I truly, deeply despise AI Art
I think what truly offends me the most about AI Art is how it takes something that is supposed to be incredibly meritocratic and turns it, essentially, into fast food consumerist garbage. It is the reduction of one of the truly special and awe-inspiring aspects of humanity into what is essentially pure trash.
What is the point of AI Art? What problem does it solve? So far, the only thing it appears to do is let grifters on Instagram trick people into believing they are incredible artists (while using actual artists when prompting the AI for images), and eventually directly threaten the livelihoods of artists and destroy the very idea of art as a career. No, prole, you do not get to enjoy making a living in Capitalism, now writhe like a worm under the boot of big tech.
All that for... what, making a fun toy for people to play with?
Let me be perfectly clear: AI Art is an affront to humanity. I am not saying this just as an artist who wanted to make a living off of his work - I've already accepted that careers and jobs aren't static.
No, there's something much more destructive going on here, something that makes me deeply uncomfortable about it. I genuinely believe we're on the verge of permanently losing a fundamental part of what it means to be human, here. Consider just for a second all of the infinite complexities that go into a piece of art, like how the artist has studied, their upbringing, their own personal experiences and circumstances that caused them to develop their skills in a particular way. All these things combined are result into a truly unique expression of individuality that still allows us to connect to others through it. In a way, you are sharing a truly intimate act when you show someone your art.
It's beautiful, isn't it? Too bad, because all that complexity and individuality is now going to be bulldozed and replaced by a significantly simpler dozen or so words you can type in a text box.
Consider the implications for a moment. There will come a point when you see an incredible digital painting that would've taken an artist an entire lifetime of drawing to achieve, and you simply won't give a shit. And I don't mean in the usual way that you look at an amazing piece of art and then move on with your life - no. You're not going to give a shit because you won't even consider if it was made by a human.
People will stop thinking incredible art can be attributed to humans as a default. Why would you? After all, we are going to be flooded with an endless torrent of images that are completely meaningless to everyone except the prompter himself. Sharing your "art" will become the equivalent of talking about your dreams with others.
All of this without mentioning the fact that painting as a career is destined to, for the first time in history, be well and truly eliminated. AI tech didn't come for the menial labor first as we predicted, nor the blue collar jobs that were meant to come after that. No, it went straight for the jugular of creatives. Soon, millions of artists will find themselves unemployable as their skills will become, if not utterly useless, rarely sought after. Why would a large entertainment company pay a real human being when MidJourney can create professional-grade concept art or illustrations in 5 seconds?
It's legitimately one of the most disturbing inventions that has ever been created. My doomerism towards humanity always had a sense of irony to it, but AI Art has removed that entirely.
Frank Herbert was fucking right, we need a Butlerian Jihad and we need it now.
How is it not meritocratic? You practice, you get better. No two ways around it.
"This art is better than THAT art! Its objectively better because the artist was a higher level!"
I never said you should compare your art with others' art in that way. You practice art and get better at it as a method of personal growth.
The word "meritocratic" implies that there is a tangible reward for those of the highest skill. That those with more skill will rise higher in an institution. Being able to express a learned skill that you've practiced is not meritocracy
Is the knowledge that you've mastered an incredibly difficult skill and have the ability to paint and draw beautiful pictures not a tangible reward?
No, knowledge is, in fact, intangible by definition.
Your art is a manifestation of that knowledge, though, so it is tangible in that sense.
No, you've looped your argument back on itself. Your argument is now that your art leads to a tangible reward in the form of your art. You've created a recursive loop, and are have strayed so far away from "art is a meritocracy" that you're arguing what the word "tangible" means. Being this much of a pedant is painful, please just take the L
Yes? This was always my position lol. If you do art you get better at art and are rewarded with better art. Unless you're one of those people that thinks a toddler's scribbles are just as meaningful as a Caravaggio. In which case, we simply fundamentally disagree about art and can end the conversation right here.
I didn't argue what the word tangible means at all, I just said that art is a tangible manifestation of your ability to create art, unless you're willing to argue that that's not the case? It's ultimately irrelevant because you're getting hung up on a misinterpretation of what I meant when I said art is meritocratic.
No one's arguing against becoming more skilled at something leads to self-satisfaction in that progression.
the argument is calling this "meritocracy", because that's not what that word means. When I say that a "meritocracy" would lead to tangible rewards for better artists, with the BEST rewards for the BEST artists. I'm talking about things like: patronages, high sales prices, sinecures, fellowships, hell I'll even take critical acclaim as a tangible result of meritocracy. But obviously, provably this isn't the case in the art world. THIS is what people are having a problem with when you say the word "meritocracy" because its flatly, provably wrong. It's fine to have used meritocracy wrong in the first place, i don't know why you're trying to die on this hill to defend your mistaken word choice.
Also, if your original argument, as you claim, is that getting better at art leads to self-satisfaction, I fail to see how AI-generated art ruins this. If the reward of practicing your art is entirely within your own mind, then I'm not sure how this would be ruined by any developments in art one way or another. This is like arguing that your marriage is ruined by letting those gays get married.
Because the word choice is not mistaken. Meritocratic implies that your hard work results in personal success. In that sense, it's not hard to understand that I clearly meant more that if you suck at drawing dogs, you will get better at it after you draw 1000 dogs and you can be happy about that, but that's a little bit more wordy than simply saying "meritocratic".
If you honestly think that AI Art won't significantly reduce the amount of people that might be interested in learning how to draw, I don't know what to tell you except that you're naive.
:spongebob-party: