My 2 cents on the AI argument.

Yes, in a perfect world, we would all pay artists to commission us fantastic pieces of art. But this isn't a perfect world. I would like to say that I can "Paint imagines your mind with my words!" But the fact is that when it comes to ACTUAL art, I am a ten-thumbed, talentless, paper polluter. So, making my own art is not going to be a fun time for anyone. I'll spend 2 hours making something that looks like dogshit and nobody is going to want to look at it, and then I'll feel bad for making something so terrible.

Now, i understand the aversion to AI, 100%. I get it, it is literally taking money out of the pockets of talented people artists. That is an absolute travesty and needs to be seen to.

But st the same time, this is a free RP site that we use in our spare time, at our own cost. I am broke and struggling financially as is. I have to justify £15 going to the cinema to prevent me from blowing my brains out most of the time. I can't justify £40 on a piece of art i am going to use exactly once for this 1 specific thing and will never have use of ever again. Meaning that if I want a picture of Bailey dressed as Captain Marvel, I have 3 choices:

1) Request a Drawfriend does it on one of the many Drawthreads and hope to christ that its not ignored (Its not a Waifu or a meme, it will absolutely be ignored)
2) Do as stated above of make something that looks like shit.
3) Ask an A.I. to do something that effectively gets the point across.

So, in this case, I dont see how I am "Taking the money out of the pockets of working artist" when "Paying an artist to do it" was never really an option, due to the niceness of this specific event and me not being willing to drop that kind of money on a free hobby anyway.

Now, i will specify that I am ONLY going to be using A.I. images for things that literally dont exist. I mean, every pic of just Bailey or Christina or Sivannah or any other characters that exist already, absolutely, I'll find some existing art. But the niche stuff that my only other option is to pay a bunch of money i was never willing to spend? Nuts to that. Before AI, I would just describe it or poorly photoshop it together myself. Again, the part where an artist gets money never entering the equation.

I have no drawing talent, I wish I did and I respect those who do immensely. But I dont see how me asking a bot to do something for free that I would have found another way to do for free if that wasn't an option is somehow "Literally slapping every artist in the world in the face!"

I mean, if I have the idea in my head for a picture of Batman, Wolverine, Storm and Wonder Woman at a sleep over together telling ghost stories, with Wolverine and Batman hiding under the covers because Wondies story is too scary, I can describe that here. I think its a funny image in my head. I just told y'all about it. Now, 5 years ago, thats where this story would end. I dont have the money to commission something like that, most decent artists charge about £80 for something like that (Usually about 40 for the coloured image, 10 for every 2 characters and 20 for a second panel.) And thats reasonable. But I dont have £80 to drop on that kind of silly meme in my head. I could, however go ask an A.I. to make that. It'd look like crap, but id have the image.

Now, i am NOT going to ask an AI to make this, so this idea will forever stay here on this page, unless someone comes along, finds it hilarious and decides to draw it, but thats hoghly unlikely, so lets just assume that this idea will forever stay here, unused. Now, if I did go ask an A.I. to draw that, do you believe I would have robbed an artist i never had any intention of paying to make in the first place? Because I dont think I have.

Now, as i said, I will agree, if you can use ACTUAL art to make a point, I highly prefer people doing so, but at the same time, this is a free hobby that we do for free and if there was a price tag attached to it, we'd probably just go find a free version regardless. So I have no problem with people trying to improve it using free tools, even if I'd prefer they use actual art to do so.