When someone tells you about the hard times in their life and you find out they just made it up, you probably feel upset about it. Same thing. The experiences people have matter.

I think this is one of the moments where the adage "it's the thought that counts" makes sense! If you're just throwing a prompt at a generator and send it to your friend as a birthday gift then that's a bit tacky. I once got a hand drawn picture in a card from one of my best friends. It was terrible! But I knew how much effort he put into it.

If I found out that he just used AI to make the picture, then I'd probably ask him what his workflow was.

I'm not against using AI to generate images and stuff! I actually have been playing with image generation (Nano banana and also comfy ui). I like making silly pictures for friends and family as e-cards (or whatever they're called now). If it's not a close friend, then I'll exchange prompts with nano banana and generate a few dozen images and then pipe it into veo to make an animated e-card. Maybe takes 10-20 mins including image generation time.

For closer friends I'd spin up comfy ui, spend some time looking for workflows or loras, probably generate a few dozen images as well, and pipe the one I like into Wan video.

This process can take me about an hour, which includes generation time. But I tell my friends they're ai generated, not that I need to because they all I know I can't draw. They don't mind, even if they don't necessarily know how much effort I put into their picture. To their eyes, maybe I just used nano banana. But no ones ever accused me of being lazy with them. It's all in good fun anyways.