Having tried some AI image generation, it feels more like gambling than work --- repeatedly submitting and hoping you get the result you wanted is extremely reminiscent of pulling a one-armed bandit hoping to win, except perhaps a bit cheaper. I can certainly understand a potential for addiction though.

For me, this is completely true but I just see it as a new form of being creative.

What I find interesting is no one use to be against Kai's Power Tools like this 30 years ago. I can remember waiting for new magazines to come out in the 90s to find what cool new graphic tools I might get to use to make something interesting. The output is what mattered, not the path to get to the output.

I think it is really deeper about art itself and that "creatives" are largely not at all actually creative. In the 21st century, "Creatives" is the word we use for the product varnish painters.

A class of people tasked with putting a thin layer of gloss on products to make them a bit more shiny. Absolutely nothing creative or artistic about this at all. Not to say there isn't a lot of talent involved in being a product gloss painter. I would be highly against AI in the arts too if I was a product gloss painter.

There is also this aspect that is like at some point in the 20th century, there were highbrow people that believed anything but 12-tone music was not worth listening to. Schoenberg promoted this music saying his discovery was in league with Einstein. If you were to play early punk music to these people not only is it not even music, it is an afront to the very idea of what you believe music to be. The idea anyone can pick up an instrument to make music is not worth considering. It is just making a type of noise. A type of worthless "slop".