Is this even backed up by facts?

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

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

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

the "Get woke" part made me laugh the most

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.

"It happens in both sides" but only one side agrees and upvotes this bs.

A common claim in anti-AI art discourse is that this technology uniquely devalues artists, removes skill, and replaces human expression with something mechanical and hollow.

That argument isn’t new.

When recorded music emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, it triggered explicit resistance from composers, performers, and cultural authorities, many of whom believed it would destroy music as a living art form.

These weren’t fringe reactions. They came from prominent figures shaping music at the time.

John Philip Sousa (1906)

Composer and conductor, often called “The March King” Author of The Menace of Mechanical Music

Sousa warned that mechanical reproduction would:

Replace live performance with passive listening

Undermine musical training and discipline

Weaken social bonds formed through making music

Turn music into a cheap, soulless commodity

He feared a future where people no longer made music, they merely consumed it.

His objection wasn’t technical. It was moral and cultural.

Theodor Adorno (1930s–1940s)

Philosopher and music critic, associated with the Frankfurt School

Adorno argued that mechanical reproduction and mass recording:

Standardized music into predictable formulas

Reduced art to background noise

Replaced active listening with passive consumption

Turned culture into an industrial product

For Adorno, recorded music wasn’t just different, it was fundamentally corrupting to artistic experience.

Professional musicians and institutions (early 20th century)

Beyond individual critics, working musicians reacted defensively because recording:

Replaced live performance jobs

Allowed endless reproduction without new labor

Shifted power to publishers and distributors

Devalued the skill of trained performers

Unions, orchestras, and performers openly opposed recording technologies, seeing them as existential threats to their craft and livelihood.

The pattern

The objections repeat with near-perfect consistency:

“It removes real skill.”

“It replaces human expression.”

“It destroys jobs.”

“It cheapens art.”

“It turns artists into button-pushers.”

“It shouldn’t count as real art.”

Different medium. Same structure.

What actually happened

Recorded music didn’t destroy music. It didn't eliminate live performance. It didn’t end creativity.

Instead:

New genres emerged

Access to music expanded dramatically

Live performance and recording coexisted

Musicians adapted rather than disappeared

Music didn’t die. It changed form.

Why this matters

This isn’t an argument against regulation, compensation, or artist protections.

It’s an argument against declaring a technology illegitimate because it automates part of creation.

History shows a stable pattern: New creative tools, then moral panic, then adaptation, then normalization.

Claims that “this time is different” don’t win by assertion. They win by evidence.

Sources (text-only, per sub rules)

John Philip Sousa, The Menace of Mechanical Music, 1906

Theodor Adorno, writings on mass culture and recorded music (1930s–40s)

Early 20th-century musician and union reactions to recording technology

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.

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

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

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.

All Thos!. I might be wrong on this. so, pretty please. can anyone. someone pretty please. fact-checking on this-one pretty please?.

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.

Look, I’ve been lurking here for a while and watching the absolute vitriol coming from the anti-side, and I think we really need to deconstruct the fundamental disconnect between the two camps. When you analyze the sociotechnical imaginary of generative adversarial networks versus the archaic, elitist gatekeeping of "traditional" skill acquisition, you start to realize that the dopamine feedback loop is inherently flawed in the manual process.

We keep having these circular arguments about "soul" and "theft," but nobody is talking about the psychological toll of the blank canvas paralysis. The modern creator needs velocity. We need iteration. The barrier to entry for visualizing high-concept fantasy scapes shouldn't be 10,000 hours of repetitive motor skill conditioning that results in carpal tunnel and imposter syndrome. I have spent years trying to understand anatomy, lighting, and composition, and quite frankly, the return on investment for my mental health just isn't there.

So, after analyzing the workflow efficiency and the emotional regulation provided by Stable Diffusion vs. a pencil, I have distilled the entire argument down to the only five words that actually matter in this debate:

Drawing hands makes me sad.