AI or nah (or "taste vs talent," pick one)

tldr: AI not good or bad; taste better than talent; creative process important for integrity and aesthetics; use AI to get running and move into more creative and personal business.

Hi fellow creative lost souls. Since starting this t-shirt venture I’ve been feeling forced to pick a side, again. I actually already picked a side a year or so ago - and disavowed AI in content creation. When I started my t-shirt venture, I re-committed and started publishing my photos to shirts. But then I realized the business model I was more likely to benefit from (you know, financially) was based on quantity. Other people succeeding at this t-shirt game were pumping out the AI designs. And so I thought - “do I really care?” So I bifurcated my efforts: selling my higher integrity products on my own website - a longer-term effort; and selling AI boosted graphic tees on Etsy. (I use the term “selling” loosely.)

literally putting this here so it becomes the thumbnail for the post

Now, there is absolutely no doubt that AI can currently create better t-shirt designs than me. They aren’t what I imagine, but are often better than my own idea in some way, if I generate enough to find a good one. In every case I have to do a bit of work to get it up to my standard, so I do make them mine.

Exhibit two: an ai-generated, edited image.

Process is good Dirty

I now refer to my unfinished “Theory of Dirty.” This theory states that people like the human touch. It shows how ‘dirt’ can be teased out, or left in, as a result of the process. In this idea, AI can GTFO. But although it promotes a potentially faster and carefree naive art style, more time will be taken if there is a manual process.

Exhibit one: no ai process. A Dirty, glitchy pixelated top-hat

Taste or talent?

I’ve always considered myself as someone who has more taste than talent. Alot of what I do creatively isn’t practiced, but I’ll attack the exact same thing tens or times until I’m satisfied with a result. I don’t usually have the exact result in mind, I’m just fishing. In this sense my own process isn’t that much better than AI - but when I do this myself I am at least in a process that will leave its marks on the final.

I will probably continue doing both, perhaps using AI to get some cheap and nasty ideas out there, like this Apathy is my Superpower t-shirt, which received minimal editing. People buy all kinds of crap, and why I don’t want to be a purveyor of crap, I do want to be an earner of money, so I will try both.

Which brings me to a final consideration: niche. Do I need one? I’m not sure that on Etsy where people are likely to be discovering products from topical searches, rather than via particular makers, niche matters. Unlike my former Shopify store at alidark.com (took it down for now), I don’t think having a unifying theme will matter. I don’t think building a brand on Etsy will make a difference at this stage.

In the future I’d like to return to T-shirts made from my personal work - whether photos or graphic tees that convey things that are important to me. My plan is to, if I can make some on Etsy, reinvest money into something more important to me, but which will take longer to get running. I would do this with a local focus - a smaller market, but something I could do in person rather than anonymously via the web.

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Thanks. I’m going to start adding a post every day. Why? I’m bored as fuck with my life.

Here’s the Tee I put online today - based on the sketch you saw in yesterday’s post. No AI here (wasn’t needed). Buy It :D … It has Nike vibes.