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.

Block ai content posters. Starve them and they stop

Most AI generated stuff is shit. But most AI generated stuff that's been widely circulated has been handpicked to not be shit, and are generally not recognisable as such.

This energy is peak!

may i join?

I consider myself to be alright by hobbyist standards, at least, but here's a watercolor and watercolor crayon painting of a pair of bunnies skating on a frozen pond at night.

And yeah, I kinda love watercolor crayons as a medium, at least in combination with watercolors, and I'm a newbie to watercolor crayons.

Plus, here's an acrylic painting of a mouse building a snowman at night for a bonus pic, and yeah, I know the snow and mouse are supposed to be white, but I gave that whole scene a pink/purple tint for the sake of cuteness.

Also, I very, very much have a preference for traditional media over digital tools mainly because traditional media have always been fun for me to play with, painting in particular I tend to get lost in for hours at a time.

Finally, I'm adding a wax crayon drawing to this post because why not, but here's a wax crayon drawing of Pichu and Dedenne building a snowman, and I'll stop here before this post gets too spammy. And just like with the mouse painting above, I gave this scene a pink/purple tint because that's cute, also, wax crayons are one of my fave drawing media currently alongside oil pastels and chalk in any order.

That’s a lot of fucking words that all just boil down to “I have no artistic or moral integrity and no respect or regard for the value of art or the human endeavor.”

Go fuck a robot.

We're going to need a Butlerian jihad at the rate this is going.

I will not thirst for the laughing buff guys, I will not thirst for the laughing buff guys, I will not thirst for the laughing buff guys...

Parents are going to go for years, then one day to their horror realize that they don't have any actual pictures of their children.

You want someone to look at your AI art? Simple. Just make an LLM look at it. If AI produces it, AI can be the one that has to look at it.

This shows me how hateful and stubborn you are. I never said (and nobody in this comment chain) that gen-AI is better then artists. Of course I agree with how unfairly AI companies treat artists and that they should be supperted.
The only thing I said was that I think gen-AI uses less power and so should be more environmentally friendly. Then you asked for proof, so I gave you a proof. The proof was based on a lot so assumptions, so it could be wrong, but it is still better then saying "I don't like AI, so it must be worse in every way".

It seems insane to me that most people in here refuse to admit that there could be one single perspective in which AI is better, there is one single example where it is useful...

One quickly learns that drawings don't have to be detailed or experienced to be appreciated. Sure, it absolutely helps, learn what techniques make art more beautiful so you can punch above your weight, but I've received compliments from quick minimal doodles just by having fun with it.

Without the ears and with broad paws, it nicely doubles as a sea lion.

Same here. AI slop has turned me (and my brother) off of YouTube shorts. Like 80-90% of the content is AI, and you have to play detective for most of them (to find out it's AI generated)

James Cameron should have directed the Dune prequels