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

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11–20 of 71 posts

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

#11
Most programmers want to get some final output, they want the application or game rather than some beautiful code.

Most artists want to create beautiful art, it's a form of self expression. Creating art just for outputs sake without adding love seems cold and capitalistic.

So AI enhances and delivers what programmers want, and diminishes what artists want.

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

#12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a relatively small but extremely loud contingent of people that have meltdowns over AI-generated images and video. That's not my experience at all . Hacker News is indeed an echo chamber, but sometimes things escape, and discussion of how much people hate AI "art" is becoming increasingly common among my non-tech friends. The earliest example most people point to is the Christmas Coca-Cola commercial.

Do people really hate it, or is it bandwagoning? When OpenAI added image generation to GPT-4o, the "ghiblification" trend took off and most people seemed to enjoy it for memes and jokes. Furthermore I've never really encountered people IRL who hate AI art. The vast majority seem to be neutral towards it.

All of the two-dozen-or-so people I know closely hate AI art - hate. Not as a tool, e.g. for making images to go with your DnD campaign or whatever - that's great - but rather as replacements for human art. E.g. as blog post images, movie posters, images uploaded to art hubs, etc. They also mostly hate the way it usually looks.

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

#16
post #13

Artists correctly realized the threat to their future economic viability and made up reasons it was morally bad. Programmers are currently stuck in an earlier stage, insistent that it can never replace them because [various things].

Destroying a profession without a plan to help those displaced is morally bad. It's also inevitable. The most obvious mistake of everybody on both sides of AI arguments is denying the fact that something can be used for both good and bad, will have devastating effects and yet is an advancement that must happen, etc. This isn't cognitive dissonance - it's reality.

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

#17
The point of most AI-generated videos is as an attention sink. They're uploaded to get you to spend 30 or 45 minutes watching, and they're typically a mishmash of "points" loosely related to the title of the video. They are often very low-content, and do lots of "before we get to the point, let's backtrack over the history of Three's Company..." and then you get a rehash of the whole Wikipedia article on the topic with zooming still photos.

The style, when it is so obvious, becomes indexed in my mind with low-quality waste-of-time videos.

I blame the tool users, not the tool. The people sloshing these things up onto YouTube are deliberately flinging enough crap at the wall to get clicks. Imagine if they put some oomph into it. Focus on the topic, emphasize main points instead of having a monotonous litany that just sounds like facts strung together without logical connection. Have a point. Thesis, summary, argument, elaboration, summary, map to the thesis, conclusion... Or, if it's fiction, give me three act structure, or seven-point plots.

Otherwise, I'll continue to recognize, and discard what are literally garbage videos, generated by the thousands, to waste our time.

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

#19
I'm not sure we can be certain everyone has that view. I get the impression many of the people who vilify art generators are also against coding copilots.

> I reflexively told my wife, “That’s AI—skip it.”

> Yet I’m using AI-created illustrations for my graphic novel

Aren't you worried people will skip your graphic novel?

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

#20
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people really hate it, or is it bandwagoning? When OpenAI added image generation to GPT-4o, the "ghiblification" trend took off and most people seemed to enjoy it for memes and jokes. Furthermore I've never really encountered people IRL who hate AI art. The vast majority seem to be neutral towards it.

All of the two-dozen-or-so people I know closely hate AI art - hate . Not as a tool, e.g. for making images to go with your DnD campaign or whatever - that's great - but rather as replacements for human art. E.g. as blog post images, movie posters, images uploaded to art hubs, etc. They also mostly hate the way it usually looks.

Wouldn't a human normally make the D&D characters though?

Also, do they hate all AI art, or just art where they can tell because it looks like AI art?

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