Having read through the thread I land pretty firmly in the camp believing that AI art should not be allowed in an Illustration Contest because I don’t feel that it meets the bar to be considered art. A huge problem I have with AI generated “art” is that it takes too big of a shortcut in the artistic process. I understand that as certain mediums are timeless and others, like photography for example, have changed as new technologies have become available. The difference for me here is that it is too easy for someone to input a loose set of directions into an AI tool and have the tool spit out an image that is usually an amalgamation of other’s artwork. This process skips the steps that require real human input