No AI for art. AI for everything else.
Note taking, learning, research, organization and scheduling, automation, scripted tool development, marketing: basically, all the ways that someone can use AI that won't compromise their artistic integrity.
Everything else
Most of an artist's working day isn't the art. AI can help with all of it, and never touch a single brushstroke, model, or frame:
- Note taking. Turning lectures, meetings, and messy notes into clean, searchable ones.
- Learning. Explaining a concept a different way, quizzing you, and answering the follow-up questions you'd be shy to ask.
- Research. Finding references, documentation, and techniques — and pointing you to sources you can check.
- Organization and scheduling. Planning projects, breaking them into tasks, and keeping deadlines in view.
- Automation. Renaming, converting, exporting, backing up: the repetitive jobs around the work.
- Scripted tool development. Writing the small scripts and tools that make your own software do exactly what you need.
- Marketing. Portfolio text, descriptions, posts, and the rest of getting your work in front of people.
The grunt work inside the art
Many jobs involved in otherwise artistic processes have no real artistic contribution at all. They are busy work — "grunt work" — that wastes artists' time, and worse, takes them out of the creative flow state by forcing them to focus on something else. For example:
- UVs
- Setting up a camera in 3D to match 2D concept art
- Retopology for a subdivision surface model
- Levels of detail for games
- Shader code
- Character rigging
Where the line is drawn
Where the line is drawn becomes a subjective choice. However, there are a lot of parts in the processes where, for years, we've been comfortable using tools that automate the process: automatic unfolding for UV layout, for example, or ZRemesher in ZBrush. AI-based tools that do these things are just a natural next step, and they don't take away anything meaningful from the artist's control.
Every individual artist gets to decide where to draw the line between which processes they automate and which they choose to do themselves.
More time for the art
In these cases, what AI actually does is give the artist more time to work on their actual art: more time to put towards perfecting their vision, and making the parts the audience will actually see.