The rudimentary knobs on generative AI tools almost guarantee low quality output but they can do it with such speed and in such volume that trained artists are concerned it will overwhelm the market.
Yes, photography was similar in how it overwhelmed painting, but the difference is that photography, from day one, offered a gloriously rich set of tools for making pictures while DALL-E is a peg-board toddler toy by comparison and the results speak for themselves. Just compare the first few years of photography to the middling pablum we have that's spit out from these generative AI models. Despite the models stealing the entire history of world art and putting all of that at the fingertips of untrained artists, the results are still embarrassingly naive and mostly boring. The reason is that art isn't about the tools, it's about the mind and people with no training and no experience in art cannot make consistently good art without training, even with tools that let them create sophisticated collages of other people's real art.
Yes, photography was similar in how it overwhelmed painting, but the difference is that photography, from day one, offered a gloriously rich set of tools for making pictures while DALL-E is a peg-board toddler toy by comparison and the results speak for themselves. Just compare the first few years of photography to the middling pablum we have that's spit out from these generative AI models. Despite the models stealing the entire history of world art and putting all of that at the fingertips of untrained artists, the results are still embarrassingly naive and mostly boring. The reason is that art isn't about the tools, it's about the mind and people with no training and no experience in art cannot make consistently good art without training, even with tools that let them create sophisticated collages of other people's real art.