When you first see what image-generating AIs can do, you feel bad for real artists; after playing around with it, you envy them.

I've only found that true for days I am prompting without a specific image in mind. The second something specific gets in my head, and even hours of fiddling and tweaking prompts won't get the result that satisfies me (though I might get a bunch of cool tangential output along the way).

It is the same as science. Many discoveries are serendipity, they happen by chance. You need a professional to understand that that is a new discovery.

Anyone who manages to make something significant with AI is a professional.

In the same time? Yeah absolutely, I've put together some really cool pieces of AI art in like 5-10 mins. A "real" artists just couldn't match that pace.

yea, specifically I envy the ability to form an original idea and then using your skills to create something exactly how you want it to be. Must be nice. Using those AIs is just unsatisfying, it's never your thing, never your style and never your idea, never your vision, never your art – even if it might look kinda cool sometimes.

I tried really hard to "create" an older Version of Daria (from the MTV cartoon, so not even an original idea cuz I cannot form those) standing in front of a billboard in a slightly dystopian environment. Despite numerous attempts of prompting, the best I got was this hyper-attractive girl in a green jacket.

AAAAH!! Yes, that makes sense, thank you~

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling, idk how you could even come to the conclusions you did with my response.

1. AI isn't going to replace us anytime soon. Data entry will be first, in the next 5-10 years most likely. When I say it's a "lever" what I mean is that for people like myself who work in IT, AI tools have multiplied our efforts and allowed us to spend more time doing and less time researching how to do. Even when it's wrong, it's usually good enough to get me on the right track and save me time.

2. The Segway analogy was intended to illustrate how the average person who doesn't work on or around computers sees the invention. They think it's the next Segway (as in, a useless item that is supposed to change everything but disappears in months) because they don't have an actual use case for it and spend most of their time trying to make it write smut or whatever else they're dicking around with.

I was awful at drawing and painting and now I'm not. I've walked that path, and I'm glad I spend the time learning those skills. I much prefer creating whatever I want to as opposed to pecking a word at a time, trying to coax something vaguely like it from an algorithm. That seems sad to me.