Realized I was blaming AI for something the artist did themselves

I used to be fully on the "AI is stealing everything" side. Then last month a local painter in Portland showed me her process. She does these huge acrylic landscapes and she openly traces photos she takes, uses projectors, even copies color palettes from other painters she likes. Nobody calls that theft. But if someone runs her painting through a diffusion model and tweaks it, suddenly it's a crime.\n\nThe thing is, the line was already blurry before AI. Humans copy each other all the time, we just call it inspiration or technique. The real issue for me now is not the tool, it's the deception. If someone sells AI art as fully hand made, that's bad. If they're open about it, I don't see how that's different from using a projector.\n\nI still think artists deserve credit and pay, but I stopped treating AI as the enemy and started asking who's being honest. Is anyone else here more bothered by the lying than the tech itself?

2 comments

2 Comments

danielm802d ago

The "line was already blurry" part really hit home. My buddy runs a print shop and he's caught two different "traditional" artists sending him paintings that were clearly just filtered photos, one was even from a stock site. Nobody cared until he called them out on it, then suddenly they were the victims.

stellat462d ago

I read an article last year about a court case in England where a photographer proved a "painter" had just run his photos through a filter app and sold the prints for thousands. The painter settled quietly and kept his reputation somehow. That's the thing that gets me, people act like digital tools created this mess, but tracing paper and projectors have been used by painters for centuries. The real issue is honesty, not the method. If you're going to lean on someone else's work, at least own up to it instead of crying foul when you get caught. Your buddy did the right thing calling it out, and the backlash just shows how many people prefer the comfortable lie.