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Has anyone noticed how much vitriol there is towards AI-generated art? Over the past year it's slowly grown into something quite ferocious, though not quite ubiquitous. I'm starting to feel (almost) as if it's outside the overton window to admit to using or liking AI art. Like I said, it's not ubiquitous, but maybe it's getting there. Pretty much any thread I ever see that features AI art (outside of specialty groups devoted to AI interest) has many vocal detractors accusing AI art of being trash and stealing from real artists.
While my mind is not fully made up on the issue of whether AI art is "good", if you ask me, I wouldn't say that it's bad that AI learns from "stealing" from artists. Honestly, ask absolutely anyone who's learned anything creative: learning art is all about learning how to steal from people. I know it's not completely analogous, but I don't personally believe that it should be bad for AI to learn by stealing while it's okay for human artists to learn by stealing.
More than anything, I'm kinda surprised there's this strong sentiment, and willingness to call out AI art and its proponents as being some sort of evil in the world. Maybe it's mostly because people get off on being judgy these days, and believing they have some sort of moral high ground, and less that they actually care about artists? I'm not sure, but I would have thought the Butlerian Jihad would have started for something more severe than art.
To be very uncharitable, the same people that go into hysterics about AI artwork would be the ones celebrating en masse if AI suddenly took over all long-haul truckers jobs.
I think we're seeing a very odd case of twisted future shock, where the expectation that AI would suddenly come in an usher a gay communist utopia has proven to not be the case. Instead, we're seeing AI used as tools meant to augment skills and intelligence, rather than physical work, and the same people that thought their creative skills protected them from being replaced have discovered that their creative skills are easily replaceable.
I don't really have an issue with AI artwork, myself. I think it's neat.
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