How an AI Art Comic about Fans Changed the Reddit Webcomics Community



My comment:
Of all the thoughts I seen people expressing against artificially generated images like this, there's two I don't see as often. A pithy one and a deeper one that gets at the heart of something that truly bothers me on the subject.

Pithy:
Making ai "art" and calling yourself an artist because well, you made the prompt? Is like calling yourself a chef for ordering at a restaurant.

More serious:
Making images in this way removes a lot of the intentionality and choice from art. Even when I sketch a crappy little furry without a background, I'm deciding absolutely everything about the image. Every aspect that makes it into the art piece is there for a reason, even if the reason is "I'm giving them a red shirt because I like red".
And the computer doesn't do that. CAN'T do that. It doesn't have intentionality, it only has statistics. This both prevents the images from having meaning, atrophies the supposed "artist's" ability to make these decisions(1), and hobbles the creation of new ideas outside of the existing dataset. The very way the machines WORK prevents it from coming up with new coherent ideas. It can sometimes mutate existing ideas into something new by accidentally combining things? But it can't think up something its never been fed.

(1) Like any other aspect of life it's a skill, which takes practice, and there've been studies demonstrating that use of artificial generation like chat GPT can hamper decision-making and analysis abilities in its users.

Our Least Popular Pearl in our Least Popular Topcoat Over our Least Popular Base



I'm not really a car guy, but every once in a while a car video comes over my recs and I'm glad I clicked on it.

Part Two: Thomas Kinkade: the Evil-est Painter | BEHIND THE BASTARDS



My comment:
These episodes unlocked a memory I have of a mall I used to live near and visit, and walking past a gallery space selling what I think was this guy's work. It was on my usual route out of the mall so I'd walk past it a lot. I think I only ever went in once, briefly looked at the art, and left again.