> You're projecting,

No, I'm actually not. I'm an active creative portrait photographer and I take part in photographic communities with people much, much better than me, I am surrounded by dozens of gigging and working musicians, songwriters and composers in my friend group (and play a couple of instruments myself); I know painters and illustrators of great ability (though I am not that kind of artist).

I listen to what people say and I talk with them about how they feel about it.

> AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs,

I fully, fully disagree. I think using AI images in this way — for collage or moodboard — is ruining the point. It dilutes the value. I do know some photographers who haven't yet figured this out, unfortunately, but they will. Letting an AI image into your collage or inspiration for another piece of work is just opting out of a creative choice; you might as well place a grey rectangle, because that is what it is.

> and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on

AI music is not and cannot be inspirational. It's the absolute opposite of it. And serious musicians know it.

AI content might have some value as placeholder but even then you have to be careful that the prototype does not go into production.

I'm also aware of someone who used AI images to generate a series of test prints for her new alternative process printing practice, precisely to make sure that her test prints never had any accidental value — it makes it essentially compulsory for her to destroy them when they have served their purpose.

I have no particular problem with them being used as a more varied alternative to a step wedge like that, but the point is this:

AI generated creative works have zero value. Anyone who is seriously involved in creativity knows that even replacing something that is working against you with something that has no value either way is probably a bad idea. And putting out work that has this absolute zero value does you more harm than bad work.

It's way better to try and fail than not to try. Think for example of all the ambitious, earnest failures of movies you've seen; would any of them have been materially improved by AI?

> AI use in creative fields is similar now to PEDs use in sports, except more ubiquitous.

You were saying that you thought it was an "amazing" tool, and now you are saying it's like drug-assisted cheating? I think you still have some of the internal work to do.

I go to a lot of craft fairs and I've been seeing people using AI to make their banners or book covers or detail designs on mugs and such. Here are people playing a "support local creators" line and they won't support their own local graphic designers.

There was one booth two shows ago that I particularly remember as it was selling "paintings" of pastoral scenes and wild life, "painted" on to log slices. This is a fairly common craft you might see at such events, but this particular booth was gluing an AI generated image printed on some kind of paper and then slapping it with a coat of texturing medium to give it a paint brush effect.

Disgusting. Selfish. Dishonest. Churlish. This is what craft is becoming. A pink sludge chicken mcnugget of cynical capitalist exploitation.