Rant: A young artist cornered me in a coffee shop about "exposure" payments

I was sitting at a cafe in Denver last winter editing some photos and a kid maybe 19 sits down and starts lecturing me about how I'm "clogging the algorithm" with my traditional digital portraits. He said my work was stale because I wasn't using AI upscaling. I just pointed at my tablet and asked him how many commissions he'd actually sold that month. He went quiet and walked off.

1 comments

1 Comment

nancyd8511d agoMost Upvoted

The kid who cornered me was selling prints of his AI upscaled stuff for $15 each and bragging about it. I pulled up his Etsy shop on my phone and showed him he had three sales total in six months, all probably from his mom. That "clogging the algorithm" line is just a way for people who can't draw to feel superior about typing prompts. Real clients pay real money for work that actually took skill and time, not something you burned credits on.