SrPx

oki, will do so, as I too hate it when I can't finish reading something... (maybe I'll remove it again tomorrow or so, then) Yep, I often make a local copy of what I wrote before I delete it, mostly if there's some conclusion I want to keep for myself or sth.

Okay, I removed my (too long) post. Might remove many others, as well. (but, yep am pro, several fields...)

Not even in 2D, be it web, print/corporate image, game graphic work, film, etc. Despite having lots of indy studios working with other software (Affinity and many more), the very high end, large firms, etc, it's pretty much Adobe (like Autodesk, Houdini, custom solutions in 3D/animation) territory. Despite being a fact that you can do a lot of high end work with Affinity (as you can with Blender in 3D, but until film companies start doing large productions using Blender, that area of the field is exclusive of certain tools. The technical capability of the tool is only part of the equation). I think Canva is well aware of the current market for Affinity. And IMO, they might want to add new niches or increase/evolve some. As for knowing about Canva (I'm talking about several comments, not just this quoted text) I very well knew about its existence since very long ago. When working with small business owners, and not only having them as clients, also watching and reading material related to marketing, business matters, etc, Canva is everywhere. Tons of times I have handled stuff for some step needed in these users and companies' Canva based workflows, or added/fixed stuff which they started there. It quite makes sense the addition, to empower and help it grow (so, the opposite future of what some predict), from what I have been seeing for a long time with Canva's users. I think they want to expand to a bit higher niche than their current, and compete there, or that their current users are increasingly needing more functionality. Or maybe both. Whether more or less integrated in Canva itself, that would be hard to know, right now. But that they really want that level of functionality and nuanced work, for me that's plain clear. About competing with Adobe... I said it earlier. I doubt any of the alternatives (including Affinity) is realistically hoping to dethrone any time soon the king of the industry (industries) in decades-long pipelines and ways of working which got established through decades in companies of all sizes, custom plugins, familiarity of high end firms and clients, etc. It is a huge ecosystem that, even if it wouldn't upgrade (but it upgrades, a lot, and very fast, I keep up to date with that, even if just a bit, enough to realize it), it would be extremely hard (or impossible) to be really threatened in the high and mid-high end (but... companies. Some freelancers are in my book very "high end", and I know a few that already moved fully or partially to Affinity). At least for some time. Honestly, though, Corel Draw and Xara have been strong competitors in certain areas many years before Affinity appeared, and are still alive, though slightly niche, not a serious worry for Adobe. But they have quite a chunk of users over the world. The same happens with specific apps for certain functionality, which are even better suited than Adobe's for certain activities, (specialized tools, I call them) but this did not put Adobe in danger, either, as a whole. Monopolistic players (monopolies are always bad for us) usually only have themselves as a threat, or regulation/governments, if anything. But Adobe is doing pretty well. Long plans can be ambitious, though (till some point, being realistic), the free for schools and non profits thing is really smart. If it is a strategy. If it is not, kudos for the gesture, anyway... that is similar to how Adobe and Autodesk made most of their huge user base. Not them directly, but it was already so common in many graphic workers' machines (in "that type of license", I don't condone it), even at companies, and I have seen huge industry standard apps and companies fall before (often due to their "way of the dodo" behavior more than by competitors' actions...ie, Mirai disappeared by its own). Like I never saw coming XSI would stop being the leader or a very key tool for the film industry, and it happened. Autodesk ended up "acquiring to eliminate" it, and so it happened (there was a serious overlap!! Maya and XSI, and 3D Studio till some extent), but people feared the same with Maya when this happened, as it was also acquired by Autodesk, too, while the same company acted very differently with Maya. This software had a huge users/companies base, was much a better tool for character animation than 3D Studio (although, 3DS was good for that with certain addons), had a solid foot in plugins, scripts, pipelines in animation (games and film) based companies, heavily production tested... and so, all this made no sense to kill it after acquired, so it kept strong and updated, despite all the dark predictions. There were also bad predictions with the buyout of Youtube by Google, back in the day (2006, if I remember well... 18 years ago....). More even the case as Youtube was losing money (btw, Twitch was acquired by Amazon, and it was also losing money. Did not kill it and still is the main game streaming platform), due to Youtube's servers costs in video and stuff, it was a non profitable company!. And that seems to have worked out darn well (in terms of numbers, or in convenience for Google), currently is the second search engine in the world, and many marketers think of it as the the best tool for promotion. Some of us had thought it would just close their offices, be done and that services similar to Vimeo would take over, as Youtube costs are immense. 