drstreit

Have a look here to understand how photo editors will use AI generated images in the future. Just released, its already heavily impacting the industry. But Affinity Photo is lacking an SDK, so no plugin for us - while GIMP, Krita, Photoshop, ... already have working versions!
If Affinity sleeps through it, it can damage their whole future quite fast - PLEASE react and either finally provide an SDK (WHY IS THERE NONE???) or integrate e.g. Stable Diffusion into your products...
 
to und 

Have a look here to understand how photo editors will use AI generated images in the future. Just released, its already heavily impacting the industry. But Affinity Photo is lacking an SDK, so no plugin for us - while GIMP, Krita, Photoshop, ... already have working versions!
If Affinity sleeps through it, it can damage their whole future quite fast - PLEASE react and either finally provide an SDK (WHY IS THERE NONE???) or integrate e.g. Stable Diffusion into your products...
 
to und 

I feel you are not too enthusiastic about AI here - but honestly: Every new technology has every changed some job profiles (or even vanish them). Sure, in 5 years you will be able to tell an AI: "Draw me a 100 pages comic around the story of xyz, don't forget that I love cool sword fights and a happy end" - and it will be delivered in minutes...
Is that good or bad? I tend to see it as good, as every human progress in the end is a good thing from my point of view - but it will take years to adapt: society, job profiles, (mis-)usage etc.
What is the saying? "Society tends to overestimate the short implications of innovation, while underestimates the long term effects..."
 

Ok, I stand corrected. The thing that convinced me mostly is Reddit post where children photos were transformed into Disney's princess. I can imagine many parents likening this.  And someone who knows how to use such plugin could possibly make a lot of money on this. Transforming HD pictures to 8bit versions also opened my mind. I generally agree with both sides of people who shared their opinions here That's what discussion is all about. Thank you.

Great post, PaulMc!
I wholehearty agree - I also do not see AI as replacement, but as an important part of a pipeline of the future (even soon for vector grafics: That is due to the early stage of the software, but seperating the results into vectors should actually be quite easy, shouldnt it?). 
Still the question is open: What are Serif's plans for the future here? And sidenote: Not really answering the communitys question about SDK access for months (beside: "Not planned") is not really something I do understand... 

I feel you are not too enthusiastic about AI here - but honestly: Every new technology has every changed some job profiles (or even vanish them). Sure, in 5 years you will be able to tell an AI: "Draw me a 100 pages comic around the story of xyz, don't forget that I love cool sword fights and a happy end" - and it will be delivered in minutes...
Is that good or bad? I tend to see it as good, as every human progress in the end is a good thing from my point of view - but it will take years to adapt: society, job profiles, (mis-)usage etc.
What is the saying? "Society tends to overestimate the short implications of innovation, while underestimates the long term effects..."
 

It is going to destroy many jobs, and possibly, due to drastically reducing the people interest in learning anymore the very difficult craft of drawing and painting (which requires extreme training in anatomy perspective, color, lighting, actual painting materials and brushes., etc, etc) , and whenever that happens to a field, when society decides that something or someone is of no social interest anymore, or it's not "trendy", when competition is reduced to almost zero, due to people avoiding the entire career, vanished the motivation for people to invest a life in preparing for becoming an actual painter or illustrator... Then with zero to no competition (in every field or market), quality goes to the drain, all that know-how is lost, even the knowledge of it. This happened very intensely in the medieval age to all arts, coming from the brilliant Roman and Greek era (the Romans were cultured enough to respect the Greek legacy and maintain a lot of it) once the "barbarians" (did not have the pejorative meaning as now) put an end to the empire.
True that AI now can't consistently work in an style. It's mixing and photo bashing among other generation techniques. Also, that a painter puts her/his soul in every brush stroke, that is not possible either with AI. And mostly, that a computer or AI algorithm will never have real emotions (as much, an approximation, as it can't have consciousness, so, no self awareness, neither "intent"). By the definition related to expression that is art, it will not be making "art". But the society at large won't initially care for that (once it does, might be too late).  Despite that last permanent advantage, the job itself will most surely die (or for the biggest chunk of artists), as general public typically just want mediocre solutions. We will see great artists replaced by "prompt engineers". Translating that: mostly what the client uses to do ( "I want a red unicorn with purple browses and a rainbow in the background, with very threatening dark clouds around it").  Which, of course, is not "art" by any means. With the definition of art in hand, nothing of that will be art, neither will ever be able to be, but that will not matter, history repeats itself (another reason why studying it is crucial, but, like philosophy, it is yet another subject which importance and effective hours have been progressively reduced at schools).
Yes, it's great news for the commissioners, average janes/joes and etc who think that it is enough for the images of their small businesses (main clients for commissions and current gigs for artists) . But in the end, it will bite all of us in, ehm, right there, once we realize what we have lost. Meanwhile, AI (and robots) will keep destroying many jobs/careers in other fields as well. Some of the current defenders of this will complain when their turn comes (another thing that is cyclic in history, there's even a very famous quote about it).
My advice to my fellow painters and illustrators: We'd better move towards the activity (I've been doing it for a while) of programming (and if after all what's happening with the AI coding, coders say sth to generate you impostor syndrome.... PLEEEASE...send them my way.... mwahaha). That one will also ultimately be filled by AIs, but will take many more years, and you could always design/program more complex AIs, having a job there. 
The one only hope is that governments and international regulation starts putting rigid limits to this (it has been mentioned as a very likely possibility, although I'm not that optimistic about it). Indeed, if one would have been paying attention to a bunch of well known economists, there's this theory (both in right  and left sides of the political spectrum, as that also exists among economists, of course) which says that at some point, governments will have to impose to large companies (to be able to operate in the country's soil in certain conditions) a huge tax for using robots and AI which effectively are substituting like a (for example) 90%  of the work force or more, this tax income to be used directly by the gov to provide with an UBI, universal basic income for an x percentage of the population (those not coding, neither rich ). This theory (and there seems to be quite quorum about it) establishes that, otherwise, social stability wouldn't be possible, including riots, massive hunger, and very importantly, having very low to no consumption, which is the main engine of any economy, making economies development extremely difficult. I mean, even some fierce capitalist ones have stated this will be a need. Now... I don't love a society filled with people doing close to nothing just receiving their plate of food (and so... dependent on the authority in too many ways, quite more than now) from the government, with no aspiration to grow (no position to grow to), etc.
So, while I agree with how unavoidable it is, can't share a single millimeter (or 1/25.4 or an inch) of enthusiasm about it. Art creation from sketch to finished painting is a therapy for creators, from painters to sculptors, to musicians, and when it has been an act of love in every brush stroke, every line, it is something that society (as audience/spectators/consumers) needs more than it knows (from comic creation to decorative art, to many things) . Also, once we reduce drastically the amount of actual real creators of styles, painters that know about sketching, anatomy drawing, composition, color, etc, AI itself will have a much poorer data base to "feed" from, given a certain time period, IMO, degrading the field more and more. So... great!.  
But as I said, the solution for many people in these fields is... (I've done this so many times in my life) changing not just jobs but careers... Artists becoming programmers, other people filling up jobs that need human attention (specially in healthcare, that's another (of the extremely few) sector I predict to keep strong, maybe indefinitely, even if AI and robots there will invade many jobs, too).
How was the Martin Niemöller quote... Of course, it referred to a much more dramatic matter, but slightly applies here, as people defending AI removing jobs completely, are those whose jobs, or better said, entire careers,  are not at stake :  
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Yep, a lot more of a terrible situation, but it replicates on and on in our society and history. Be it what is happening in the third world like since... always... or among the different classes in a first world society, or with the destruction of jobs...

