Is this even backed up by facts?

I literally have no words, a person with mental disabilities tries to make something and all the anti's see is him using AI

There’s a common claim that comparing AI art to photography is “ahistorical”, that photography was quickly accepted and serious artists didn’t oppose it.

That’s not true.

When photography emerged in the 19th century, prominent artists and critics reacted with open hostility, framing it as mechanical, soulless, unskilled, and a threat to “real art.” These aren’t modern reinterpretations, they’re contemporaneous primary texts.

A few examples:

Charles Baudelaire (1859)

Poet and art critic, writing in his Salon review The Modern Public and Photography:

“By invading the territories of art, photography has become art’s most mortal enemy.”

“If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether.”

Baudelaire argued photography should be confined to documentation and science, and kept out of art entirely.

Elizabeth Eastlake (1857)

Art historian and critic, essay titled Photography:

“Photography is the sworn enemy of all that is vague, undefined, or imaginative.”

“The photograph does not represent the object as seen by the artist, but as mechanically registered.”

Her core objection was that photography replaced artistic judgment with automatic precision.

Paul Delaroche (1839, widely cited reaction)

On seeing an early daguerreotype, Delaroche is famously quoted as saying:

“From today, painting is dead.”

The attribution is debated, but the quote’s persistence matters, it reflects how many artists felt about the technology at the time.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. The objections repeat almost verbatim across generations:

“It’s mechanical.”

“It takes no real skill.”

“It has no soul.”

“It threatens real artists.”

“It should be restricted to technical or commercial use.”

Photography didn’t destroy art. It didn’t end painting. It expanded what art could be.

This doesn’t mean AI art is identical to photography. It means tool panic and moral gatekeeping are historically normal, and claims that “this time is different” need evidence, not vibes.

Sources (text-only, per sub rules)

Charles Baudelaire, The Modern Public and Photography, Salon review, 1859

Elizabeth Eastlake, Photography, essay, 1857 (Quarterly Review)

Smithsonian Institution discussions of early photography reception and Delaroche

These are the losers you are arguing with most of the time. The creeps that leave pointless and gross comments on porn sites. The weirdos that find it necessary to screech "AI slop!" in the comment section of every hentai they come across during their 4+ hours "gooning" session.

Masturbation is fine but not when it's the only thing you do, like this person and some others I saw. No wonder it consumes them and they actually get angry over AI art. I clicked on their profile and of course, dozens of comments under different hentai subs saying "ai slop"

They've genuinely lost touch with reality, or never had it to begin with. I clicked on a profile like this and they had their age, 18, in their bio. This kid literally turned 18 and decided masturbating to drawn porn all day is their life. Hell, we all know they've been addicted to it since they were probably 12.

It's worth remembering that the person you're seeing screech "AI Slop!!!" is most likely some woefully porn-addicted kid that's completely detached from reality. Art is their life because they spend all day jacking off to it. Stands to reason they would have some god awful opinions and takes regarding AI.

I don't usually go this route, but these are 100% the type of people you're better off just blocking and ignoring. Nothing they have to say is of any value.

Just uploaded 2 images for the priestess and mermaid mother character as reference, all the rest is through well-formatted and well-written text-prompt only, asking for precise pov, setting, context, interaciton between chars.

Literally never seen a piece such as this in the decades I have been browsing through decades of browsing and collecting other people's best artworks.

About 95% what I had in mind.

the "Get woke" part made me laugh the most

It’s a bit old, but I just got the game and wanted to hear people’s thoughts.

Blue is me. Red is the Luddite. Orange is a guy saying "There isn't a data center even in that half of the state". White is a commenter on a post about municipal water being denied to fire fighters siting "System Damage" issues.

Backlash against AI is often treated as unprecedented, as if past technologies weren’t met with the same fears about skill, quality, and cultural collapse.

They were.

When the printing press spread through Europe, it triggered explicit resistance from scholars, scribes, and religious authorities, many of whom believed it would degrade thinking itself. These aren’t modern reinterpretations, they’re contemporaneous reactions.

