I used to dabble in art in a previous lifetime, and I would have killed to have something as good as the current AI models that could help me draw things in my style for me to practice on.

Whether it was drawing a dozen rough poses for me to choose as a base, doing all the flat fill colours so I could skip straight to shading shading, or even just making me little exercises to practice drawing hands.

I think artists who familiarize themselves with AI and incorporate it it into their work appropriately will have an advantage.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. It's like turning your nose up at using software on a computer because being able to Undo/Redo, or having layers and alpha transparency at the click of a button isn't "in the true spirit of art".

I'm surprised that no one has used the "able-ism" card against them. AI art allows people who previously were disadvantaged physically to now join the community and create art. Why do they hate these "different-bodied people" so much? :^)

On a more serious note, the sheer iteration speed of AI models allows you to explore potentially interesting ideas that would have taken you months before. Case in point: the recent rise of "<franchise> in the style of a 80's horror movie" picture dumps/videos. It would have taken me months if not years to be able to draw anything in that style, only to discover that it wasn't what I actually wanted. Now the computer can spit out examples for my consideration faster than I can review them.

Edit: I actually popped back in at some of the old communities I used to frequent to see what the mood was like, and it was pretty much exactly as you'd expect. The only permitted stance you were allowed to have on AI art was zealous disgust. I have a feeling that if I were to broach the hypothetical scenario of training an AI on my own style to help with my work, I'd have been accused of being a cheater who was trying to avoid "putting in the work", so to say.