community isolated from "luddites", but somehow, they seem to want everyone to be on the same train as them, which is a telltale sign of them knowing, deep down, that their opinion doesn't carry weight. And the second reason - if AI art was worth something, if you genuinely found it beautiful and moving, people wouldn't want everyone to love and accept it. This is admittedly, a bit more difficult to explain, but think of it like this - you're making this beautiful art, instead of trying to get people to look at it and give you validation for it, why is it not enough to just generate more art, or look at other people's generated art? Isn't it, after all, so good?? Now, I know about the different forums where people share AI slop, like civit ai and r/stablediffusion or whatever. I don't understand why they don't just stay there, instead of trying to convince others.

2nd. A lot of people have tried to explain to you why AI art is completely worthless, and you seem to be close to the concept yourself, you're almost grasping it based on your replies. You mentioned that you did a few hours of work and got your stuff on newgrounds nuked, and that hurt you. You mentioned that a lazy person doesn't follow through (I'm not holding that against lazy people!) Instead of explaining to you why AI art is worthless, let me explain to you why art is full of value:

Art is your mortal soul fighting the chaotic universe. You are born and you are going to die, and you have a finite time on this earth. You choose to dedicate a lot of your limited time into honing the skills to make good art. The value of art comes from exactly that. The effort gives it value. Whether it was a few hours you spent, or a few months, the step where you used AI is what muddies the whole effort. That's not what art is at all. People are hostile because they know the value of what you're pretending to have made. A person being lazy, is precisely the whole point. When you are lazy, you don't get to make art. Art is overcoming the laziness, overcoming the struggle and coming out the other side. This is what gives art value, not "a pretty picture". An AI doesn't have to worry about dying. Even a general AI, a sentient one one day, will never have the soul of a human being, because it cannot die - it has infinite time. It can't fall down and break its hand, and now this hand is permanently been broken. It can't lose a loved one. This is a deeper philosophical problem concerning immortality and invincibility. If you cannot die and experience loss, then your soul is just.. empty. Suffering is baked into our universe, and we, sapient life forms, are trying to make our peace with it, every single second in our limited existence. And art is one of those ways we make peace with it. We reach into ourselves, and we scrape off from our time, in order to make art - art which is some kind of a permanent (or at least longer-lasting) mark on a canvass outside of us. That's valuable, because time is valuable - you understand this.

There is an argument to be made about how people complained in the past about new technologies. I find that argument to be insane, because... look at where these new technologies have lead us to. Wars, climate change, cities with no character, people with no personality. People say "the industrial revolution made a lot of people lose their jobs but it brought us tech advancements!!" but.. at the same time, we've never been more disconnected from each other, never more inhuman towards each other. I go into the city and I feel nothing but emptiness...

Anyway, hope this helps you understand why people have such a visceral reaction. It is completely understandable, from my POV, and I'm trying to help others understand it too. Good luck!

ETA: I had another thought about AI art and why people hate it - it's a bit of a disjointed thought though; it's about the value of art again: You've had yourself a child and this child draws you a picture with crayons that says "Daddy" or "Mommy" and it's a picture of you. It's completely technically bad and has no good perspective, composition etc. - you're still in love with the picture. You still hang it up on your fridge and you smile when you see it. You go to your close friend's house and you look at their fridge and there's a drawing of them by their child, and you smile again. You can ask an AI to generate you 10,000,000 "cute crayon drawing by a child for their parent" and you'll get exactly what you asked for. Would you smile? Would you be able to say any of them belong on any fridge? The soul is missing, I hope you can see the point I'm trying to make.

I don't know if the OP still reads this but, here goes:

To the OP, your logic with AI is a little off--and I don't mean that in a bad way. You should definitely look into "linear algebra" and find out exactly what AI is doing. It will blow your mind.

I say this because I finally got tired of the arguing, I figured I would find out the truth for myself. By my own hands and eyes, I wanted to KNOW. So I spent 3 full days pouring over the mathematics. It all looked so simple, I thought it couldn't be true. So I worked out the high-dimensional mathematics for single 6x6 encoder neuron pass--by hand. Sure enough... You could literally do anything AI does by writing numbers on a piece of paper. The computer code is just automating the math problems at incredible speeds.

I can now literally, not maybe, I can literally build my own ChatGPT from a blank sheet of paper. I don't have to ask anyone anymore... I know.

IS AI ART STEALING?

Yes and no... but mostly? NO.

WHEN IS IT STEALING?

There is literally only 2 instances in which generating something with AI can be reasonably called "stealing" and that is: 

1.) When you use a LORA or an Embedding to mimic a particular style.

2.) If you use or mention anyone else's work in the initial prompt. (Like using img2video to animate someone else's artwork)

There is no "output", only the input transformed. These words, all this terminology, it's just lies. Or wishful thinking or marketing hype or something. There is no "training", there is no "knowledge base", there is no "pattern recognition". 

"AI" isn't even AI. What we do after the process, that is the "intelligence" aspect. In truth, an AI model does not have to "speak" in words like a chat bot. It does not have to "speak" in images or video. It can utilize anything. ANYTHING.

Because a feed-forward neural network is way cooler than anyone can possibly imagine if they don't already know.

It is a High-Dimensional Probability Drive. And whatever mathematical expression that navigates that hyperspace becomes forever changed.

It's not "intelligence". It's a navigation system. The only reason it even "cares" to do anything other than that is because after the navigation, we use a softMax function to reduce the final vector (coordinates) into small enough numbers that they can fit into probability calculations. Then, each final neuron is compared against the token dictionary like a massive game of Battleship.

E-3... Hit!

Whichever neuron produces a probability closest to the intended token, that's the one that is chosen. An AI's "temperature" is literally like saying how "hot or cold" it is allowed to be from the desired result.

So until someone steps up with the mathematics, ignore them. Because they do not know. It will help your heart and mind to know for yourself.