site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1512 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 17, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What art style was discredited the most by the AI? I have just encountered the works of Guillem H. Pongiluppi when someone posted his Chapterhouse: Dune illustrations, and I can't tell if they are AI or not. Both my eye and free detectors scream they are, but he's been drawing in this hyper-realistic, full-effort, high-contrast style for a long time, and this is the style that a lot of diffusion models use when you tell them to draw something "realistic, highly detailed, trending on Artstation". Imagine wasting years mastering a style that diffusion models will learn from your work and devalue your whole portfolio.

Or is he cleverly doing AI-washing now? Why draw anything yourself, if you can tell a model to draw "like Guillem H. Pongiluppi" and then get angry when someone compares your work to "AI slop"?

/images/17843613116444316.webp

I was not aware of Pongiluppi's art until just now. It is not what I'm into at all but it is effective for a certain market or applications where you would want that kind of style. You're right that a lot of AI art generators create things that look like his style, but really that's more of a problem with the taste level of the entire internet that scraping every image then weighing the output (or whatever) leads to this sort of aesthetic too often. I constantly have to tell ai generators to stop making everything look so high contrast, so epic, so deviantart, so hollywood 2010s film poster bla bla bla...........

I don't think any art style is "discredited" by AI, in the same way that PS2 graphics didn't "discredit" Alex Colville's art from the 1960s that looks freakishly similar to PS2 graphics. The reproducability of a style has more to do with the models/technology than the artists, for example AI can much more easily create artwork in the style of Van Gogh or Monet than it can create a high quality vector graphic design in the style of, say, Herb Lubalin, but it doesn't really mean that the value of a Monet painting is now less than the value of any graphic designer's work.

Interesting. I think the AI effect comes from the lack of meaning permeating his pictures. The characters are posed dynamically but without purpose. Gargantuan objects loom randomly. All sorts of outlandish crap from our commercial trash-heap culture are juxtaposed in a way that brings out their banality. Subtextually it's undermining itself, presenting a sort of anti-meaning. It's funny that he's probably going for these effects deliberately, whereas it's more of an inherent byproduct for AI.

I refuse to believe that LinkedIn posts were ever anything but a weird kind of avant garde performance art, so I'm going to say LinkedIn posts.

"Here's what having my avant garde performance art being accused of AI usage taught me about B2B sales!"

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats