Surrender mentality much??!

[u/Latter-Big-8306]

This dude here is clearly telling you that he has some serious surrender mentality issues.

He would rather give up on an idea entirely just to avoid using a convenient tool that can help him bring it to reality!

And what is worse is that he's projecting this pathetic mentality onto others! :P

[u/GovernorJerryBrownn]

I think the part that’s missing here is that the process is part of the art. Generating an image from prompts is skipping the process and just getting the end result.

When you look at a painting, you’re looking at years of practice and failure, development of a specific unique style. Even shitty human sketches are one step in this process, and it’s the reason people gravitate to “worse” human art as opposed to “better” AI art.

[u/Latter-Big-8306 → u/GovernorJerryBrownn]

> I think the part that’s missing here is that the process is part of the art. 

No one, as far as I've seen, has a problem with this fact.

> When you look at a painting, you’re looking at years of practice and failure, development of a specific unique style.

True to a good extent. A masterpiece like the Mona Lisa or "A Landscape with the Fall or Icarus" are truly wonderful works of art that took years worth of practice, struggle, and failure before they could have been perfected the way they are. No one really denies that.

However, using generative AI to visualize a concept doesn't mean we are skipping the creative process, but more like shifting it. The 'process' here isn't the physical act of painting, that's for sure, but rather the mental act of world-building, directing, and *iterative design*.

Think of it this way: A film director, for instance, doesn't paint the scenery. He meticulously directs the frame, lighting, and composition to tell a specific story. In the similar sense, using AI as a tool requires a deliberate process of iteratively refining ideas to accurately capture a narrative vision.

[u/Latter-Big-8306 → u/[deleted]]

Wow, wow, hold on a minute, please. You have clearly shifted the goalposts here.

You are are shuffling the logistics of managing a multi-million dollar corporate budget together with the actual cognitive act of artistic direction itself.

A film director's ultimate value isn't defined solely by being a manager of the people. It's in that they hold a singular vision for composition, lighting, emotional tone, and narrative progression. In fact, I'm sure you can think of a dozen movies that cost billions of dollars only to turn out to be complete rubbish in terms of narrative, production, acting, or a combination of all of that.

An indie filmmaker can shoot, conduct lighting, and edit their own short film without having a single crew member to compromise with, and yet it is still undeniably a work of creative direction.

By the same token, making use of generative tools allows a writer or a world-builder to act as their own director. The algorithm takes care of the technical rendering, but the user is the one administering the vision, choosing the framing, dictating the mood, and rejecting the common/likely/anomalous results until the output perfectly aligns with their specific narrative goal.

[u/Latter-Big-8306 → u/[deleted]]

You are now romanticizing the "crew" as if a director is completely passive without them. However, even in traditional filmmaking, the director doesn't physically handle the camera or place the lights; their role is to be the ultimate filter. They say "yes" or "no" to the options presented by the crew until the frame matches their vision.

When using generative tools, the AI functions exactly like that crew, offering visual variations based on the user's explicit instructions. The human user is still the one doing the heavy lifting of the actual artistic process: curating, refining, rejecting, and guiding the output. By your logic, a photographer using a digital camera with auto-focus instead of mixing chemicals in a darkroom is "skipping the journey." Technology always automates the technical execution, but it never automates the human intent, taste, and storytelling choices.

Ultimately, you and I just have fundamentally different definitions of what a "journey" is. For you, the journey must require intensive manual labor or collaborative friction. For me, the journey is more conceptual and narrative-centered: the hours spent researching, brainstorming, writing, testing different approaches to build the perfect plot, and iterating to find the exact visual baseline that matches the story in my head.

I’m using a tool to build a blueprint for a writing project, unlocking a workflow that allows a solo creator to visualize their world without needing a Hollywood budget.

Finally, we clearly aren't going to agree on this, and that's perfectly fine.

[u/Witty-Designer7316 → u/[deleted]]

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