> In fact it is kind of stupid to insist someone slavishly draw something by hand

I believe they used to call that "art."

No, they used to call that "illustration."

The belief that we were living in a golden age of hand-made visual beauty before AI arrived is obvious nonsense.

The golden age of illustration ended when Illustrator arrived. After that, everything became a mess of cliches and clip art, culminating with Google's Material Design, where everything looks simultaneously soulless, heartless, and bland.

AI brought some colour back. A lot of the imagery is kitsch, but illustration has always tended to kitsch, so nothing really changed there.

This is the irony of the anti-AI purity hunt. Most human-made work is crap. It always has been.

AI hasn't suddenly sent the quality of creativity off a cliff. It's commoditised the low standard of most previous hand-made work and made it easier to access.

The high end - the real talent - still stands out. But most people can't afford it, and even fewer people appreciate it.