18 years ago, though.... So, it's a mixed bag, not always in one direction. I dunno, people is free to think whatever, but I always think about if the buying company has an actual something that is really competing with the acquired product/service (and so, 'acquires to annihilate' ), or if, quite the opposite, needs badly what the acquired company has. Google knew that the future of content and promotion was in video, and Autodesk had no interest in killing the best (some would say that this was indeed XSI, though... I had the Foundation version. At least way less intuitive than Maya, in the UI, for new users) character animation tool available and so, lose all that business. But higher end is super hard to compete with, IMO. The way I see it though, many bosses that I had, small business clients, marketing departments, etc, have a very hard time trying to navigate through Illustrator and Photoshop UIs, while for them Canva is intuitive from the start (one of the main advantages of Affinity is also good UI), and they keep using it. That very low end (but massive! BTW, wasn't the number mentioned 175 million, not 100, neither 75?) market is where they have an enormous chunk of users, and I guess Adobe is not particularly happy about it. I am not saying that's a good or bad thing, but it is a fact, to me. [ About the "professional" thingy, well, at least in art, I have a Fine Arts degree, and besides I really learned painting much before going to college (almost free in my country), and a lot of people finishing those studies can't really draw or paint (sad, but it's that way), as it depends on certain level of personal effort and compromise, mostly, than in any academic studies (you can learn the same on your own! even if harder) and in a way you could say comparable to a master in the US, the fact is that I never considered that this made me a professional in any way. I think a professional is a person able to both solve the problems and do the activity required for an specific profile at a company or to cover a market niche successfully (if working by your own as a business owner or freelancer, etc). Also, a person that has the skills and training (by your own, with courses, or college) needed for what the job profile requires, and who has a background (knowledge and technical capabilities) good enough to adapt to any situation in that field. These skills are most likely coming from a mix of personal study and practice, and the actual professional experience. Still, in many jobs in programming, academic titles are required to even get to the interview, but IMO there's always a place for the individuals who are serious about their job, and good at it, with or without college studies. If not in one company, it's in another] About the main issue, I think a) there are other alternatives, but in terms of export for professional work, stability (yep, some of the competitors, which are very few in doing all what A. does, are a bit of a fest of bugs and lacking key features) and feature set, many of them are still behind what Affinity has. A very small few are in very good shape, though, but for a lot of the Affinity user base, price counts quite. I have paid even 2.5k for a software license decades ago, but these days people even doubt it when it is 300 - 800 $. The other alternatives and FOSS could be used, though, if Affinity ceased to exist (I mean, I certainly would use them). b) the possibility of Canva wanting Affinity to get a medium user ground is very likely, hence not much sense in putting all that money to not use what you just bought. They have absolutely nothing to have that functionality. And yep, I agree with those that think they will make it (even as an standalone suite of apps) highly connected with the cloud. I do not think they will trash the permanent buy possibility, as neither did Celsys, which keeps releasing a very nice ClipStudio full version once a year, for those willing to update it (I did, while I really did not need it, but it's affordable. Still, I like to have the freedom to decide not doing it). Affinity's presence now as an "alternative" on internet articles, forums, reddit, etc, is huge (as Canva's. IMO, some people here did not know about Canva because we are immersed in our bubble of usage, and rarely need to go outside that, it is happening also a bit with social media) and mainly the whole user base is about the permanent purchase option. So, I don't see Canva going against that, it would not be wise from a business perspective, if it would mean losing 2.5 (random number) of the 3 millions users, and surely all the marketing that made Affinity big, once they'd make such thing. So, nah, I don't think they will.

