I was a beginner until I tried this one weird trick: Draw an orgy scene with Sonichu, Shrek, Goku, and Spider-man.

You are welcome in advance.

In the beginning, people used simple programs like ms paint with a mouse to draw. I use my phone's editor to draw stuff. Have a cat

I wouldn't call anything I've ever seen on lemmy art. Maybe like2 the photos of actual art.

The Lemmy devs are not very active in the commits…

Then quote where they would have said what they think about the energy cost, or what they were trying to do. Oh wait they didn't.

Seriously. You're all being assumers. And you are being an assumer and a liar.

C'mon, a person can dream, right.

Whilst I agree with your point about strawman arguments in general, that isn’t really the case here. The OP explicitly said “It’s funny, and it doesn’t hurt anyone” when, in fact, it does.

I already addressed this here.

This appears to be their primary justification for using it,

Emphasis mine. If someone is handling things by how they "appear to be", instead of how they "are", then the person is simply assuming.

I don't think the rest of your comment is worth my time replying.

So, are you naive or insidious with this? Are you actually eating those bullshit sandwiches or just serving them?

Oh fuck off

Oh!? Its a snake?

No, I will not fuck off. Criticise what people say, instead of your assumptions over what they say. And if you're unable to tell both things apart, then you're probably better off shutting up.

And if I see muppets like you doing this shit again I'll call it out again, again, and again. And if I were to do the same, I also expect others to call me out.

You've been doing it this whole fucking thread you holier than thou asshat but whatever

Blocked

You know why I hate it even more now?

Because unaware people have started using it to generate images of our loved ones, houses, etc.

I CAN'T EVEN FUCKING TRUST A PHOTO OF MY NEPHEWS ANYMORE.

I HATE that. If my friends, family and home aren't refuges against that AI shit, then what the fuck is?!

Yeah, because holier than thou behaviour would totally make someone say "if I were to do the same, I also expect others to call me out.", right? ...right?

...look, I don't really care if you block me or not, but please do everyone else a favour and shut up, okay. There's Twitter, Reddit and Facebook for people like you, you'd feel at home in any of them.

People do not respect artists and with the internet and digital art making it the easiest time in human history to get art, people feel entitled to art. They don't respect the time and effort that artists put into creating something and don't think that their skills are worth paying for, even when they're demanding that they produce content for them.

In this regard, GenAI has become a real plague because the kinds of people who would make great middle managers - taking credit for the effort of others - now have access to the skill required to make "good art" without having to pay for nor respect the labor required. GenAI lets your average person treat artists the way that corporations treat their employees.

Man, I suuuuck at drawing and painting. But (up until the last couple weeks I guess) I've been making and posting my shitty ass, MS Paintesque paintings and collages. Why?

Because you and I are humans and creative expression is our fucking right.

Because you don't get better at anything unless you keep doing it.

Because people, at least here, prefer a technically shitty artistic effort to a better looking image made by a insanely thirsty software architecture owned by greedy technocrats.

Because fuck it, we can.

Post those drawings homie.

Thanks, you are being really helpful...
I at least tried to understand the problem and explain my reasoning. And yes, I do not know much about the topic, but everyone here is complaining how I am wrong without saying why so.

So, to have an idea, let's do the calculation.
Generating 1000 images takes on average 2.907kWh (Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?, A. S. LUCCIONI et. al., 2024), though with very large varience (standard deviation of 3.31). So generating a single image consumes on average 2.91Wh.
I have to make a few assumptions about the artist. First of all, I will ignore the energy their body would consume, since it is pretty safe to assume, they would need the energy anyway.
Let's assume it would take the artist one hour to produce the same image (based on nothing, just the ease of calculation; feel free to correct me).
If the artist was drawing using a PC monitor, they would consume tens of watt-hours based on the monitor (Internet article: What is PC Monitor Power Consumption? A Complete Guide, Akash, 2026). Computer with all peripherals would consume even more.
If the artist would choose iPad, using official parameters (Apple Inc.), the iPad should last up to 10 hours with its 28.93Wh battery, so the drawing would consume at least 2.893Wh. This is slightly less then AI, but charging the iPad isn't 100% efficient. Also they would probably use a stylus for drawing, which also uses some electricity, so I would say the total power needed would be comparable (please don't force me to calculate these efficiencies).
If the artist would draw on a paper, it would get so much complicated and probably lost in all of the assumptions about materials used, their production complexities, etc. But just for a comparison, a efficient LED light consumes from 4W (Internet article, How Much Electricity Does a LED Light Bulb Use?, 2025), so using a bulb for 44 minutes consumes more energy than generating an image.

So overall under my assumptions, generating a image using AI is at least comparable, probably more efficient then hiring an artist to do the same.

I ignored training the AI, because the more it is used, the less effect it has on the generation, and goes to 0 over time. In the same way I ignored the monitor / iPad / light bulb energy footprint during its production and transfer to the artist, since with more paintings this effect goes to 0 too.

Please do not force me to do any more calculation. I think, this was enough.

How many art communities do you follow?

There are dedicated communities where people post their art?

The best and most basic way to fight that, at least as a hobbyist, is to just keep handmaking stuff like you've always done before GenAI became a blight on the creative world, that way you'll at least hold the line on some metric, plus making stuff is still fun, particularly with traditional media, (paints, crayons, etc, whatever your jam is) regardless.