A (limited) defence of AI. (CLOSED)

For the past few days, while the spring rains pounded down outside, I've been exploring the deep, dark, dank and often creepy and bizarre rabbit hole of AI images on DeviantFart (couldn't resist). 

Firstly, as expected, there's an ocean of stuff that's the same as a ba-zillion other images.  It's obvious that there's only a few AI engines being used since you see the same faces repeatedly.  The same poses are shown ad nauseam with the same backgrounds, and few take the time to correct weird eyes, mouths, lips, fingers and the rest of the artifacts of AI.   People seem to think that I want to wade through tens of thousands of images that are all the same save for a few details, and it's even more insulting when they expect me to pay money to see this shit.  My record (so far) is one site with just over 30K images!  I lost interest after a few thousand and moved on.

On the plus side I saw a few (very few) quite well done images.  The person (they're NOT artists!) had taken the time to learn the engine, massage their results and presented only the best one or two.   I realized that AI (even the poorly done ones) allows people with no talent or patience to realize their own fantasies.  Ideas that they'd never have been able to put to paper (so to speak) are now out there for the world to be inspired by (or disgusted at).  I found some truly unique and original themes that will inspire my own renders in Studio.   I made a new directory for these fun ideas and have been adding a few new ones as I cross them.  I not only followed these few folks but took the time to message them with comments of what I found intriguing and inspiring about their images and thanked them for sharing their fantasies.

I've still got dozens of sites to wade through but so far it's been quite productive. 

On DA, I've also seen a few (not many) creative AI people who go against the mainstream, and whose work can definitely be inspiring. 

There's even someone I'd almost call an AI artist: Roope Rainisto from Finland. For his series Life in West America, he exploited the weaknesses of AI and achieved some truly astonishing results. It's worth doing an image search

It's important to pay a few bucks subscription, to get away from the exact same "sameness"   that comes from the repeat offenders of the freely available services.  

And you have to be prompting genius too.  it's all in the words. 

I played with it for awhile when my workhorse computer died until I got another workhorse. I saved some of the better images I made in case I ever opted to use them as backgrounds in 3D renders. It took me 3 - 4 complex, highly detailed paragraphs and multiple refinements, plus some work in Photoshop to produce an image like this:

Well, I make the distingtion between "Generative AI" and "AI tools".
Generative AI does create stuff based on your prompts, searching in data bases for references.
Example: 
-"create a blonde supergirl with pink guys trunks."
AI tools helps, where a manual solution is overall difficult and time consuming.
Examples:
-Adding micro movements to animations.
-Remove reflections on shiny materials from green screens.
-Make hair and cloth simulations more natural.
-simulate underlining body tissue on human characters.
These examples should be different from being just an overlay post render filter.
Again: If AI helps the process, it is useful and is totally legit.
If it makes creative decisions for a user, by filling the blanks, than it is a clear No.
Example:
Make a poorly designed draft 3d scene into a hyper realistic, or colorful toon render by just AI filtering.