This is why your art sucks and AI-art is better

Most people who criticize AI-generated art don't realize that their own art (if they make any) probably wouldn't fare much better in public. I am not trying to insult any, just stating the facts. it's a reminder of how art has always worked, most of the art gets ignored. Until it doesn't, even those that we praise as histories best art.

Most of the time artists receive recognition after they are long gone.

Sometime ago, I posted one of my digital art on Reddit. It wasn't a masterpiece, an amateur's honest attempt. It received 7 upvotes and no comments.

I took the same art, enhanced it using an AI image model, and posted both versions side by side, AI enhanced one as a cover art for my graphic novel. People were praising the original as "authentic", "emotional", people even interpreted the art and said "It reminds me of a 2D figure being forced into a 3D world that it could never truly comprehend."

And? outright called the AI version a downgrade.

Nothing had changed about the original. What changed was how it was framed and compared.

When people think they are evaluating art, they are often just reacting to labels. Human vs machine, skilled vs amateur, effort vs laziness. But most people are not good at telling what's good. They are good at detecting context, once they believe something was generated by AI, they just detect those as effortless, and laziness. That makes them likely to reject it.

This isn't new. When photography first emerged, painters called it mechanical and soulless. When digital tools appeared, traditional illustrators called them cheating, because they can now erase and undo as many times as they wish. Each wave of innovation triggers moral panic. Couched in concern for "authenticity".

In reality, it often reveals fear of being displaced.

It's true that many AI models have been trained on art scraped from the internet without consent. That's a serious issue. But critics rarely direct their anger at the companies who built these models. Instead they aim it at small creators, people who use it to extend their abilities, often with no commercial advantage, sharing their stories for free, just a story to tell.

It is easier to blame a kid reading a pirated PDF, while giving a pass to the pirated torrent website that it was hosted. We get mad at the user because it's easier than holding the system accountable.

Platform like Reddit and Hacker News are built on admiration for new and emerging tech. But when it comes to AI art, they are in an echo chamber. Anything tagged "AI" is downvoted, and dismissed.

Ironically, the same people rarely celebrate handmade art unless it's gallery worthy.

Elsewhere, it's different. In smaller communities, niche discords, viral posts of X, you can easily find people who are genuinely excited by AI art. Not because it's better than human art, but because it's evolving. It's messy. It's getting better. And to some, watching that growth in itself a form of artistic engagement.

In those spaces, what matters isn't how the image was made. What matters is whether it makes someone feel something, anything...

I ran a small test. I posted my hand-drawn sketch to Reddit. No traction. Then I posted it again next to the AI version. The moment it was compared with AI-art, people praised the original, not because it had improved, but because it was competing with something they already hated. The bias was real.

This tells us something important. People are willing to lie to themselves, or at least, skew their standards to defend a worldview where AI cannot be artistic. "AI cannot make art. It steals from the artists. Full stop."

That's not a position based on aesthetics. It's ideology disguised as taste. That is not healthy way to look at art.

The most vocal critics of AI-art on these platform are often aren't artists themselves. They are rarely interested in art outside the context of these debates. If you spent ten years perfecting your craft, many of them still wouldn't buy your book or look at your portfolio. They are not the right audience.

Imagine if Vag Gogh posted his paintings on Reddit today. He would be told to improve his anatomy, explain his process, and maybe asked to stop using AI, just in case someone thought he did.

The irony is that attacking AI-assisted creator, even when they genuinely give credits to the tool they used. These critics are undermining exactly the kind of creative spark they claim to defend. They are pouring water on embers, people who are finally making something, telling stories, experimenting. They alternate for them isn't better art, or decade of struggle to acquire skills, it's silence.

We want more people making art, because anyone who has had an easel and a painting brush knows that the outcome isn't important, it's the process that gives joy to oneself. If someone uses AI to finish an art that they left half way, that's not a loss, that's not atrophy, that's a win.

Many like me are not lazy, it was never a one magic prompt to generate the whole comic book. I don't outsource my work, not my creativity. I sketch by hand, sometimes rough, sometimes detailed. Then I run those images through an AI model. I tweak, I guide, I redo. The AI doesn't make my art. It helps me finish it.

This isn't about replacing creativity. It's about finally being able to complete something that was trapped inside my head and the skills that I needed to have a polished outcome is partly non-existent.

Art is full of ghosts. People who never had the tools, money, or time to finish what they started, can now complete those, even if it does not fully looks like what they imagined. AI, for all its controversies, gives some of them a chance. That never make it holy. But its not evil either.

You don't have to like AI art. But if you care about creativity, you should at least be careful where you aim your fire. Aim at those who used artwork without consent of the artists to train their models. Ask who built these systems, who profited from them, and who's avoiding accountability.

Don't scream at the small creator using every tool they can find to complete their story. They're not breaking art. They are trying to keep their story alive.