"But AI art is a tool just like your drawing tablet, or a pencil..." Except drawing tablets don't make work themselves. Tablets, pens, pencils and whatever tool or medium real artists use don't feed off algorithms that steal other's works. Not to mention, a lot of AI art looks like uncanny dogshit anyways. You can always look up close at an AI piece and see all the calculations that break immersion and make the piece feel lifeless. I'm talking about terrible hands, misaligned facial features that go into uncanny valley, weird blurs between background and foreground elements, weird color palettes that feel calculated. On the other hand, when you look up closely at a work of art made by hand, whether through physical or digital means, you see all the exact strokes, the textures, the very slight misalignments that feel like a real person poured their soul into. Even if you want to argue that AI "art" can look good if the right key words are plugged in, it's not impressive because you're literally just having a computer spell out a work of "art" on your behalf. REAL artists however make their works by hand. They climb to success and garner their own circles of love and appreciation because of their talent, emotions and curiosity that glimmer on their canvas. AI is not advanced enough to replicate that same magic, and I don't think it ever will. So unless you're using it ironically for the sake of memes or just find a quick piece of inspiration for something you'll actually put effort into crafting, PLEASE stop calling AI images "art" because it's clearly not.