Met a digital painter at a coffee shop who changed my mind about AI art

I was sketching at a cafe in Austin last Tuesday when this guy sitting next to me saw my drawing and started talking about AI art. He told me he's a professional concept artist for video games and said AI tools actually help him brainstorm faster for client work. He showed me how he uses a generator to create 50 rough ideas in 10 minutes, then picks 3 to refine by hand. I always thought AI was just stealing from artists, but seeing his process made me wonder if there's a middle ground. Has anyone else talked to a working artist who uses AI and came away with a different view?

3 comments

3 Comments

baker.christopher2d ago

Hold on, I gotta push back on this. I've talked to a few concept artists about this and the "50 ideas in 10 minutes" thing is exactly the kind of sales pitch that makes me suspicious. If you're generating 50 images that fast, you're not really brainstorming, you're just scrolling through a slot machine of stolen visual data. The real work of thinking through a design, understanding the shape language, the silhouette, the story behind it takes time that AI just skips. And that "pick 3 to refine by hand" part? In my experience, most of those artists end up spending more time fighting the AI to get something vaguely usable than they would just sketching from scratch. Plus, the whole pipeline trains on millions of images from working artists who never agreed to it. I get that seeing it in person feels different but I think it's just a polished version of the same old problem.

cameron_hernandez692d ago

Right, because nothing says "creative discovery" like asking a slot machine for 50 vaguely medieval castles real quick. I'm sure those artists just love spending their day fixing an AI's weird texture hallucinations instead of, you know, actually drawing.

the_miles2d ago

The "50 ideas in 10 minutes" part sounds exaggerated - most generators take at least 15-30 seconds per image, plus setup time. Still, I get why seeing it in action would change how you look at it.