Developer Vs Artist Ai

The other day I was watching [thePrimeTimeagen]https://youtube.com/@theprimetimeagen?si=jVcp23FbfQSFZfDc) and he talked about devs loving ai and artists revolting. There was some discussion in chat about art being more creative and prime quickly squashed that. He ended with being oddly confused why developers are jumping on board and artists are not. Both had their art stolen to build out the models.

I'm writing this from my phone without further research, all vibes, personal experience, and thoughts,  no research.

Good Tools #

First I want to argue that artists have had some form of ai in their tools for years. Idk, probably not ai as we know it today but functionally similar. Content aware fill. This is a Photoshop feature from Adobe, as far as I know it’s one of the special things you get from Adobe that you don’t get from the FOSS alternatives easily.

This is an example of a good took that is well loves by the community and widely used, if you put ai in it to make it better no one would care, if it made things look oddly ai it would get rejected.

taking the brush #

Here is the critical difference that I see between the communities. Software development has made great tools for itself in a wide spectrum, from hands off vibe code no code to better auto complete. There’s something for everyone and every situation. This feels very obvious the minute you try to look at how to do it. In fact we started with better autocomplete. This autocomplete is really good at recognizing patterns in your document and continuing your current thought for you.

Art is a complete 180. It started with prompt engineering. Hands off let the tool do everything, you do nothing but prompt it. If it’s wrong reprompt. Diffusion is the worst because it generates completely new results every time nothing like what you had before. The newer stuff from openai and nano banana are not diffusion and do much better text and edits, but it’s not the same.

hands off is frustrating #

Anyone who has tried to get something specific from ai art or code gen without touching it themselves knows the frustration that you ask it to do one thing that takes 3 prompts to get it to understand what your asking and by the time it’s right it’s wrecked something else. It’s not fun, it’s soul sucking and ripe for meme content.

freedom of expression #

Software development has made a really good effort to make really great tools for itself. We have a wide spectrum that allow you to prototype fast, get something complex working in hours not month, but riddles with issues. Allowing us to get better scoped work from PMs who have put their hands on a semi working prototype. We have the ability to slice out parts and refactor with ease, and when things really matter we can right the code ourselves with ai there to take away the boilerplate repetition that finds it’s way into some modules.

I’m sure there is better ai art tools out there that allow artists to keep their brush in hand and enhance their skills, but I have not seen them. Ive seen in painting, but its not discoverable as it’s first experience, is hard to setup, might cost a lot, and doesn’t quite fit in to where you work with it. It’s still all or nothing prompt engineering, just a bit more focused in.

ai video #

I haven’t even thought much about things like sora throughout this. I can say for sure I’m enjoying editors for small time creators having the ability to throw in short clips to enhance the story. Especially for story telling style content that is impossible to get real video of, and would cost a fortune to build set, costume, and cast. It makes no sense for this scale. The McDonald’s and coke videos im on the fence on. They seem fine, they don’t feel inspiring, great, or terrible to me.

fin #

Developers naturally started with great tools here, and artist were given tools for developers to do art with, nothing tools for them.

Please tell me I’m wrong, artists have great tools you just haven’t seen them. I’d love to be wrong.