I think "AI assisted" digital art needs its own category in showcases

I keep seeing people lumping fully hand drawn digital pieces with stuff that was basically generated by a prompt and then touched up. At the local gallery last month, I watched a guy spend 4 hours on a single piece in Procreate, and right next to him was someone who typed "cyberpunk cat" into Midjourney and called it a day. They were both labeled "digital art" on the tags. It's not the same skill set at all. Why does everyone act like it is? Anyone else feel like we need different sections for this stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

spencer_moore3918d ago

Yeah exactly, that part about "context really matters" is spot on. I was at this small comic con last year and saw a guy selling these super detailed character portraits that he'd clearly spent days on, and a table over someone was just printing out obviously AI stuff with like weird hands and garbled text in the background. When I asked the AI guy how he made them he just said "oh I typed some words." It made me feel bad for the actual illustrator who had to explain his whole process while the other guy just stood there. A separate category would at least let people know what they're looking at from the start, you know?

henrygrant2mo ago

Does it bother you that they're grouped together, or is it more about the way people talk about the process? For me, when I was in a similar spot at a craft fair, I had to start asking the artists directly how they made their work before I judged the skills involved. It was a small change, but it made me realize the context really matters, and maybe a separate label would help the audience understand those different levels of effort.

abbyc332mo agoMost Upvoted

Asking the artists directly at a craft fair helped me see the difference between someone welding custom pieces and someone assembling pre-cut parts. Once I started talking about technique instead of just the finished product, the whole conversation changed for me. Getting that firsthand context made me realize a separate label would save everyone from making wrong assumptions right off the bat.