One of the best things about A.I. art is that you don’t have to deal with a person.
Artists tend to think that that’s a problem. They want to be involved in the creative process, even if you’re not doing anything with the art but looking at it. Part of this is because some of them are up their own asses and they’ve decided that, because it took them a long time to get where they’re at, they are now the gatekeepers of this ‘power’. Some people talk about ‘theft’, which is comical, because they also say that the art produced with this thing is also in the public domain anyways. Others are just assholes. Overall, it doesn’t matter.
For about 20 years, I commissioned artists. The overall experience I had is that you give money to a person who is not going to produce anything for about a month, at least, and they will be upset if you e-mail them once a month, asking for progress. Today, with an A.I. Art generator, I can have the result I want in the span of an hour. For free. Without someone hurting my feelings on purpose.
Whenever I complain about ill treatment, people always like to blame me. Human beings love to blame the victim. Despite me not having to defend myself from any accusations whatsoever, I do want to tell you: I didn’t treat them poorly. I was business-like, and polite. Overly-polite! And I always paid upfront, the full amount. No halfsies; no half now, half later. Because I respected them, and I wanted to be a patron of the arts. I wanted to help them. I felt sorry for some of them.
Most of these people did not have their shit together.
Out of about 102 artists commissioned, I met about two artists who had their shit together. The rest were either late, or so ‘forgetful’ (there are things that happened that make no sense to me, even to this day) that I never received all of what I paid for.
I get it: you draw. It’s hard. I’m currently working on some things— I understand. Drawing for money is one of the worst things ever.
But you chose this. You chose this; set a price; and I paid it. And now, you’re acting like I’m the monster, because I ask if it’s finished every month.
You know, these days? I hear that commission wait times, for some artists, are 3-4 years out there. How does anybody get anything done, relying on these people? I have a pretty healthy lead time, and even paying hundreds of dollars, like I did in the past? Yeah. These motherfuckers were in no hurry.
Again: I get that it’s hard. You draw and you don’t want to give me the original copies through the mail. You don’t want to pay for postage, and you don’t want to deal with me like that. Fine; but I was upfront about all of this. My terms were clear: I give you the money, I e-mail you once a month to check to see if you’ve done it yet, I don’t pester you beyond that. In fact, to say that I ‘pester’ someone by e-mailing them once a month to see if they’ve completed a drawing is just fucking stupid. It’s not ‘pestering’. It’s an e-mail.
Occasionally I received back commissions that were just plain insulting. I have no idea whether or not the person I was talking to was mentally ill, but I deeply suspect that at least 3 of them were. Like a French guy who, upon hearing that I was American, told me to kill myself. That was interesting.
One moment, he’s giving me 3 sketches without me paying upfront (which I found odd, and uncomfortable, as I had told him prior that I would pay him before he even laid pencil to paper); the next, I ask if he can snail mail me the things. And then when I give him my address, he tells me, in no uncertain terms, to fucking kill myself.
The problem with commissioning artists is that artists are people, and people are cruel. I’m glad I didn’t commission them in the era where people were trying to cancel others on social media. Because some of them would have tried to get me killed.
Again, people will blame the victim: they’ll say, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.
I’ve been screamed at for doing something that I was told to do.
I’ve been screamed at and shamed for trying to save someone from killing themselves.
I’ve been screamed at and shamed for fundraising for a year, for a person’s sick mother, who had cancer.
I’ve been screamed at for trying to give money to someone so they could buy food.
I’ve been screamed at for helping raise money for charity, after people have asked me to. That lady was nice— we raised $5,500 or such for her to get a chair lift, because she was disabled. (Probably still is disabled.) And when she got the money, she immediately insulted us. Said that we were nothing; told me that my voice sounded like a backed-up toilet. Yeah!
I’ve been screamed at for something that the other person thought that I had thought. That’s right— they yelled at me because they said I had a thought that was insulting to them, but they had no way to know what I was even thinking. (At the time, even I had no idea what I was thinking.)
I’m sitting on the tail-end of raising over 5+ million USD for various charitable causes online, and you know what I think?
I’m glad it’s over. And I’m glad I won’t be purchasing commissions again.
I stopped doing commissions the day that I started painting again. I painted a portrait of a space alien, over a commission I got from a friend. That was the day that I realized that I didn’t need artists’ help anymore. That was the day I just started painting— and I got a portrait even better than anything I could ever pay for. Even now, even with an A.I. Art generator, I can never get an image as good as what’s in my own head.
However: nowadays, when I want some throwaway art, some shit I don’t care how it looks exactly (fanart, etc), I ask a computer. Right now I’m using an A.I. Art generator, running off my own little computer, to make a nun with big fucking titties. I don’t have to ask anybody to do this for me. I don’t have to do it myself. All is well.
A lot of these people were very useful to me. Some of them are friends. They provided me with a greater idea of what the space aliens looked like, when I couldn’t even remember their faces. And, eventually, I started painting the space aliens myself. So, they were a means to an end. They helped.
But that’s over now. The way that things are, I don’t even have to fucking tell people what I’m doing. And I don’t have to show them.
Forever and ever, until the end of time, I can just make this art. I don’t even have to try.
And I don’t have to get yelled at by human fuckers, nor do I have to pay them to draw anything for me, just to have them ‘forget’ about the commission for a full fucking year, only to do it in 45 minutes when I e-mail them a year later.
I don’t have to deal with Frenchmen telling me to kill myself for asking them to snail mail me the beautiful drawings they’ve done for me.
I don’t have to deal with people taking money for a commission, using it as a short-term personal loan, and then asking if I want a refund months later.
I don’t have to deal with three separate shipments where an artist keeps sending me unrelated things, but never gives me the drawing I actually paid for.
I don’t have to deal with people judging me, yelling at me, hurting me or my feelings.
I can make art by myself, now. Without any cruel human being trying to control me, or hurt me.
And thank God for that.
The Future
The future of all of this technology is going to be like that one science fiction story I saw, then lost. Where people stayed in their apartments, and talked to each other on video chat. We do that now, on Discord, and Twitch. We’re there, man. We’re the Beautiful Ones now.
Overall the reason that this technology exists is because human beings are cruel and don’t want to deal with each other. I’ve learned more from ChatGPT than any human being who was paid to teach me. The A.I. explains eloquently, and it is kind, unlike a human being. It can break down things and I actually understand.
Gemeinschaftsgefühl is a glue of civilization. You have none. Your ‘society’ unravels before your very eyes.
And you blame A.I. But really, the reality is, it is your cruelty that is destroying your world.
And it is the reason that your species will eventually be alone.