When ChatGPT first debuted, I believed my days as a author had been numbered. There are so many things it can do, and I think about artists have had related pangs of fearful panic as generative AI retains getting ever higher at creating lifelike and/or stylized pictures.
But I’m nonetheless right here! Still getting paid to place the best phrases in the best order on the digital web page. And even inside my small world of picture manipulation, I nonetheless use Photoshop each single day.
Generative AI is neat, nevertheless it isn’t excellent. In reality, it’s so removed from excellent that I not often use it. It’s solely good for very particular wants, and even then I nonetheless need to do some handbook touch-ups. I’m no Photoshop wizard, however even my rudimentary abilities surpass what AI can do—more often than not.
Where generative AI pictures shine
As I’m not a Photoshop professional, my abilities are positively restricted. There are issues I simply can’t do as a result of I don’t know tips on how to do them, and AI is sweet for these bits. AI can also be good for fast little duties the place I don’t look after excellent outcomes, like prototypes and ideations.
Generative AI is improbable for shortly whipping up idea artwork and creating fun digital props for a roleplaying game. I’ve used it to create phony sci-fi pill overlays for sending faux messages to my tabletop RPG gamers, and Photoshop’s personal Generative Fill characteristic is a quick and dirty healing brush/clone tool replacement that makes it method simpler to fill in any gaps in a picture or simply make it a bit of greater.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
I’ve used generative AI to create prototype card layouts for a sport I’m designing, for fast private memes between buddies, and for portraits representing the characters I wish to roleplay as.
But for me? That’s the place generative AI’s usefulness ends. I don’t use it to create sprawling vistas or gigantic artworks. Why would I? Sure, it may be spectacular from a technical standpoint that AI instruments can create these issues out of skinny air. But I don’t actually have any use for that.
At their core, giant language mannequin AIs simply aren’t able to understanding something meaningfully. Even once I do want generative AI, the dearth of accuracy, precision, verisimilitude, and skill to observe particular directions kills its usefulness. It nonetheless principally appears like a tech demo, and that makes it largely ineffective for something past novelty.
The evident weaknesses of generative AI
Faster, cheaper, extra sustainable
Indeed, there are one million fast little issues I nonetheless use Photoshop for the place it solely takes me a couple of seconds to do. It doesn’t make sense to make use of AI for these items, even when AI is able to them: resizing pictures, adjusting lighting, tweaking distinction, reframing a picture, changing to a distinct file kind, altering facet ratios, and many others.

Jon Martindale / Foundry
These are all necessary duties I do each single day, and there’s no method I’m going to 1) belief an unreliable AI to do what I want accomplished accurately, or 2) waste all that GPU time, electrical energy, and water on one thing I can do quicker and extra successfully with current software program. (Yes, the environmental costs of generative AI are frighteningly costly.)
Look, I’m not anti-AI. It’s not like I hope the know-how dies, and it’s not like I can’t see the way it may be helpful. But it’s necessary to be aware of what we’re utilizing and the way we’re utilizing it, and I feel it’s pointless to make use of generative AI for something I can do myself, particularly if I can do it higher, quicker, and with much less frustration.
The better of each worlds?
There’s in all probability an finish sport someday within the subsequent decade or two the place generative AI will be capable to do what I do effectively sufficient… and I would find yourself dropping my area of interest altogether. Some even assume that’ll occur to everybody and we’ll need to deal with a post-work world. But I don’t assume LLMs are what’s going to make that occur.
For now, AI instruments can assist. They’re helpful, however they’ve limitations. I take advantage of AI for enjoyable, novelty, and unimportant stuff. I’ll spin up some pictures and movies to ship my buddies, or inspiration for our subsequent roleplaying session, or a fast idea for a inventive challenge. It’s invaluable for placeholder artwork in a work-in-progress sport design, for instance.
But in the case of something vital, something that calls for specificity, something that would land me in scorching water if it accommodates errors, something I can already do myself very quickly? I’ll simply do it myself. No method I’m going to entrust any of that to an unreliable AI that received’t take heed to directions and can as a substitute inject a bunch of its personal hallucinations. If AI goes to make my life more durable, then I’ll simply do it myself.