I really, very much agree with the need in Designer of being able to get a stroke, a line, in very raw input (~ish). Like we get in raster (Photo). Indeed, the strange thing is that while you are drawing the line, it stays accurate, the problem is when you lift the tip and it makes the huge "smoothing", even with the stabilizer completely deactivated (it is a very old issue from the very early times of Designer, I remember reporting it with pics). I would have assumed this is impossible in any vector software (unlike in raster graphics software) but I have experienced full accuracy in tools like Inkscape, Illustrator (since many years) and some other. The majority of apps have this kind of excessive "smoothing" (even the current Xara Designer Pro has about the worst of the entire market (quite worse than this), despite being so good for other things). I can draw lines without stabilizer in any software now (got me years to get an almost equal level to how I'd ink on paper...well, it's yet very different, but workable) provided I am using a Wacom device (some others have hardware line wobble). But I know it is very good to have the stabilizer feature for some situations in inking, it can speed (fast) work that is OK to ink with some of that help. The stabilizer feature works well, the problem is not in it, but in how the brush works even without it. With it on, it fixes the most extreme bad effects, but eliminates the possibility of truly good inking, and worse, it makes it almost impossible to draw small features with complex details (while seeing the full canvas, zoomed out). Plus, some sort of smoothing keeps happening, even in very high levels of stabilizer (in a full zoomed out composition, which is ideal in many moments of the process). Reason why I suspect that the problem is in the basic stuff underneath, not something the stabilizer can fully fix. But as an example of usability, in A. Photo I can totally ink accurately, now in 2.4.2. And I very well remember reporting the (considerable) staircase issue (now fixed) while inking zoomed out in Photo, the lag issues, and some jitter. And at least with certain configuration in preferences (this is important in any Affinity app), it seems all those got solved, reason why I am hopeful about getting a similar level of quality with freehand inking in Designer (and as an illustration tool, it should be a critical aspect...). About inking very zoomed out in Designer, I agree, this used to be another issue (very similar to Photo's in that) ...Although! I am not noticing the zoomed out problem in Designer 2.4.2. Or maybe very slightly in some case (in the raw input of some diagonal line, very subtle). I mean during the raw input! Not once lifted the tip as then it does its problematic smoothing thing. The OP's 3rd point is true, indeed, as when the tip is lifted, the more zoomed out, the worst the smoothing effect is. While in Photo it works well. For me at least, the current Photo 2.4.2 (and many previous 2.x) has not this problem while working in a 6500x5600 px canvas (for example) even if very zoomed out. I wish we had this level of accuracy in Designer. I know, it's not raster, it can't ever be the same... But Inkscape and Illustrator got it, so, I hope it is somehow doable (and I know, code bases are very different, etc). So, about point 3., to clarify, I'd say there are two different aspects. That once lifted the tip, it smooths the lines wildly (quite more than it already does in a zoomed-in situation) when the zoom-out is significant. The second aspect, that even in "raw input", it used to smooth and/or add staircase increasingly more, the more zoomed-out the canvas is, in this raw input as well. The second aspect, I am not seeing it as very noticeable (or at all) on the current Designer 2.4.2, but the excessive smoothing once the tip is lifted, definitely yes, and absolutely that the more zoomed out, the more it happens (to bad levels). But! if we can fully disable (not possible right now) the smoothing, then I guess it would not matter, as it would not be doing it at all, maybe only a small, very slight averaging (due to being vectors), trying to be 100% accurate to our raw input, or as much as possible. I suspect improvements in that matter would help as well the people using the stabilizer ( as this feature is not able to really counter it, it happens on top of that, it seems). It would be just a fantastic improvement for anyone doing anything (beyond basic stuff) requiring freehand line work, in Affinity Designer (again, partly an illustration app). But IMO, it both (zoom out augmenting the problem, and the problem itself) are sort of solved with just fixing it by getting a stroke equal or as much as possible, to the raw input (before lifting the pen's tip), as I can notice that in the "raw stage", it is indeed accurate enough, now in 2.4.2, even zoomed out. Probably the reason why in Photo it is is now good. Indeed, it is probably only one problem, that gets intensified when working zoomed out. The stabilizer on top of it can't really fix it. This is one of the most important issues, I think (in Designer). But again, I am optimistic, judging the progress on Photo in relation to the brush engine.

