/qa/ - Question & Answer

My brother spent an entire summer rigorously studying and practicing art, this allowed him to draw and create incredibly realistic portraits on paper, with barely visible flaws. But afterwards, he completely abandoned art and decided to follow another career.
Anyone can learn how to draw and create, drawing has a process and people can get good to create truly beautiful artworks. But not everyone can add deep meaning to those artworks.

The rise of AI has shown the clear difference between artists and "artists".
Artists (music, art, etc…) are people who can utilize their craft to make the consumer think, they generate new ideas which stick with their followers who continue to ponder about their work for the foreseeable future. Whenever their art is brought up, it is met with deep discussion that can change people's minds on important or minor issues, not just "oh it looks really good".
"Artists" on the other hand, are workers. They only make art for profit and lack knowledge or a will to inspire others to think deeper. Their artworks lack a meaning, a mere drawing with no deeper reason that's designed to appeal to the lowest-thinking people. This is why I don't consider porn artists to be artists, their creations oppose knowledge by allowing and promoting humanity's most primal urges.

AI is the ultimate boogyman for "artists", able to replicate the quality seen by experts at art, this renders the regular artist who only draws for money useless. But one key factor is that none of those artworks have deeper meaning, they are merely made to look as appealing as possible to the human eye, they do not make us think deep but rather remain surface-level with how we perceive art.

I originally thought about becoming a graphics designer, but after my realization of what it truly means to be an artist, i decided to do art now as a hobby and passion, not as a job. Art, the practice itself, will inevitably get taken as a job by AI, but not true art, art that causes critical thinking, art that finds itself in the minds of critically thinking people who are able to use the lessons learnt to improve themselves or the world.
I see people complain about how AI art is too high quality, that it's going to inevitably take over their jobs. Good, art made to be appealing as possible to the low-thinking masses (art without meaning) will always be less valuable than art that's made to inspire and get people truly thinking about the world around them. I'm not saying that people should be forbidden from drawing for fun, I'm saying that we should not make drawing meaningless art our job, because it is replaceable. "Artists" can be replaced by other "artists" like how factory workers can be replaced by other factory workers.
Real artists are like philosophers, real philosophers are one of a kind and are rightfully remembered for their critical thoughts about the world and humanity, this should be the same for art.
90% of the artists you see on sites like Twitter or DeviantArt are not real artists, they are akin to factory workers who follow instructions, they are commissioned meaningless art that caters to the lowest-thinking. Real artists are people who have the will to make a change rather than to make ends meet.

This is just what I've gotten so far from critically thinking about art in the modern era and my definitions for art. With how industrialized art itself has become, it's important to differentiate art and the shallow recreations of it that are wrongfully labeled as art.