The way I see it is with every stroke, an artist makes multiple decisions, most of them unconscious. They’re based on everything from the media, to our experience, mood, inspiration, and very much on our physiology… the arc of my shoulder and the length of forearm are just as much a part of the process as what inspired me about something to draw. To some extent, much of that is even true in photography.

Diffusion models basically record, classify, and amalgamate those decisions, which is why it’s so dang difficult to get generated art to look like something distinct. Not distinct like an existing artist, but genuinely unique.

The workflow of the prompter is very similar to an existing workflow in the art world: someone commissioning art. There’s often a discussion where the customer gives the artist a textual description, back-and-forth with sketches and preliminary versions, and sometimes revisions if the proposed final product isn’t what they wanted. Commissioning a piece of art is a creative process, but it’s not the same thing as being the artist. Even an art director who has extremely granular control over what they commission would never claim to be the artist. They’d get run out of town. I believe creating a collection though juxtaposition or even curation could be art, but you’d still never be the author of the contained pieces.