Hey, thank you so much for your contribution to this discussion. You presented me a really challenging thought and I have appreciated grappling with it for a few days. I think you’ve really shifted some bits of my perspective, and I think I understand now.

I think there’s an ambiguity in my initial post here, and I wanted to check which of the following is the thing you read from it:

• Generative AI art is inherently limited in these ways, even in the hands of skilled artists or those with technical expertise with it; or,
• Generative AI art is inherently limited in these ways, because it will be ultimately used by souless executives who don’t respect or understand art.

I’m not sure I understand your overall point here. It sounds like you’re saying that the perceived emotional connections in art are simply the result of the viewer projecting emotions onto the piece, is that correct?

You make a compelling and very interesting point here. I’m still l considering it, because it’s provoked a lot of thought for me. Once I feel like I can definitely make an argument against or in favor of your point, I’ll get back to you.

Well done, I love intelligent discussions like this so much, I really missed them when my online communities started decaying. The pursuit of truth is so much fun!

The university I went to had an unusually large art department for the state it was in, most likely because due to a ridiculous chain of events and it’s unique history, it didn’t have any sports teams at all.

I spent a lot of time there, because I had (and made) a lot of friends with the art students and enjoyed the company of weird, creative people. It was fun and beautiful and had a profound effect on how I look at art, craft and the people who make it.

I mention this because I totally disagree with you on the subject of photography. It’s incredibly intentional in an entirely distinct but fundamentally related way, since you lack control over so many aspects of it- the things you can choose become all the more significant, personal and meaningful. I remember people comparing generative art and photography and it’s really… Aggravating, honestly.

The photography student I knew did a whole project as part of her final year that was a display of nude figures that did a lot of work with background, lighting, dramatic shadow and use of color, angle and deeply considered compositions. It’s a lot of work!

I don’t mean here to imply you’re disparaging photography in any way, or that you don’t know enough about it. I can’t know that, so I’m just sharing my feelings about the subject and art form.

A lot of generative art has very similar lighting and positioning because it’s drawing on stock photographs which have a very standardized format. I think there’s a lot of different between that and the work someone who does photography as an art has to consider. Many of the people using generative art as tools lack the background skills that would allow them to use them properly as tools. Without that, it’s hard to identify what makes a piece of visual art not work, or what needs to be changed to convey a mood or idea.

In an ideal world, there would be no concern for loss of employment because no one would have to work to live. In that world, these tools would be a wonderful addition to the panoply of artistic implements modern artists enjoy.

Of course! I didn’t mean to suggest you are arguing about the soul thing. I’m sorry if that’s the impression I created, since you’ve been very clearly arguing on a very different tract that I firmly agree with.

I did close my post by saying capitalism is responsible for the problems, so I think we’re on the same page about why it’s unethical to engage with AI art.

I am interested in engaging in a discourse not about that (I am very firmly against the proliferation of AI because of the many and varied bad social implications), but I am interested in working on building better arguments against it.

I have seen multiple people across the web making the argument that AI art is bad not just because of the fact that it will put artists out of work, but because the product is, itself, lacking in some vital and unnameable human spark or soul. Which is a bad argument, since it means the argument becomes about esoteric philosophy and not the practical argument that if we do nothing art stops being professionally viable, killing many people and also crushing something beautiful and wonderful about life forever.

Rich people ruin everything, is what I want the argument to be.

So I’m really glad you’re making that argument! Thanks, honestly, it’s great to see it!

The question about if AI art is art often fixates on some weird details that I either don’t care about or I think are based on fallacious reasoning. Like, I don’t like AI art as a concept and I think it’s going to often be bad art (I’ll get into that later), but some of the arguments I see are centered in this strangely essentialist idea that AI art is worse because of an inherent lack of humanity as a central and undifferentiated concept. That it lacks an essential spark that makes it into art. I’m a materialist, I think it’s totally possible for a completely inhuman machine to make something deeply stirring and beautiful- the current trends are unlikely to reliably do that, but I don’t think there’s something magic about humans that means they have a monopoly on beauty, creativity or art.

