AIBU that I am upset over a tattoo design?

I think of it was about something different to a tattoo, it would be YANBU.

But, and it’s a big but, tattoos are permanent and extremely personal. They have to be just right and while I can see how hurt you are, him walking around for ever with something that isn’t quite right /to his liking on his body , just to spare you feelings, wouldn’t be any better either.

I really want a new tattoo(and have for years) , but I haven’t found anything that is “IT” , rather than “yeah that’s nice” so I’m not having one done.

I also think that if his instructions were really prescriptive (as you do when you use AI) … make that bigger, slide that to the left , turn this upside down, add a happy cow, do it in the style of .., and so on, you’d also find it quite insulting. Mainly because every artist has their own style and creative licence that they incorporate in their designs. I have a feeling that to end up with what he really wanted, it wouldn’t have been truly “your” design anyway if that makes sense.

With all due respect but please start working on your confidence and thick skin if you want to be an illustrator. Lots of resilience will be needed. Become unflappable. All that is part of the job

Was the changed image not a combination of AI and the tattooists own work?
Generally, good tattooists don't just go with the image they are presented with and will make suggested changes / improvements.
So Its highly likely that the original design would have been altered anyway.

I think both of you not liking confrontation is at the heart of this. We don’t always agree with our partners and in long term relationships learning to handle disagreement and conflict is important.

Your feelings about your design and AI are valid and understandable, but the concern for me is that your DH avoided discussing it with you. It’s his body and so he gets to choose the design for it 100%; the question is why he didn’t ask you to alter your original design and thought it would be easier to ask AI.

Would you have been upset if he’d asked you to change the design? I think you need to bottom out the communication between you here.

Honestly I think people who aren't artists have trouble understanding just how bad AI is. I see it more and more and the artists I know absolutely hate it, with good reason.

Seems that your DH is very tone deaf about the reasons you dislike AI and doesn't grasp that altering your design means it's no longer your design! Since you said you both tend to avoid confrontation he wasn't brave enough to tell you about the more extreme alterations. He's said he 'doesn't know' why he did and 'forgot to tell you' he ran it through AI, but I expect if he was honest, yes he does know, he simply didn't want to have a confrontation. It shows a weakness on his part.

I've a friend who does YT podcasts and is now making AI thumbnails for them (apparently encouraged by YT to 'reach more people' and 'grow your channel'). The AI features a picture of her but it's altered by AI - 70% her and 30% altered, apparently this is YT's recommended ideal. Afterwards I felt weirdly upset about it, as I've seen other content creators' thumbnails altered in this way. It's like your own image and design isn't good enough, it needs to be altered by AI to make it more attractive. Gives me a very bad feeling about the way things are going. So yes OP I'm sorry this happened. I think all you can do is try to get better at having calm conversations about these difficult issues, and encourage your DH to do similarly, or else some other bigger topic may arise in future and be much harder to deal with.

If your feelings are this strong you should have left the tattoo shop there and then, lost the slot you paid for and gone away and had a proper discussion about it. Not let him have it permanently put onto his body and then you fester and seethe about it afterwards.

Yup.

"Working alongside AI" is not the same thing as throwing an artist's work into it and churning out a horrendous edit that the original artist is unhappy with. That's such an insult to you and your work.

It takes away everything special about it being made by you, for one thing, and disregards artists and creatives across the board whose livelihoods are being slain by AI.

It's the ignorance of it that gets me - he's married to an artist FFS - he seems completely oblivious.

I really feel for you and completely can understand why you're so upset. The people saying that you need to develop a thick skin are forgetting this is your husband, not an unknown client at work. I don't know what the solution is, just wanted to say I empathise and would probably feel the same way.

Please don't quit your degree. Again, I understand how you feel but don't let it squash your personal love of illustration. Try and learn more about AI if you can and don't write off using it in some ways professionally. I work with designers and creatives and they are embracing some aspects to help them but it doesn't take away their personal style and creativity. They are still completely individual and I can see that as a client.

