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Comment by dostick | Hacker News Reader

Easy for them to say that. The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.

And maybe a smart strategy? If they add AI that will learn how you draw, and after couple of drawings will be able to draw for you, that may kill the product because artists will lose interest or reason to spend time with their product.

Maybe they realise that and just want to push away inevitable for as long as possible.

I wonder, they probably have same stance about AI coding, and have no need for that either.

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> "The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process."

I can imagine. In fact, I wrote a scifi novel that imagines it! :)

In the story, the idle elite has painting classes with an AI teacher. They have levels of engagement they can choose from: see something and paint it, see an AI-made painting of that something and copy it, copy it over projected lines into your canvas, paint only the filling colors over AI-created lines delineating it, let the AI-teacher-robot fix the painting for you after you are done. Every student goes home happily with the same painting in the same high AI-made quality. :)

> ’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.

Then you don't use your imagination. Obviously one can "snap" a sketch into a car or an owl or a house or whatever, keeping the style similar.

You could use your reasoning similarly to spell checkers.

I think there are two key differences: a spell checker doesn’t write the document for you or change your style (grammar checkers are closer to that) so your work is still your style and something you can claim copyright on. If you sell your work, that last part can be important. If you’re an artist, customers are paying you for your skills and the more you say a tool can do, the less they’re going to think your time is worth.

They also have a bit of a different market: their customers are people whose work has been used commercially without compensation to endanger their future livelihoods. It may be futile in the long run but I’d imagine there is a substantial market of people who don’t want to contribute to the problem or worry whether Adobe’s terms of service give them rights to screw you.

> It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.

“Sketch me a wireframe of a person running”

“Can you add a flowing cape to my character in a similar art style?”

“Add stippling for the shadows on these objects assuming the light comes from the left of the scene”

They could certainly have introduced things like AI-powered brushes or filters, and competing products from Adobe definitely do include AI features.

As you say though, it could be good business sense. Adobe seems to be getting a lot of backlash from creatives at least on social media.

> Adobe seems to be getting a lot of backlash from creatives at least on social media.

That mainly seems to be about Adobe doing opt-out training on people's art and data (and sneakily re-enable that option for people who've already disabled it in the past), not just because Adobe now has AI features you could use. But maybe we're stuck in different bubbles/echo chambers.

Why do you say they "push away the inevitable"? Why would it be inevitable to have quality apps without AI integration? I would even argue that in a lot of cases, no AI integrationadds quality to the app.

> The product is about manual drawing. It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.

Microsoft Paint has AI these days.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-image-creato...

> And maybe a smart strategy?

It's a brilliant strategy, IMO. Maybe not to take over the whole industry, but to carve out a loyal niche. Are there many other top-tier creative apps that take such a clear position?

Clip studio paint uses AI for coloring, better filling with gaps etc.

CSP once tried to develop a full generative AI, but they killed the project after a big backlash on social media (especially from Japanese on twitter).

It seems that the current line drawn by artists is: the app dev can do anything with neutral network as long as it doesn't generate a whole image.

> It’s difficult to imagine where would you insert the AI in that process.

Automated pattern and design fillers? Colour palette testers?

I read it as them stating their stance. As in, "Our" means Procreate, not humanity.

The thing that pops in my mind on misplaced AI integrations is: Copilot on Microsoft Word—infusing the caret with that God-Awful, purple Copilot “call to action.” Intuitively it makes sense to add AI capabilities to a writing program, but enough is enough. At this point it’s an insult on our collective intelligence.

If you ask me, keep the AI in a new, separate program.

Generative AI has a distinct workflow that is unique and the UX patterns will likely be different than traditional workflows. For instance: the generate, reject-or-accept loop.

I’m wondering how many people just copy and paste from their chat agent and simply ignore the other integrations (with respect to consumer products).

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