Debate: Did a harsh critique on my AI art style actually make me better?
I posted some AI-generated portraits on a feedback forum last month and got told they all looked 'too smooth and plastic.' At first I was annoyed, but then I started looking closer at real photos and found they had noise, texture, and rough edges everywhere. Now I'm deliberately adding grain and imperfections to my outputs, making them look more like oil paintings than polished renders. The weird part is some people prefer my old style and say the new stuff looks messy. So which side wins - do you aim for realism with all its flaws, or stick with that clean uncanny valley look that some folks actually like? Has anyone else here changed their whole approach after one piece of feedback they almost ignored?