Create With AI ! question for CGTrader Team & Creators: What is the future of the marketplace with the new feature

Honestly, I have stopped caring.

It feels like we are in the endgame now.

Year after year, CGTrader's decisions are making things worse for creators. And to be honest, I can't really blame them since, with the development of AI and model generation, it is becoming harder for CGTrader to stay relevant, and the same is true for us, the creators.

I don't know about you guys, but I am fed up with CGTrader reducing the cut for each sale, selling our assets in bulk for pennies to probably be used for AI training, adding an AI-generated tool inside CGTrader to directly compete with our models....

I am also fed up with "customers" who would buy models for cheap and not honor the license attached to the model. So they would resell 3D-printed versions of my model, or they would just resell or share my model elsewhere for free. Good luck finding, reporting, and taking them down without needing to hire a lawyer. I had to stop pursuing "pirated" models since I would get my head full of greys in no time....

I hate those people from the deepest bottom of my heart.

And now with AI, it is just getting worse than ever. Something that took me days or weeks to make, AI can now create in a matter of minutes. Sure, the quality might still not be there, but give it time.... We already have pages full of low-effort AI-generated 3D models that also have their renders "enhanced" with AI, so you really don't have a good idea of what you are buying. And if you do buy, you probably won't be buying anything else from CGTrader, or other platforms, ever again....

The worst thing about those people is that they have the audacity to call themselves "artists." " AI artists" , "Prompt artists" ....

But I digress.

It was good while it lasted. I used to get so excited thinking about what I would make next, and even more excited when I would get a notification that something got sold. There were days when I would sell dozens of models in one day and get notification after notification after notification. It was glorious seeing your work pay off.

But it seems like those days are behind us (me).

I probably won't be uploading to CGTrader, or other sites, anymore. I don't really see the point in it. Sales are at the lowest point in years, and no matter what I upload, it will just be bought for cheap to be resold somewhere else or be used to train AI.

It is a shame, really....

I think their AI offer is very unprofitable for users. 5 free models now and it is not specified whether they are updated monthly or it is just 5 free generations and that's it. The same tripo gives 7-8 free ones monthly. And for ten dollars you can generate about 100 there.
As I understand it, AI goes into the same subscription as cheap models. That is, you can download either 25 generated models, or 25 products with normal topology that are in the subscription category.
This is a very strange and at first glance unsuccessful move, but we need to see what will happen in a few weeks or a month.
Maybe they did it just to get rid of AI garbage on sale. There is no point in buying someone else's generated work if you can generate your own.
I read somewhere that for one dollar that a CG trader receives from AI garbage, 90 dollars are from the sale of manual models. It would be beneficial for them to get rid of all these garbage dumps and the authors who create them now.
We need to look at the statistics in the near future.

I would like to add, this things are a disaster for the environment, with the amount of electricity and water that they require.
There is something that gives me hope though: this types of AI integration tend to go from "free to use" to paywalled, sooner or later. Especially if they have advanced functionality. The more they are used, the more it costs in computational power, meaning huge amounts of raw materials, hardware, infrastructure and energy. And someone has to pay the bill. This means that making and buying decent 3D models made with AI will become expensive. There will (maybe) be a free tier that allows to make cheap s*it but users will quickly realize that.
Last thing, the AI models that produce generative "art" have been trained by scraping content from the internet, without consent by creators, in most cases violating copyright. This is bad. On the other hand, in many countries you can't claim Copyright on the so called "Generative Art" that you generated. Nobody seems to realize the implications...