Good catch, Alfrd. 😛

Not... But great design! 😜

@Bit Disappointed I'm curious about this since a while... So... I'm going to finally make the question. If you are so disappointed with the Affinity software, the team, the buyout, Canva, the community... Why not just using a suite, or separate tools from different vendors (there are a few options now, luckily it's not as spartan as we had it the 90s anymore) that you consider actually professional and a better fit ? As you would probably be happier taking that route and saving your personal time and energy, as well. I promise! It is just curiosity. As, me, when I don't like a software because I think it's lacking key stuff and/or I just absolutely dislike it, I do the practical thing and leave it alone, to move to a solution that suits me better. I've seen some people in this same situation, through the years and in a few communities, with different tools. And it keeps me wondering...

It's interesting. Reminds me of a mosaic :).

A huge lot of the beauty in that thread of images is due to the genius of many human artists (and as I am seeing in it, of both 3D artists and traditional illustrators. It is taken from both)... but this is one of the several points in which we would end up as well having to "agree to disagree". We have a different concept of what is art (this has been debated in many forums on internet since the latest and more ground breaking arrival (as it had several) of the so called "AI", many artists are of the following opinion). Art, by definition, has the process of making art as a very essential part (it's not only a final output), the process of an actual human in every bit of this creation, as in, putting each stroke, each bit of expression. And self aware (while doing it and for the overall purpose) because they need to be conscious of their reality, to create the expression called art. Yes, with generative 'AI' there is a human writing a paragraph and pressing a button, but writing what clients used to write on a brief about how they wanted the illustrated gig to be, then hitting a button and waiting it to automatically seed, in my opinion, is not creating art (thus the reason why some judge has declared that AI art can't have copyright. But maybe money will end up bending art definitions, common sense and ethics, in future cases. It is good at doing all that). I am not saying that what you just said is wrong. It is indeed correct to say that someone can get wowed by an automatically generated image. As can be with a sunset, your dog making a tender noise, or one's son doing something nice (but none of that is "art"). I will not go as far as to impose the definition of art to anyone (there are indeed several) although most coincide in that. But to me, having dedicated decades to making art and studying theory involved in it (not saying that I have authority for that; just that it is the obvious conclusion for me after all these years), etc, that point happens to be essential to define art (and so, artists those who do such), and then we'd get into another locked point of the debate. After which, well... I leave this thread... Very interesting debate, but I think we would start going in circles (and maybe making it even more boring for casual people clicking here, or to those who are following it) . The majority will prefer the pretty pictures. Tends to happen with the "two sides" in this big issue, so much that I was very very very close not to answer, initially...maybe I shouldn't have (mental note for the next one). ) Please, R C-R, don't think that I am being impolite if I don't follow the thread...

I believe he refers to the matter of the AI not feeling emotions (neither being self aware in any way) being a problem for it generating art, as, despite that fact, yet considering the "art" which AI generates better or even equal to what a human artist would create, but I could have misunderstood what he said.

Maybe. I'm judging the current situation, only (as it is what I can only examine well: the future is not that easy to predict). Also, I doubt AI would ever have true "human experience", neither conscience, both essential for the core of real artistic expression.

Not trying to make a point, it is a genuine question... but, having (Canva) 175 million users, and lots of money (from what we heard of the acquisition), and that level of things, companies typically do all these operations with expensive (external or internal) consulting and research (not just spent in lawyers firms); it is not like a small business anymore. I really have no idea, as I have no inside info, but all my life, with a pair of large companies exceptions, I have worked in small or mid sized studios (web/desktop dev, design and game studios) and even we, we'd look both for paid and reputable third party consulting when needed (ie, in matters for which we didn't count on experts), and definitely our own research (like, digging forums similar to this up and down like there was no tomorrow, hundreds of articles, etc) . In much smaller operations. Such a expensive operation is typically handled with a lot of experts of several fields, third party companies for consulting, etc, from all I know. But I could be wrong.

