My cousin in Denver showed me her AI art portfolio and I didn't know what to say

She spent like 3 months making these really cool digital paintings by hand, then last week she just typed prompts into Midjourney and had 50 images in an hour. She was so proud, saying she found a shortcut to express her ideas faster. I didn't want to kill her excitement, but it felt like she skipped the whole point of making art. Has anyone else had a friend or family member switch over and you just had to bite your tongue?

3 comments

3 Comments

theas288d ago

Did she say why she switched? I get why it bugs you, but I think you might be selling her short on what she's actually doing. She probably spent those 3 months learning fundamentals like composition and color, and now she's using AI to skip the tedious parts of execution. It's still her ideas and her eye making the final call on which images to keep or tweak. A lot of digital artists use photobashing or filters to speed things up, and nobody calls that cheating. Seems like she found a tool that lets her make more art faster, not less. Maybe ask her to show you how she refines the outputs instead of just judging the prompt part.

ray_sullivan8d ago

Huh, @theas28, thats a solid take but something else might be happening too. Maybe she got burnt out trying to keep up with social media algorithms that reward constant posting. When you spend months on a single traditional piece and it only gets 12 likes, AI tools start looking less like cheating and more like survival mode.

wendy_lee488d ago

Heard a buddy say the same thing about his girlfriend, she went from painting to prompts and never looked back.