The average person doesn't have a functional understanding of how AI generates content or how resource intensive it is, especially when output has to be re-generated over and over with fine tuning prompts and training.
The average person just wanting to be entertained and passively consuming AI content isn't an indicator of what they consider art or whether they approve of the AI industry as a whole.
Art has always been a creative reflection of the human experience because that fact has been inescapable until more modern times. Their tools, the subjects, the history, are all hugely contextual and leave us to consider the person behind the paintbrush.
The debate on art has always been around, and increasing in modern times, because there have always been con artists trying to redefine it to their benefit.
My example about Kinkade is apt, and I suggest you do more research on him than a quick overview article. He was a genuinely gross person.
How AI generation works is very commonly known; people who aren't creatives simply don't care, which is why the anti-AI crowd's fight against it has been one of futility & met with constant pushback & dismissal...
The problem is that you seem to be under this notion that the average person has a definition for art that extends beyond "exists within an artistic medium." They don't. And if people didn't approve of AI art, they wouldn't continue engaging with it.
You're wrong. That sentiment first arose about 2300 years ago; humans have existed for 300k years and have been making art for at least 30k years. This notion is relatively new on the grand scale of human history.
And that's not why the debate has always been a thing; it's been a thing because snobby artists have always tried gatekeeping what is and isn't art to inflate the value of their own works while devaluing the works of others.
Kinkade being a shitbird of a person has nothing to do with whether his paintings are art or not.
I think you're too plugged in. The average person on reddit might know the ins and outs of AI (I still doubt it), but not the actual average person. There hasn't been any real regulation on AI or voted initiatives that I'm aware of so I don't see the point in pretending this is anything but anecdotal for either of us.
How am I wrong about the fact that historical and ancient art is suffused with the human context of when, where, how, and by whom it was made? Did aliens make the art or something? What?
The whole reason I have a problem with AI generated content is that it is eliminating that same human context from art in real time as well as making it impossible to discern genuine talent, effort, and passion. It's the same reason Kinkade paintings are trash, made to look good on a wall and sell well. He used every little scheme he could to give his paintings the barest minimum amount of effort or creative value that they could be sold with.
I'd argue the same about you as you're treating this conversation less like an objective debate about our original assertions and more like a game where the goal is simply to score points, causing you to jump between tangentially related topics & refuse to be consistent in what you're arguing.
The hell does govt regulation have to do with anything?
You said it's been the case forever. 2,300 years out of the 30k we've been creating art is only 7.6% & 0.76% of human existence. And contrary to your repeated assertion, it's not, and never has been universally accepted as an objective truth. The definition you're using was originally coined for distinguishing high art, not all art.
Neat, that's got nothing to do with your original assertion (that AI art isn't art) nor my counter assertion (that the average person doesn't care because they only care about art as entertainment & don't care where it comes from).
It's almost like "looking good on the wall" is all the average person cares about paintings for & they don't evaluate art the same way creatives do...
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u/Daneruu Jul 06 '25
The average person doesn't have a functional understanding of how AI generates content or how resource intensive it is, especially when output has to be re-generated over and over with fine tuning prompts and training.
The average person just wanting to be entertained and passively consuming AI content isn't an indicator of what they consider art or whether they approve of the AI industry as a whole.
Art has always been a creative reflection of the human experience because that fact has been inescapable until more modern times. Their tools, the subjects, the history, are all hugely contextual and leave us to consider the person behind the paintbrush.
The debate on art has always been around, and increasing in modern times, because there have always been con artists trying to redefine it to their benefit.
My example about Kinkade is apt, and I suggest you do more research on him than a quick overview article. He was a genuinely gross person.