No, that is not exactly the point. There are nuances, let me explain (might we reach some middle ground. But if, not, that's fine, too). First, artistic expression is IMO beneficial for any human being, if having the desire for such expression (and some don't have it because they never tried, though. Others just really don't feel the need). Like it is also singing or dancing. Almost therapeutic, I would say (I have read it is, indeed, in a bunch of cases). Anyone can express feelings, emotions, provoking ideas, or simply depict something that they (and maybe others) consider beautiful, etc, through any medium, written words, music. The output of that, anyone can find it beautiful or provoking in any certain way. But like with any form of knowledge, artistic expression (music, writing...), going through well tested methods, good techniques, a person can become a lot more effective in conveying such emotions in others. Like (it's just a metaphor, bear with me as it does not apply perfectly), if I try now to play a song with a violin, my intentions to play something harmonious and beautiful with it can be sincere and intense, but the result for other people's ears might not be so much (or even a pain), as I have never learned a thing about violins, or music, in general. To the point that someone with years of art learning (painting, drawing, theory, etc) and practice can and surely will become a lot more effective in generating that powerful emotion in others. Even more, in feeling it themselves, which, in a way, is the most rewarding. And nope, it is not needed to go to college, as most documentation was already available (and it is yet) in great books in public libraries since many decades (when I actually started learning), or can be purchased for very little, but now internet makes it a hundred times better, easier, and even more, relatively cheap: very affordable courses can put some one in the same path with enough years of practice (practice and constant effort is key). Still, going to Fine Arts college is a great advantage, but I can firmly say that considering the number of my colleagues in the uni that were only interested in "getting a title", that anyone with strong interest, patience, resilience and mostly with good books and video courses (yep, better both things), could very well end up with a much higher skill than most of my colleagues for less money than today most hobbies require, video games included. But the advantage (just like in science!) of centuries of studies collected in books (even when the cheapest, less recommended art book writers are just repeating techniques which they surely don't know where they came from, or only know barely the practical recipe) and taught in affordable video tutorials (but good ones! There's a lot of very bad material out there that can do more harm than good) puts the artist going though such (long, I admit it) path in a much better position to build something that aligns with this person's dreams, objectives for creation, and also is more likely to produce the desired emotions in the viewers (this is key). Just because indeed there are techniques for this, just like for every other parcel of knowledge. So, does a prepared artist have the same chances of conveying such emotions in others, or of being as effective in building certain imaginary worlds than a person who picked up a brush for a first time and hasn't read anything about the matter? Well, the first one has more chances (quite more). Is it impossible that a total newcomer to art would produce something beautiful or replicate what is in this person's imagination in an effective way? Nope, is not impossible (there are just quite fewer chances). And in a competitive world, I would say that it is quite more likely that the art of the years long prepared one can match certain criteria (which do exist). As for the first point, the judgement (ie, an art jury in a contest) is indeed based on the techniques, as it is known that with those techniques is how that effectiveness and "beauty" is better achieved. It all forms a puzzle that a good artist (or an art critic) can establish if it finally works in achieving the goal of conveying such emotion or transmitting a certain idea or sensation effectively enough. Again, because both the criteria and techniques are based on solid, tested aspects of psychology, which is a science, but also on perception (well, it's actually part of it) and art theory, among several other things.

Nope. Since when techniques are subjective? These are techniques that help creating a better perspective (as in, to paint a landscape or a city scene, building a previous -even if loose, as a good artist eye gets trained with practice- base guidelines of a 2, 3 or 5 vanishing points perspective), better built figures (through solid knowledge and know-how of anatomy drawing (and that is as objective as it can get), shading/lighting, etc), better contrast, better composition (it is studied what the brain (generally) finds more compensated in a composition, this is not "sci fi")... even techniques to generate certain emotion in the user, like psychology of color (studied together with theory of color). These all are studied (and tested) techniques (through centuries) to lead to generate in the viewer a certain psychological reaction or sensation. Indeed, in this is what the advertising language is based on. This is a key part of what an artist is taught in art schools/college and learns through decades with good books and documentation about all these matters. There is a lot of method in that, which has been tested again and again. There are dense studies about human perception which are pretty objective, (the Gestalt Principles for perception, all the techniques for painting, drawing are in a strong way orientated towards that, color and composition in relation with psychology, etc, etc) based on studies and facts. The subjective part is that, a part of the art process, not all of it, by any means. But okay if you don't want to understand/admit that.

Not really. We could get deep into philosophy (the concept of beauty, etc), but a lot of such criteria is based on actual human perception rules, psychology, and effective methods to convey an emotion, none of that is just random, but the result of centuries long human (artistic) studies. There are techniques for all that in almost every style and genre, so, nope, it is not that subjective. There is a portion that is subjective, of course, but the other part is just as important.

With the first part of my comment I meant that inside of each style or artistic movement, there's also good and bad. There are good, bad and terrible impressionist pieces, for example. There are great and very bad comics, and you can always apply solid criteria for each style or genre.

Each style and art movement has its own criteria which can and should be used to determine quality. I would not judge a Roy Lichtenstein's piece with same criteria that I would with a Vermeer painting (although a lot of the main principles often apply, like color theory, composition, etc). But if we go to a more emotional-only aspect, still the human experience and self awareness, the conscience, is lacking in the AI. About the skills of the classic masters, definitely are really harder to replicate truly (also for actual artists). I mean not in the output (the result of a pretty picture from a mashup), but the process, and the level of understanding that such process provides with.

BTW, unnecessary to mention it, but obviously I am totally, absolutely in favor of AI advances in medicine. Progress is good when ethics drive it. I am against bad or unethical uses of AI (which are happening in the visual art world, music, writing, voice acting, and probably in the near future, many more mainstream jobs unrelated to creative profiles). It is not just a matter of quantity, of amount of data processed. There is a lot more involved. Like human experience, but even just the skills themselves, are a lot more than quantity of data. And getting to be truly conscious, as a possibility for AI, (main requirement for true artistic expression) that's the part in which I predicted where we would "have to agree to disagree" .

Trust me on this one (as an artist, not an AI expert, which I will never be )... to create good art, you do really need to know the process, the skills needed for it, and definitely, be self aware, have a conscience. But "it" does not have even the very basic level of this group of things, which are the artistic skills. The "training" (even if efficient for a commercial output, due to counting on a humongous, very cool art database from great artists) as understood by processing the databases, is very different and at a much lower level in matters of intelligent processes than what human artists do for training their skills. Proof of this (among many more) are facts like not knowing that a hand does not typically have 12 fingers, that some stuff is not contextual to certain important historic matters, or... how it has often copied directly a watermark thingy (often just a part of it) that was in the watermarked image of an art stock site or an artist's Instagram on which paintings there were watermarks. A human artist would never do such dumb thing. That is not "smart" by any means, besides neither ethical. It does not "understand" at the level of a human, but by a huge difference.

This can be answered by any "AI" expert (I'm not one, but I know about this one aspect) : they don't know anatomy. They can't process how a muscle is inserted into a bone and produces certain external aspect with the skin and flesh over it, and how it looks if rotated in certain angle, its exact bulging if flexed in certain other angle, and how that arm responds to the environment, lighting, other conditions, etc. They are mixing and mashing up, mostly, many bits of information, using patterns that are ways less sophisticated than what we do in our brain, even if we can't process as much data. They are much dumber than what marketers are trying to sell, but that hype brings money. Not saying it won't be possible, but current tech is very far from that (and yet producing enough artistic jobs destruction, but because humans like to shoot their own foot). This can be easily checked... And like anatomy, many other concepts needed in art creation, through skills intensively trained for decades. That besides it not being conscious of itself, not self aware (and that is really far, if ever possible), which is a huge aspect of being able of true artistic expression (and other types of human communication), if not the main one.

@William Overington I am in a hurry right now, but, having read some bits, I certainly have (personally) no issue if it is stated that the images are AI generated. I will read it later on. There could be some legal issues regarding copyright (as in, not being able to register the images), still, though, for some operations (that's a bit of a complex matter). In general I am recommending friends not to publish with AI images for a little while until all is a bit more settled, though (and this not because of ethics or the like). Not ideal, but it should not be a problem. If everybody would do this (adding such note), things would be much better.

Claude Monet (practically the creator of Impressionism) would paint a lot more loosely a female figure and definitely the stegosaurus and the Okapi, which for other reasons have certain problems (among other things, the Okapi's head looks more like a deer's head...btw, Okapi's males do have horns, but skin/hair covered. An stegosaurus had much smaller head, and different shapes in several parts...That almost seems like a mix between a turtle, a brontosaurus, and something else ). The problem can be detected also in the backgrounds (slightly in a different style than the figures, anyway), he would not paint them so, he was after a very fast impression of light and color from reality ("Impressionism" was initially a term invented by an art critic, supposed to be derogatory) , a sensation, more than a very refined thing. Her hand and wrist over the Okapi have important issues (easily seen when compared to the other, and due to anatomy). Indeed, in certain way this reminds me a bit more of pointillism (even if there's no actual pointillism in there). But for a greeting card it would be fine.

