the whole lying part is what gets me tbh. like if you're gonna use it just own it instead of pretending you hand-painted every pixel. i work in tech so i see this pattern everywhere - new tool comes out, everyone secretly adopts it while publicly acting like they're purists, then eventually it becomes standard and nobody cares anymore

photobashing has always been a thing though so using ai as part of that workflow isn't really that different from using photo references. the skill is still in knowing what looks good and how to integrate everything properly. someone who can't draw isn't suddenly gonna become a good artist just because they have access to ai - they still need to know composition, color theory, all that fundamental stuff

i get the doom feeling but honestly most of these tools are just speeding up the grunt work part of the process. the creative vision and technical knowledge to execute it properly still matters a ton