It's a very uneven playing field. If somebody hand paints or draws something, it shouldn't be in the same category as someone just adding a filter in a program. Last night was going thru the comments of the "Combining two photos with a neural network" and seen a disheartened artist. They're mixing hand painted art with photos and now it looks like it was painted with creativity. This isn't like just doing a brush stroke filter in photoshop to make it look hand painted. This is a new creation morphing two images. He was like, why bother anymore.
My older brother can paint like a photograh. He does murals in 5 star hotels and all sorts of places around the world. Sure doesn't mean as much anymore to paint like a photograph. He made a living painting before computers came along. Now just filters on a photo can make it hand painted. And you got the giclee. Painters have taken a hit since computers. Now this neural network stuff.. ugh.
I think what's going on around here is a bit of backlash towards anything that's not hand painted or drawn. And rightly so. Look at how much time someone puts into drawing something that has all kinds of detail. It shouldn't get as much merit or votes as something that's whipped together in moments with a program. Just doesn't seem right. However, if an image makes you go wow, why should that not get the upvotes that made you go wow. It's a different category but there definitely is a backlash towards anything that says digital. Don't take it out on me. Judge an image for if it makes you go wow, instead. But that's not gonna happen.
There seems to be a bit of gloom around here. Meanwhile artists who do make some interesting hand drawn stuff, seem to be getting some of that downer mood with not as many upvotes as you'd think. For a subreddit that has this many subscribers the activity really is low. It's like the music subreddit. Look at anything other than the top one which goes to the front page. It's dead around reddit in general because of everyone's fractured attention these days because of media choice overload.
Movies too with CGI sure have dulled people up. All kinds of flashy stuff and they're yawning nowadays. Well, a still image, that sure ain't gonna get them revved up as much if that kind of video bores them. I guess it's a bit like comparing a horse and buggy to a car when it came along.
All I can say to an artist is, you can still do interesting stuff. Don't just paint like a photo, that doesn't amaze them as much these days. What you should look into is creating fantasy worlds or something new that the computer can't do. It's called using your imagination. Look at Escher. Dali. What I was checking out the other week was H. R. Giger. That's art which is new stuff, not just a painting of fruit bowls. If you want to make it these days painting things, imagination realms you create would be an area to discover.