Honestly I don’t see any value in getting angry about it. The cat is out of the bag, so being mad is just a waste of energy. Are portrait painters still mad that photography got invented? Hopefully not, for their sake.

Yeah it’s bullshit when someone generates an image and tries to pass it off as a photograph, but that’s their problem. Sure they can churn out images that look cool but if someone interviews them, commissions them to do something specific, or looks closely at their work, they’re gonna get found out. Random people posting on Flickr don’t matter, so if they somehow get enough recognition that people start paying attention, their days are numbered.

And, given that ai is best used as a tool in the process rather than the process itself, if someone gets good enough with it that they can reliably produce art with a distinct vision and with realism that can’t be clocked as partially generated, then they’re clearly doing something right.

In the end though, if people are gonna lie about how they made stuff, they’re just digging their own hole. Don’t let it get you down. There’s already enough shitty stuff and negative energy in the world, don’t give up more of your energy getting mad that some losers are lying about their art.

I would strongly suggest not using this photo as too deep an inspiration.

The light trail effect is cool and all but it’s also massively overused. By all means figure out how to do it, and if the venue is ok with flash, take a few like that, but if you spend the whole set trying to get light-trail photos and nothing else, it’s gonna be pretty lame.