Raw LLM Responses

You're still missing the point. Its not about any of those things. Its about the market. AI is having success because it is filling up a void in the market, meaning easily accessible illustrations that look good enough to be used professionally, without incurring in the usual cost associated with these things. Its ridiculous to criticize the technology on the basis "do it yourself instead". Its not about accessibility in terms of raw materials, like you mention with the paper. If that was the whole problem, professional artists would not exist, since i could always just "do it myself". The issues are time, commitment and interest. If i want 200 custom illustrations for a project and I suck at art in general, i could 1)pick up pen and paper and take 10 years to get good, leaving the project behind 2) hire an artist, which is going to charge up to 100$ per new illustration, or pay royalties which can also be expensive 3) spend one week on a random image generator and be done with it. This is the "convenience" that you fundamentally skirt at the end of the video with some strawman about google images vs ai illustration. By the way, most AIgen is completely free to use, it's trivial to set up multiple accounts to repeatedly use them (contrary to the claim you make in the video to make your argument appear stronger). You also fundamentally skirt how the ease you draw on paper vs digital is due to years of experience you have on your back. A complete noob will get much better results with digital art thanks to the automated tools. You want to criticize Aigen because it steals from "real artists"? Fine, but do it against the companies themselves, not the final user. I wonder if, in a parallel world where these companies had payed all the royalties, this video would exist regardless.