Ask HN: Why do we celebrate AI-Copilots but reject AI–Generated art?

That's not the generalization that I would make of HN sentiment.

But one generalization I'll assert is that there seems to be a very strong undercurrent of self-interest, often to the point of cheating. It's not universal, but it might be over 50%. The field has been selecting for, and refining for, people who seek big paychecks, and train for the BS rituals (e.g., FAANG interviews, resume-driven-development, metrics, Agile reactive theatre, growth scam startups).

How are all those people going to think about tools that might give them an edge in their operating mode. Would they be thinking about quality, maintainability, security, team, company goals, or ethics.

I've used AI art a lot for tabletop RPGs. The level of actual creative control isn't great, even for what should be an easy case of one character in profile against a blank background. Even if you know how to use it well you're wrestling the systems involved to try and produce consistent output ot anything unusual. And that's fine for Orc #3 or Elf Lord Soandso, which are only going to be featured for fifteen minutes at a time and in contexts where you can crop out bad details or use low-effort color grading to get a unified tone.

But for a graphic novel? What? I can't imagine giving up that level of creative control, even as someone who sucks at actual drawing. You'll never be able to get the kind of framing, poses, and structuring you want, doubly so the second you want to include anything remotely original. It's about the absolute worst case for actually using these generation tools.

However, AI image generation is immensely helpful when I want to do a painting. Before I would find photos I liked and stitch them together, or try to imagine things. Now I can get an image much closer to reference.

With code, my feeling is that we have to write way too much of it right now to express what we want. I can write a small bit of text to the LLM and it will fill out 75%+ of the code over multiple files, which I then just need to shape. So much is structure that needs repeating in variations. I don't have an answer but it seems like there's something else missing from our tools and LLMs are providing a bad imitation of what it should be.

The entire framing of this question, as posed, is transparently self-serving as a justification to seek validation for a process which, fundamentally, contradicts the purpose and definitions of art.

Code is a functional set of orders to a machine, nothing more. Nobody is buying paperbacks of source code to read on an airplane, correct? It’s refreshing to have this opportunity to confront these absolutely infuriating equivocations which have momentum in the present day.

There’s a reason the term “AI slop” is floating around with such frequency. I am an artist and a musician and a writer. You are not a part of our “we” buddy. Sorry not sorry.