But they conveniently leave out that it costs money to do anything with AI. It’s more like “open to anyone with a credit card.” The vast majority of people don’t have computers powerful enough to run generative AI models locally, and even then, server farms with a billion GPUs will always produce better results
This means that people have to rely on corporate platforms where you buy tokens that you use to get pulls at the various AI slop slot machines, hoping you get something decent. The mechanics more closely resemble a gacha game than any kind of artistic process
By contrast, learning how to draw, animate or make 3D models costs nothing. There’s free tutorials and tools everywhere, and you can also just pirate commercial ones if you want
Just because it has value to me, but imo that is not monetary value. And having that picture accurately represent how I want that character to be, even if it has weird eyes or an extra finger, is a benefit to me and helps me be immersed in the game. I guess like I’d pay someone money for that, but I wouldn’t be willing to pay what their time is worth, you know? Like 10 bucks or something is not appropriate for someone spending an hour making a nice illustration - more like 75 would be appropriate, and that is too much for me.