Within the Affinity Product Line? many use cases;
Think of it as an addition to the Studio->Stock Panel - an enhancement or replacment to Pexels and Pixabay.
 its going to be the end for many stock image/video sites or even the boom for them if they have more open licensing.
  Quicker to create or transform existing images or parts of an image into the style of X.
2.1. training the AI on your own style/selected images to again create unique stuff.
       This can be done with as low as 5 images.
  Brainstorming/moodboarding helper.
  Helping artists to explore different artistic choices and placements.
  Avoiding bad press like Telltale had with too obviously using an image of a murdered diplomat. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41524653
  Enhancing a scribble/turning it to a finished drawing. All of this results in more productivity  and churning out more content.
 

I guess as always with progress its about effectivity: Sure you can draw everything on a piece of paper, its just more efficient to use readily available brushes and the many tools a software offers you instead. Here in this case, the workflow will be a close mixture of AI and manuell edits to take the best of both worlds - but for that you need seamless integration.
And with that type of software, the job of a grafic designer will change drastically: Have a look at https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/midjourney/?hl=de : These are all pictures created by "amateurs" with the help of AI - why would I pay a designer for that if AI can do it better, faster? These AI models were released only 4 weeks ago and already have huge impact - just imagine 1 year of improvements and integration into workflows...
 
AI grafic design is there, it will be HEAVILY used to create/modify pictures, and without an plugin interface, Affinity Photo will totally miss that train.

I would be interested in seeing some AI features too.
I would much prefer an API to allow me build my own plugins though as this feels to me like a better use of the development resource.
In addition to Affinity products I also use Blender extensively and I've recently been using DALL-E to to perform more creative in (and out) painting to textures and material images. Source and reference images occasionally arrive with too severe a crop or with noisy objects spoiling the composition. This feature of DALL-E is very helpful in extending sets/scenery and removing objects. Although the AP inpainting feature is very useful for large areas it can often get stuck in a rut with high contrast changes and clone copies appearing which means you have to use other approaches like cloning or painting. I also have a frequent need for seamless textures which often require lots of fiddle and faff in AP. Creating these in DALL-E (after some pre-processing in AP) nearly always gives me the best results.
As a separate issue, I think that the industry is changing. AI is not going to go away. I'm already seeing marketing departments getting excited at (the potential of) not having to hire me to do some of the work they need. I, personally, feel that excitement is a little premature and that my skillset is still going to be required to complete the pipeline. Currently, the diffusion method that is popular isn't doing much to help with vector designs. My opinion is that these tools will help with inspiration and create a new kind of idea sketching that will be upstream of what designers and artists will receive as part of a brief and may even be part of their toolkits. It has already helped me with the blank canvas block syndrome for getting started after receiving intangible wording for an idea from the client.
AI is part of the designer/artist future and we need to embrace it and understand it. That's not to say that it is good - a lot of what I've seen is rubbish, but it is getting better at some things. It is early days and things are developing quickly, plus there are still lots of problems.  There are huge legal and ethical issues surrounding the sourcing and curating of the source training data. The web might be public access but that doesn't make all the images visible on it CC0!