What artists resent isn’t just that AI exists. It’s where the leverage is applied.

Generative AI does two things simultaneously—and that combination is toxic:

1. It flattens the skill gradient on the front end People without visual training suddenly get access to outputs that look like competence. The cost of entry collapses. Years of cultivated eye, hand, and taste are bypassed.

2. It refuses to interlock with expert practice on the back end When a skilled human does show up—with sketches, proportion sense, symbolic discipline—the system will not treat that work as authoritative. It won’t accept visual intent as ground truth. It insists on reinterpreting from text.