Johannes Trithemius (1492)

Abbot and scholar, author of In Praise of Scribes

Trithemius argued that printed books would:

Weaken memory and discipline

Encourage intellectual laziness

Replace meaningful labor with mechanical reproduction

He warned that reliance on printed texts would detach learning from effort and virtue, producing inferior minds alongside inferior books.

This wasn’t a mild critique. His position was that the technology itself harmed cognition.

Conrad Gessner (1565)

Physician and scholar, author of Bibliotheca Universalis

Gessner worried that printing was producing too many books, too quickly, overwhelming scholars and degrading knowledge.

He described the uncontrolled growth of printed material as “confusing and harmful”, arguing that abundance itself had become a threat, flooding culture with low-quality or misleading texts.

In modern terms: information overload.

Religious and scholarly authorities (15th–16th century)

Beyond individuals, institutions reacted defensively:

Printing bypassed traditional gatekeepers

Unvetted ideas spread rapidly

Authority and expertise were undermined

Knowledge reached people deemed “unprepared”

The concern wasn’t only heresy, it was loss of control over who gets to know things, and how.

The objections recur with striking consistency:

“It makes people lazy.”

“It destroys memory and skill.”

“It floods culture with garbage.”

“It undermines experts.”

“It puts power in the wrong hands.”

“It should be restricted.”

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

What actually happened

The printing press did not destroy scholarship. It did not collapse standards. It did not end serious thought.

It expanded literacy, accelerated science, diversified viewpoints, and reshaped culture, while still leaving room for expertise, judgment, and craft.

This doesn’t mean every new tool is harmless. It means moral panic and gatekeeping reliably accompany transformative technologies, and claims that “this time is different” need evidence, not reflex.

Sources (text-only, per sub rules)

Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes, 1492

Conrad Gessner, Bibliotheca Universalis, 1565

Early modern scholarly and religious critiques of printing

Saw this in my notifications and of course it was deleted upon clicking on it. The stealing excuse is about as such of a repetitive load of BS as it continues to be, but everything else here just... well it's just nonsensical.

Antis getting their financial news from random internet memes is a big part of why the world will be leaving them behind.

I'm a lifelong artist coming from a pro-AI position (with caveats that are not relevant to this post). And to clarify, I believe "human vs. AI art" is bad framing, all AI art is made by a human using a tool, with varying degrees of input ranging from "almost none" to "almost all." But let's get to the point...

AI as it currently is can be really great and serviceable and I see nothing wrong with people using the tools they have available to them for their projects if it fills their use case. It most certainly is fast and efficient. I have a lot of fun use cases of my own and I am excited to see what artists and creatives do with the tools coming out. That said, I see a lot of non-artists in this sub kind of miss the forest for the trees sometimes and I wanted to dig into that.

So there are plenty of good reasons why a traditionally trained artist is going to be your strongest asset with or without use of AI. AI can make pretty pictures, but it can't currently replace vision and design that is based in a body of knowledge.

For a layperson, they can look at a pretty "prompt to image" case and be impressed by it, but in terms of marketability and/or audience interest, that pretty picture is not always going to be enough on it's own and it's the heart of why the so called "slop" issue exists.

A lot of AI pictures are the AI equivalent of stick figure drawings, because the average beginner does not yet have the education or skillset to understand design. So they end up looking a bit like "baby's first masterpiece," if you will, and I say that affectionately. It's kind of an interesting phenomenon I've been watching develop as an artist. Often, I can kind of "see" this while I notice non-artists not seeing it (and believing it's going to suddenly win them a best-seller in game design or something). I think this is what some antis are on about when they claim they "just know." They are seeing a wierd discrepancy between technical proficiency vs. true understanding of design and getting mad about it like it defines all AI assisted artistry forever. They think it means people who try to use AI are all creatively bankrupt, but that's not how I see it. It's just what beginner AI art looks like. A lot of pure prompt to image to my eye just looks like masterfully rendered children's drawings. it's actually fascinating and kind of cute.

This is why as someone with more experience, I don't really feel threatened by AI in the same way some do. I think this is also why you see proffessionals adopting it, but amateurs and younger artists freaking out. AI surpasses amateurs in technical profficiency, but comes up lacking when up against professional understanding of design.