But you're completely reasonable to feel like you do about AI, particularly in your personal art and illustration. Try and have a calm conversation with your husband and clear the air because otherwise this might fester. He's been a total idiot but if he's otherwise great, you'll be able to work past it together and with forgiveness

I can understand your hurt feelings about the extent he changed your design, but I think you just have to accept he decided it wasn’t quite what he wanted.

What is unacceptable is that he ran your design through AI after you had explicitly asked him not to and he agreed he wouldn’t. I don’t see how that is anything other him believing what he wants overrides what you want and that his word is worthless.

some might say it’s just a tattoo. In my experience people who casually lie about just this or just that are likely to lie about the big stuff too. It’s their go to response.

It sounds like you and your dh disagree about the usefulness of AI - you are 100% against it and won't use it ever, he is happy to use it. It's normal in a marriage to have different views and perspectives and to disagree. The real question is how do you approach those? It sounds like up until his point you have both used avoidance. However the marriage can be enhanced by actually working through disagreements because then each of you will feel more free to be fully yourselves rather than having to mute parts of yourself that are different to each other. I think a full and open minded discussion is needed where you accept that how your dh sees the world is just as valid as how you see it and take it from there.

YANBU to be upset, but he was right to go with the design he wanted for his own body. His tattoo was for himself and he has to live with it forever, so the issues about AI in the creative industry didnt need to impact his tattoo. Very lazy of the tattoo artist to just use AI rather than redesign it themselves

AI is destroying the art world and extremely damaging to artists. It's a threat to human creativity on a large scale. I think it was really disrespectful of your husband to do this and I would be livid in your position, too. He knew your feelings on it, which makes it worse.

I don't know how you repair this, especially as he's already got the tattoo, but I think you're entirely reasonable to feel how you do. This kind of casual AI use is really unethical and I'm astonished that your husband isn't more supportive of you as an artist.

Does he understand what AI is doing to artists and people in your profession? Perhaps he needs a bit of a wake up call and education on the topic.

I understood what you meant about it putting you off your degree.

I think you are very right to be annoyed. Casual AI use is an insult to most people's skills, both everyday skills and talent based skills. It's definitely a dumbing down and the fact that so many are lapping it up horrifies me.

I can see certain aspects of AI being useful, I would call it Technical AI use, where a skilled operator can use a specialist AI tool to work on something that would be incredibly difficult or maybe even impossible to achieve without it.

In this case AI just isn't needed, and your husband's choice to go down that path instead of trusting your skill just says he doesn't think your talents are valuable enough.

I understand your frustration.

But to succeed with your art you will need to find a way to make peace with AI existing (and the reality that any artwork you put on line eg to sell may get scraped into AI generators) …

I can understand you being upset, but your reaction seems very extreme. If the biggest issue now, reading your post above, is that it has your name in, then see if he can have that covered or changed into something else or amended somehow. But, however much you dislike AI, it’s his body. Perhaps he didn’t mention it to you because he was afraid of your extreme reaction?

I also think you a) need to work on reducing your hate of AI into calmer dislike; and b) toughen up a bit. My friend has been an illustrator for years and there’s no way she’d have made it without a thick skin.

what’s the point in the degree when AI is taking over so much in the art world and even my own husband opted for AI over human created art

I appreciate you're upset but this sounds like a very childish argument. He asked you to design his tattoo but made some changes using AI. Whilst I don't really like the growing prevalence of AI your response to something so minor seems so excessive.

With kindness a tattoo is for life you need it to be 1000% right
why would you have tattoo your not happy with just do your partner didn’t kick off

he fined tuned your work
the industry your hoping to go into you need to accept and work along side AI not fight against it
like it or not AI is a massive part of the future pointless sulking and pushing back against it

I'm not a fan of AI, but quitting your uni course is a ridiculous over reaction.

You're so angry with him because he got a tattoo of your name with a design and it's not exactly the design you wanted, that you're considering quitting your degree in illustration?

This sounds like quite a first world problem.

It is bad enough that he didn't share his true thoughts with you on the design and ask for you to make the changes that he wanted, but to feed your work into an AI generator is such a betrayal.

I'm a writer and the thought of someone putting my words into a generator, especially if they knew how I felt, makes me feel ill. We put so much of ourselves into our art, it should be respected.