I imagine similar things happened when tailors, hand-crafting shirts, saw great industrial machines fabricating enormous rolls of cotton all at once, to be cut and trimmed into simple shirts. Would you try to stay up 20 hours a day, frantically pricking at your fingers to desperately and futilely try to keep up with the massive capacity of industrial creation? No, of course not. You can't adapt to that degree of complexity and industry. But you can handknit custom shirts, you can make skirts and hats, you can do whatever you want with your shirts.

I can insist on the value of "the soul of cooking," but I would be a buffoon if I tried to outproduce advanced, complex food factories churning out thousands of gallons a soup a day. That doesn't take away from the value of the soup I make at home - it just means I'm not gonna bring down Campbell's with my handmade food.

The same is EXACTLY true for digital art. Are you shaking your fist at people who use Photoshop, draw perfectly straight lines and use complicated vectors and shaders and filters to encapsulate particular styles and ideas in mere seconds that would manually take hours to create? Of course not. It's just a different means of artistic creation. I'm sure medicine men were angry at legitimate doctors when they brought medicine and technology and used them to save lives instead of rely on the traditional medicine men, but that doesn't mean the advancement of technology is a bad thing. It's just something to adapt to.

Your enjoyment of the creation of art shouldn't go away because other people can make art faster. It sucks to feel scared about technology taking your job away, but if you want it to be your job then adapt to the technology and use it yourself, nothing is stopping you. Just don't try to outfabricate a factory line with nothing but your hands, your wits and your plucky spirit.

The seed of the idea is mine and that's what matters. You can shout random words into the engine and get something out, sure, but you can also guide it and persuade it to make what YOU imagine. If you think that isn't true, I don't think you understand the nature of how current AI engines work on a basic level, where constant influence, interaction and tuning happens during image creation.

Also, by any definition? We are ALL derivative. Culture and society are cumulative; if I'm taught the methods of art from a teacher who was taught by a book, my art nor vision isn't lessened by the fact that my abilities have a source outside of myself. It's absurdly reductive to think "this was inspired by Van Gogh, and is therefore unoriginal," because we are collectively influenced constantly by the world around us and the things that interest us. The only difference is this can do it faster.

It also relieves the burden of physical labor significantly, which can greatly relieve the disabled. Why should an artist whose hands shake so bad they can't draw straight not be allowed to create their art with tools like this? The elderly, the infirm, the unfortunate? "If you don't make it with your own hands, it has no value" is a noxious notion to those likely already greatly suffering. You would diminish the value of their artistic expression simply on the fact that they are not physically capable of it, and I find that reprehensible.

My labor is my guidance of the algorithm. I'm not just asking it to give me a picture, I'm img2img guiding my own rudimentary ideas, clarifying, reprocessing, in-filling to the details of my idea. I'm clearly and closely incorporated with every part of the process.

It's like saying a house isn't a real house if you use power tools to build it and a hired architect to design it instead of doing it all yourself. Why shouldn't we rely on specialized expertise and specialized tools to help us with our creative expression the same way we do with the real world?

I have a similar perspective, but optimistically. For years there have been enormous projects in my head that I've wanted to create, but haven't had the time or skill to do - my hands shake, my schedule is full, there just isn't enough time to both survive and learn how to be the artist I wish I could. With generative engines like this, suddenly my chance to see my dreams come true and my creative visions brought to life skyrockets.

With the help of these tools, I can create the most genuine version of what I see in my head, and I can show the world what I see. Free from the burdens of day-to-day survival and hundreds or thousands of hours of necessary artistic practice that I simply don't have, I still get to show everyone what my imagination contains. And that prospect is exhilarating.