AI Art Debate

Using AI makes you an artist about as much as commissioning someone else to make art for you does. Sure, you provided the description of what needed to be done, and likely gave some input along the way, but the real work was done by someone else. There are faster iteration times with AI, but you are still not the one making the art. That is what differentiates generative models from other kinds of tools.

Whenever I see defences of AI "art" people very often reduce the arguments to these analogies of using tools, but it's ineffective. Whether you use MS Paint, Photoshop, pencil, watercolor etc. That all requires skill, practice, and is this great intersection of intent and ability. It's authentic. Generating media with AI requires no skill, no intent, and very minimal labor. It is an approximation of the words you typed in and reduces you to a commissioner. You created

GenAI is not capable of making art. Self expression is not only inherent in art, it’s essential. What AI does is make pretty pictures, but nothing more. It’s not a tool for making art because it removes the means for artistic expression. It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation.

AI still needs the text prompt to know what to generate. Hence the human who provides the prompt is still the artist, just like a photographer finds an aesthetically interesting spot to take the image with their camera. Cameras make images, humans using cameras make art. Granted, this is not quite 1-1 with AI art, but still the idea is the same. If anything the flood of AI images will only require artists to go beyond what is possible with these text->image kinds of things, of which there is

Certainly not. It's just a tool. Art is beyond generating digital images.

AI doesn't make art, it makes images - it's like a camera this way. Art is in the composition, the message and the aesthetic of the one using the tool to create an image.

I respectfully disagree. let's think from a first principle point of view, what is the definition of art in the first place? But whatever the answer is, art is just a way of structuring/representing a mix of multiple arts into one single art, and it's not limited to painting arts. historically people have been taking inspiration from nature, other people, the environment, and more. That's what an AI does as well, but with much more creativity than a human.

Well, I'm looking at AI as an artist. The first notable thing I see is that I can pick out where all the refeferences come from and I find that boring. They are often not adapted to each other, there are obvious scale discrepancies and poor to little perspective. Cohesiveness is missing. Also by the arguments that I have seen, there is a very poor understanding of how artists work and develop their art. Artists transform materials, not existing art. Some artists may copy others but developi

Generative AI can copy the style, if they's all you have as an artist, then it's barely art TBH. AI can't copy the thinking / motivation / juxtapositions behind the art.

There's a lot more to AI art generation than "putting some prompts into an image generator". Sure, putting some prompts into a generator _also_ counts as "art" in the same manner as "child scribbles doodles on paper" counts as art. But you're dismissing an entire field of aspiring artists without having even a basic understanding of what AI artists do to achieve the images they publish. Go watch some videos of decent AI art workflows and then come back.