Well.. that runs way deeper than our practical case here (and our current problem as artists/designers/photographers), but I'd say I'm not sure about Neumann having enough data to predict that, so long ago, and more importantly: I have had that conversation often with quite a few individuals; it ends up always in having to agree to disagree. Mostly because I am convinced that we can't replicate intelligence to our brain's level in certain very key matters, even if we can make it quite more capable in several areas (as fascinating as the future arrival of "AGI" appears to be for some, if that ends up happening). But mostly, because I value what is human (art is part of it) a lot more than any chunk of silicon or any piece of metal with some circuits on it, so, I wouldn't give the thing more rights than to a human, even if it got super intelligent (talking here about IP, copyrights). And overall, no matter how smart we can make it, it would not have the human's main characteristics. In any case, I'll retire way before AGI is even close. IMO what AI (which, btw, people in that field hate that it has been called "AI" by marketing folks, as it is not yet such, it's quite far) can do has been slightly over hyped, for VC's interests. Currently it does not boil down to that. At least not in its current state. It does not know what I know to make a proportionate human (hence the many errors, and it's only fixed (the 9 fingers, etc, etc, etc) with certain "tricks", not true understanding. It's just dealing with patterns), neither how all the 20 muscles of the forearm behave and change in every pose (neither do I, but yep till a sufficient extent). And neither is capable of many other skills achieved by an artist, those are not yet things that an "AI" is _really_ able to replicate, even less, consciously (but it can mashup stuff, use patterns, predict words in a context, etc), right now. Maybe in the future? Yes, probably. But that future is farther than people think. But the result, the output, is already something that can be sold/used to fully replace artists (the general public doesn't notice/even care, with said output). VC investors behind all those companies were not after giving artists tools to improve their work, give the artists more functionality to their workflows (even while a lot of devs will use AI for that, as there's a market for it, too, but much, much smaller). The main purpose was/is the replacement, otherwise these VCs would have not invested so much money in making full generative AI for images. Huge profit is at the core of all this, and only that. Replacing all labor of a field (not caring about the damage, not just to the artists, but to society, in the long run) means a lot of money gain, multiplying profit by a much larger factor than a more typical investment.

A, still not fair, yet "not so bad" solution would be to make it a requirement by law to state very prominently (and this certainly can be regulated, and it's not costly -at all- to do by the "prompters". I have indeed seen some doing it for moral reasons) that the art was created using generative AI, instead of being the work of an artist. Still, it would remain the fact that such generation came from a non allowed use (whether to extract the style or blatantly copy parts of art pieces) of a lot of illustrated content for the creation of a tool (which is illegal in any other field), and then that print. This in the music industry is very well regulated. And at least for commercial usage, it is not that easy to bypass. But the idea is not a digital protection, but enforcing the measure by law. As then, the average Jane and Joe will still be doing it not complying to the law (BTW, I have no complaints about the use in memes and non commercial use, in general), but like with piracy, unlawful use is not that practical for true commercial purposes. This is not my idea, it has been mentioned multiple times. I think it is never comparable what is happening with AI to an art student learning. Besides that an AI is not a human, the AI is not learning what it takes to make a good art piece. It does not have a clue about what anatomy is, or at least does not really understand it, neither composition, color theory, art history, its own human context, etc. It has some parameters for making a sophisticated mashup, a prediction based system using enormous sets of artwork. And ultimately, it is a product developed using creative work (impossible without it) from artists, in a way not allowed legally by their authors. I personally would have less of an issue if, by law, by regulation (otherwise people just don't comply) whether from EU legislation then copied by the US and the rest of the world, or the other way around, or if becoming a global thing in any other way, it was imposed to specify very clearly (in the credits and signature of the print, digital image, etc) that it is the result of generative AI. Then markets could be differentiated, many users would still prefer the cheap AI images, of course, but would be two categories. While currently, posters, prints, etc, are sold without any note about it (although the amount of errors is glaring, but not for everyone). The ethics of it, still not great, but at least it damages less the creators who made it, and contributes less to destroy an entire cultural field (which has built our history and it is more important to humanity than it is perceived to be), as it is doing already. The motivation for those not willing to take this simple measure would be quite telling, in my opinion. But this is not in the hands of any developer or company (they could have the initiative to force a small watermark, tho, some are doing it. But the only definitive solution is regulation). I mention it as we are apparently discussing philosophic or ethical aspects of it.

Maybe.. But I suspect that most people that dislike 2.x might be due to a first impression: they found the situation (too many bugs, initially) at the moment of launch, and left, just switched to other platform. Some others lasted a bit more trying with 2.x, by digging for workarounds by themselves and in the forum. And some (if this thread could serve as a sample, then at least a nice percentage) of us went quite farther and kept seeing huge improvements every next release they made in 2.x, fine tuning tons of things. I have more stability now in 2.4 than I ever had in 1.x (even the best version of 1.x), and the functionality I can make use of is quite more complete in 2.4, plus getting better performance. I don't know the stats, though (of how many of those 3 million users are using 2.x or 1.x). There's also another important issue: for a long time I had projects fully made in 1.x. I did not want to risk (even if there were no risks) a back and forth between 1.x and 2.x. But finished those projects, now I only work with the latter.