GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable

It will take a long time, but I think the ever growing usage of GenAI tools will ultimately make people desire human created works even more.

That said, there's a common thread in a lot of writing similar to this piece. Basically, it's some form of, "GenAI isn't art. GenAI creations lack a human element present in the creation process. GenAI creations cheapen the creative process in general due to the ease at which they can pop out new things."

I'm mixed on this. This is something we've always had to deal with as a species. This greatly simplies a lot of human history here, but consider:

- Our (long, long ago) ancestors had to paint on walls with their fingers. They had to make music by banging sticks together

- Paint brushes were invented. Musical instruments were invented. These things make it easier and quicker for people to _create_

- Mechanical machines made it easier to make garments and print books

- Digital machines made it even easier to write stories, or make music, or play music

The word processor alone made it ridiculously easy for highly evolved apes to start pounding on keyboards and outputting works of various lengths and quality.

Prior to the GenAI craze, there were music creation tools that contained multi-gigabyte sample packs. You could throw together random samples and make good sounding songs.

Photoshop and Illustrator made it exceedingly easy for artists to flex their creative muscles and get their ideas out there.

At the end of the day, these are all tools. And I think GenAI will ultimately be used in a similar way. It's a tool. Can it be used in a bad way? Sure. Just like PhotoShop. Just like Word.

Regarding what is and isn't art -- I don't think it's up to us to decide. And does it matter? History is full of ridiculous examples of things that might or might not be art.[0][1] Humans don't necessarily need to be involved in the creation process either.[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

I would really like an objective explanation of why this attitude "that the whole point of art is the process of making it" is anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form.

Surely the actual artifact itself has some value? And even if one supposes that a key part of the value is self-exploration (which I disagree with generally because that presupposes an excessive level of self-importance), then being able to iterate more easily by leveraging AI art can be a huge advantage for many artists.

This is not to say that actual fundamental skills like drawing ability etc. aren't valuable. And it will be hard to develop them if you rely entirely on AI, especially while learning. But I don't see how it is logically necessary at all to completely exclude AI.

To me, this is a rationalization for disliking AI because it displaces humans to some degree or another. I think that is a fair reaction, but the rationale is nonsense.

I predict that the number of people who start to resent AI will increase dramatically over the coming few decades. Especially if we can't improve the structure of society to be less centered around exploiting labor.

Edit: Retracting my original statement.

Yes indeed, it's the main source of nitrogen for fertilizer. Otherwise we'd be back to leaving a third of the fields empty to regenerate with clover or similar plants that deposit nitrogen, plus having lower yields in general.

It's not the AI that makes the art, but the person who tells the AI what to do. A painter friend of mine has gotten into generative AI lately, and the sometimes-pretty, sometimes-intimidating pictures she comes up with sure look like an artistic expression to me. She has a vision of something she wants to see, and she uses tools to bring that vision into reality, just like she does with paint; the new tools just give her new options.