I think there’s been this huge transition over the past 50 years from a sort of systemic-humanistic view of society and a purely sort of maximalist-efficient view.
I think some people still have this view but like art is a process created by institutions and tastemakers in places like New York City and Hollywood. The fact that there’s a narratives that a creation exists in a node of a graph of your complex model of existence yoU hold in your head in time, in space, An artifact with a story.
And this transitions to this idea that the best art is the one that combines pixels on a screen in the formation that’s most stimulating certain nerves in the back of your eyeballs.
This is something that began long before AI art. Look at the popularity of Thomas Kinkade - The Master of Light! Many AI generated images, when not refined down, now have that same sort of aesthetic. I have found that Googles Nano Banana generation is particularly susceptible to generating that cozy glow kind of style than many gravitate to.
It is art stripped of the humanities. Pleasant, non threatening, technically very capable and totally disposable. The Big Mac of creativity.
I agree that when asked to generate images/poems, AI defaults to styles most people prefer. OP calls this bad art, even if generated by a human. But can AI also generate images/poems that are the opposite (no "cozy glow" style, etc.) if asked to do so? (Although OP article is from '24, so capabilities may have changed.)
The author’s primary claim seems to be that AI art defaults to what most people like (‘accessible’, or aesthetically pleasing, etc.), which he considers to be bad even if created by a human. However, I did not notice if he checked whether AI could generate images/poems that weren’t so accessible/aesthetically pleasing, by asking the AI to do that? It seems like a huge part of his claims about AI generating art that is similar to bad human art assume that accessible/aesthetically pleasing art is all that AI can do and it can’t do otherwise if instructed to do so.
Otherwise, I guess the argument would devolve to: AI defaults to generating art that humans prefer (‘bad’), but AI can also do far more as well when generating images/poems, if asked?
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 10.1 ms ] threadI think some people still have this view but like art is a process created by institutions and tastemakers in places like New York City and Hollywood. The fact that there’s a narratives that a creation exists in a node of a graph of your complex model of existence yoU hold in your head in time, in space, An artifact with a story.
And this transitions to this idea that the best art is the one that combines pixels on a screen in the formation that’s most stimulating certain nerves in the back of your eyeballs.
It’s a profound change.
It is art stripped of the humanities. Pleasant, non threatening, technically very capable and totally disposable. The Big Mac of creativity.
Otherwise, I guess the argument would devolve to: AI defaults to generating art that humans prefer (‘bad’), but AI can also do far more as well when generating images/poems, if asked?