However, I think a lot of AI art is going to end up being bad. This is especially true of corporate art, and less so for individuals (especially those who already have an art background). Part of the problem is that AI art will always lack the intense level of intentionality that human-made art has, simply by the way it’s currently constructed. A probabilistic algorithm that’s correlating words to shapes will always lack the kind of intention in small detail that a human artist making the same piece has, because there’s no reason for the small details other than either probabilistic weight or random element. I can look at a painting someone made and ask them why they picked the colors they did. I can ask why they chose the lighting, the angle, the individual elements. I can ask them why they decided to use certain techniques and not others, I can ask them about movements that they were trying to draw inspiration from or emotions they were trying to communicate.

The reasons are personal and build on the beauty of art as a tool for communication in a deep, emotional and intimate way. A piece of AI art using the current technology can’t have that, not because of some essential nature, but just because of how it works. The lighting exists as it does because it is the most common way to light things with that prompt. The colors are the most likely colors for the prompt. The facial expressions are the most common ones for that prompt. The prompt is the only thing that really derives from human intention, the only thing you can really ask about, because asking, “Hey, why did you make the shoes in this blue? Is it about the modern movement towards dull, uninteresting colors in interior decoration, because they contrast a lot with the way the rest of the scene is set up,” will only ever give you the fact that the algorithm chose that.

Sure, you can make the prompts more and more detailed to pack more and more intention in there, but there are small, individual elements of visual art that you can’t dictate by writing even to a human artist. The intentionality lost means a loss of the emotional connection. It means that instead of someone speaking to you, the only thing you can reliably read from AI art is what you are like. It’s only what you think.

I’m not a visual artist, but I am a writer, and I have similar problems with LLMs as writing tools because of it. When I do proper writing, I put so much effort and focus into individual word choices. The way I phrase things transforms the meaning and impact of sentences, the same information can be conveyed so many ways to completely different focus and intended mood.

A LLM prompt can’t convey that level of intentionality, because if it did, you would just be writing it directly.

I don’t think this makes AI art (or AI writing) inherently immoral, but I do think it means it’s often going to be worse as an effective tool of deep, emotional connection.

I think AI art/writing is bad because of capitalism, which isn’t an inherent factor. If we lived in fully-automated gay luxury space communism, I would have already spent years training an LLM as a next-generation oracle for tabletop-roleplaying games I like. They’re great for things like that, but alas, giving them money is potentially funding the recession of arts as a profession.

It’s ultimately about the fact that no one in their life respects them. Do you really not remember being treated that way? Being disrespected on every basic level because of who you are? Don’t you remember how much it fucking grated on your nerves?

I grew up in the deep south, and it affected me deeply that everyone around me liked to use gay as a synonym for stupid, bad and especially defective. I remember how I just couldn’t take it anymore, to the point that I flipped out at one point in highschool and literally got up screaming in a class and flipped a table.

The constant, inescapable pressure is unbearable. It drives you nuts, to the extent that if it shows up when you think you’re around people who are cool with stuff it stings especially bad.

Ask yourself what matters to you more, honestly, do you care more about other queer people or you own feelings, because that’s what you’re asking other people to do as well. The pronouns thing isn’t a big deal for you, but hell, everyone’s got baggage. Everyone’s got things that set them off because of some fucked up shit in their past.

Because it’s kind of sickening to see a fellow queer person relishing seeing other queer people get the boot. I won’t lie, it makes me so angry and so sad.

Because no matter how much I may be annoyed by some sections of online queer spaces (I’ve been on Tumblr for a fucking decade and God I’m tired of it), I don’t want them to suffer. I want them to be okay, and I don’t think you actually want them to suffer either.

I think you’re angry and you feel rejected by people who should be understanding. We’re all freaks and weirdos to the outside world, we’re all used to being policed to the extent that we can barely breathe. Seeing it on the inside of the community must be really frustrating and blazingly painful. I’m sorry that this happened to you, I really am.

But I do want you to consider who you want to be, and what you want to care about here. I see someone spiralling and I want to let you know that it’s not to late to take a moment and reflect on where you want things to go.