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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

1. ArtStation got the sweet Epic Games buyout/exit. It is also the better community as it serves as a Github-like professional portfolio for artists.

2. AI-unaided art is on the way to becoming a niche artisanal field. Kids of tomorrow will treat illustration as they do calligraphy, celluloid film, and butter churning.

3. Because of these trends, their userbase will stop growing and eventually dwindle.

DeviantArt sees the writing on the wall. This is a risky but probably necessary pivot, though it will accelerate the loss of their existing userbase.

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> 2. AI-unaided art is on the way to becoming a niche artisanal field. Kids of tomorrow will treat illustration as they do calligraphy, celluloid film, and butter chuRning

Maybe I agree 80 percent With this. I teach art and certainly our illustration stream will have to re-think itself.

We are already seeing students of their own accord incorporate AI into their work. Mostly this is for ideation and development. But the best results come from the students who best know the formal language of art. This is not easy to come by and only very experienced artists and art directors speak this language effectively.

This reminds me when I was told “a skilled driver can shift gears better than an automatic”. It was probably true and perhaps even more back then but now the machine is good enough that it’s better than the vast majority of people.

sometimes worse is better, people are perverse

Did I just read a comparison between a mechanical operation and the creation of art?

Driving is absolutely an art, and if you have ever heard artist tall about techniques, you'll realize that there is a large amount of what you'd consider mechanical operation. The viscoelastic properties of acrylic paint aren't based on feeling and subconscious expression. :-)

A large part of the practical application of art is mechanical skill. Some people have an active imagination but have not trained sufficiently to bring forth what they see in their minds eye.

Art is not the same bracket as machine work. Art is a cultural expression and experience. It’s not about who churns out 3000 paintings the fastest, otherwise some speed painters would have won.

I can highly recommend the book “But is it art?” By Cynthia Freeland to get a better perspective on this topic!

There is a whole lot of artistic work that is done in fairly mechanical environments, game dev in particular is what Im thinking of, where you need a couple of lead charicters and then a bunch of extras. If you can generate the extras with AI then suddenly you have a substantially reduced need for artists.

I wonder how much this applies to other fields, corporate art and imagery for sure, but also a whole bunch of the low cost illustration and commission work I can see getting completely gutted, with the existing space for an entry level human to build from is no longer worthwile.

That’s more applied arts though, not free arts. But I agree with what you are saying otherwise. In the short run I don’t see any big chances, but overtime it’s going to be another tool. I guess curation becomes an even a bigger thing than before. We already do it with information (to some extend at least)

I mean countless books are being written each year and quality still need to be curated (or trash promoted with lots of money)

And churning butter isn't?

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