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
I’m not categorically against generative AI tools and believe they can be fun and useful. I just don’t think you can call their output art. I would compare them to character creators and similar creative tools in video games
You wouldn’t call yourself a character designer after making a cool custom fighter in SoulCalibur or an interior designer after making a house in the Sims, but that doesn’t take away the fact that both are valid creative outlets
tbh create a soul have enough going on that you could do character design in it, if we just mean visuals. i remember when mario maker was new a bunch of actual game devs were like “holy shit i wish our tools were as good as this level editor”