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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.
Most likely, good AI art doesn't get called out because no one notices. But there is a lot of bad AI art out there, and it has a certain stink to it.
But it's not just AI art. Any time a visual style gains too much popularity, it starts to get shit on, especially if untalented people lean on it to produce cheap content. For example, the "Corporate Memphis" and "Cal Arts" styles of drawing have also produced a lot of ire (among those who recognize them). Once you notice, you notice, and you start to hate it.
AI art can be done well, but it still requires a human touch. If you just enter a prompt, then 99% of the time the resulting image is going to suck. Source: I use it all the time and get crappy images.
ai art is easy to identify: it's something no one would actually bother to draw
That's perhaps not the pithy gotcha you think it is. Lots of things that humans do actually bother to draw are disgusting, revolting and/or morally abhorrent. It's telling that one group that feels particularly threatened by AI art is artists doing furry commissions. No one can tell me that human culture is enriched by a drawing of the rabbit from Zootopia being subjected to a gangbang.
Why can’t it be? (SFW, but loud)
Memes are still human culture, even if it’s sourced from pornography featuring a hilariously overexaggerated orgasm scream. We would as a species be worse off if that didn’t exist, in my opinion.
This complaint about it not being “cultural” kind of sounds like how people launder “natural” to mean “things humans didn’t do”, even though human beings are by definition part of nature so by extension everything they do is “natural”.
It’s like pretending “stop liking what I don’t like” is a valid moral claim in a vacuum.
I think you're misunderstanding the point I'm making. I'm not saying "disgusting fetish art isn't part of human culture": of course it is. I said that human culture isn't enriched by this content. It isn't a net-positive contribution to human culture: it's one of those parts of human culture that we are (or should be) profoundly ashamed of, like child abuse, drug addiction, or pizza with peas and mayonnaise.
I am 100% willing to plant my flag in the earth and say that human culture is worse off as a result of the existence of creepy fetish art, child porn, depraved erotica in the tradition of de Sade etc. Not calling for it to be banned or censored (except for child porn involving literal children, which is already illegal per age of consent legislation), just saying that it makes our culture worse. All things being equal, a culture or subculture which celebrates disgusting fetish art is worse than a culture which doesn't.
As someone who recently came to the same realization, but still hasn't fully come to terms with giving up a fairly enjoyable and rewarding hobby, I'm crossing my fingers for a high-quality debate either here or under @Primaprimaprima's potential post.
What's the hobby? Drawing fetish art?
I'd say "producing fetish media" to be as broad as possible. Mostly hiring people to draw and write stuff, and discussing and developing project ideas with other people. Wasn't really looking to make the thread about myself.
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