AI is not our future

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Procreate + iPad as a Creative Tool

  • Many commenters praise the iPad + Pencil + Procreate combo as the best current digital art setup, often preferred over Wacom Cintiqs for ergonomics, portability, and price.
  • Several note Procreate’s unusually low one‑time price and speculate it’s still highly profitable at scale.
  • iPad Air (especially larger sizes) is generally viewed as sufficient for Procreate; 120Hz Pro display is “nice but not essential.”

Reactions to Procreate’s Anti‑AI Stance

  • A large group of artists and users applaud the stance as morally aligned with creators whose work has been scraped to train models without consent.
  • Others see it more as marketing or niche positioning: appealing to artists who want “no AI” tools and distrust vendors like Adobe.
  • Some argue it’s easy for Procreate to reject generative AI because their product centers on manual drawing, and deep AI integration might even undermine the product’s appeal.

What Counts as “AI”? Tools vs Generative Systems

  • Discussion centers on the difference between:
    • Local, consent‑trained, non‑generative ML features (e.g., line cleanup filters).
    • Large generative models trained on huge, often non‑consensual datasets.
  • Some see a clear ethical line: offline, non‑inventive tools trained with explicit artist consent are acceptable.
  • Others argue the distinction between “filter” and “generative” is fuzzy and that such tools already add details and alter style.

AI as Empowering Tool vs Cultural & Economic Threat

  • Pro‑AI creatives describe using models for voice conversion, translation, faster ideation, coloring, and layout—enabling projects that would otherwise be impossible on small budgets.
  • Opponents highlight:
    • Mass production of low‑effort “slop” and imitation styles.
    • Erosion of authorship, aesthetics, and even basic trust in what’s real.
    • Concentration of profits and power among large AI vendors.
  • Historical analogies are drawn to photography displacing portrait painting and industrial automation displacing factory workers; some expect artists to move toward forms AI can’t easily replicate (e.g., interactivity, games).

Ethics, Theft, and Copyright

  • Strong resentment from artists whose portfolios were likely used without permission to train commercial models, making their markets more competitive.
  • Debate over whether learning from others at human scale vs machine scale is morally different; proposed distinctions include scale, intent to supplant, and non‑transparent business models.
  • Some wish for a legal, credited image‑reference search engine instead of generative models, but see current copyright frameworks as blocking that.