The bit I don't get about AI art is that what I chase after in my own work is the *doing*.
Finding a -flow- where I can kind of see a thing in my head, start working towards it, and it changes continuously as I tell myself a narrative behind what I'm making.
AI art is like instead of going out for an evening with friends, talking, and a great meal followed by dessert then lazing about in a park swearing at bats - you press a button and suddenly you're so full you could burst and have rabies.
@NanoRaptor YOOO I WAS JUST WRITING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS THAT I WON'T FINISH!
i'll add that it's also the sharing in the doing! robots can play card games, scale mountains, and bake potato knishes, but people do these things themselves because they want to and they connect over that shared interest and appreciation for the other person's passion.
the title of the article if i ever finish it will be "art is a hobby." by calling it a hobby i don't mean to devalue it—quite the opposite! capitalism indoctrinates people to value "productivity" over actually living, but in truth humans do things because they want to. in all the bustle of optimizing and surviving and being made to do so much out of fear instead of joy, it's possible to lose sight of that.
@NanoRaptor ok sorry to spam but i have more to say.
i think this is the true reason "ai art" is bad (other than environmental impact and its only real use-case being disinformation and it "taking jobs" and profiting off our labor without consent or compensation). not everybody cares about the art hobby, and in theory, that's fine. it's even fine if they only care about the completion of the task. but they flood our spaces with fake media that had no creator to connect with. before, we (artists and art appreciators) could take it for granted that if you see a painting you can be impressed and appreciate that someone painted it. we barely had to organize communities like most other hobbies do—art was obvious and could passively exist after the creator left to go somewhere else.
Nanoraptor
Maypop the Dragon