This is a phase that will pass.
There will be (and already are) legitimate artists who leverage AI as a creative tool like any other medium/tool (Photoshop, cameras, paint brushes, etc). I respect them even if others immediately dismiss anything AI related.
In case you were being serious ;)
Clip art was created for specific purposes by humans, and continues to find use in those niches.
But that doesn't matter, because the game theory they outlined is directionally right. The cohort of people who hate AI art is relatively small. But the cohort of people who love it is even smaller. People can generally spot it, and most people are indifferent to it.
Having said that: I think it's also true that people are generally indifferent to any of the "casual" art in online writing and publications. It's overused and a crutch.
A hero image at the top of a post: good, can be great, do it, make sure it's not AI. But like, a random dinosaur giving a thumbs up in the middle of the post? Don't do that at all.
That's a weird intentional example to make: spam-adjacent marketing content needs a stock art hero image, but a random dinosaur randomly inserted into a random post shouldn't be done at all?
And in online communities, most often people just call it "AI slop" and express fatigue. It's very different form a brief period when people were excited by midjourney-generated images. I believe it just faded off just like any novelty.
Correcting your correction: a lot of people have terrible taste. It's not polite to say it, because it's condescending and presumptuous, but it's true nonetheless.
People with good taste will agree with TFA. Your Uncle who sends you cheesy postcards that make you groan; your grandma who watches reality TV; your coworker who always used to forward the whole company chain letters about poor Jessica who's 4 years old and dying of cancer; they will all clap enthusiastically at the GenAI T-rex. That's because they have bad taste and don't know better.
In other words, TFA is right. "Socially illiterate" is a very apt definition.
The language evolved "slop" for AI art. There's no corresponding new term for good AI art. Pretending it's a minority that hates it is transparent cope.
I also like to use AI as a sort of filter on pictures that I took. Make a photo look like a drawing, for example. It is also incredible for UI mockups and saves me a lot of work.
However, to understand their viewpoint you only need to think about what art originally meant: it is something with which the artist tries to convey something. It is - in is purest form - an expression of another person.
This is somewhat offset by "art" as a salaried job. But it's worth noting that this profession has generally been seen as a necessary evil to make ends meet.
Now AI art comes along and generally removes the humans expression from the equation. To the artist, this is like a complete perversion of what they consider core to their identity.
And artists have always been am incredibly loud minority - hence you hear their complaints a lot. Complaints which are understandable, but honestly are exaggerated. Esp. If you consider where AI will go from here over the next 10 years.
Edit: I think I misunderstood your intent, my original comment did raise this question. It happens that I'm sympathetic, but I thought the original post was overgeneralizing. I think people actually like generated images and they have their practical uses, they just can't take the place of art.
But it's absolutely lovely and heartwarming when my brother uses it to make environment art to go with a D&D campaign for his children.
It's hyper-polarized.
It turns into a long tirade about how AI has made the median person's life worse and how they associate generated images with that. It could also be a short tirade.
But the point is more that it is that way, its not important (for the purposes of choosing whether to use AI art in a thing you distribute) _why_ people feel this way though, just that they do.
So, while I could do incidental art for a project I am working on, AI is going to do better than I could. (I have uploaded sketches of mine though and had it improve it. Is that still shit of me?)
I once paid an artist friend $1K (or was it $2K?) to do a set of playing cards for an iPad game I was working on. It was during the Great Race-to-the-bottom era of iOS apps such that $0.99 or $1.99 was all I was probably going to be able to ask for it.
Did I make back the $1K? Why, not at all. I think I made maybe $100 or something like that. (Never mind the unpaid time I invested in writing the app.)
Retired now, poorer, but still wasting my money on projects that will cost me, and ultimately make me nothing in return.
I guess I don't feel ashamed leaning on AI to give me something to put in the corner of the PCB I am about to order from JLCPCB. (The PCB that, after a number of iterations, I will have spent hundreds of dollars on and will never see a return when it goes "to market".)
Paying artists though makes this hobby an even more expensive one. And as I am not making any money, it's not like I am robbing anyone… (Another way to look at it perhaps?)
I don't know about that. Lots of people use AI to write text for them, saying "AI makes it sound better"—but the truth is, it doesn't make it sound better. It makes it sound a lot worse, and pisses off the people you want to read it. So does AI draw better than you could? Well, if you did the drawing, would it make your customer base hate it? Because AI art probably will. I don't know if that's "better".
I'm reading "people don't care so it doesn't matter" in the replies, in that case can we agree to just drop all unneeded illustrations altogether when it comes to technical articles?
But maybe I’m just one of those people with “minor cases of major brain damage”.
> But maybe I’m just one of those people with “minor cases of major brain damage”.
Hey, you said it not me
Are you sure?
(hallucinated) ai hard at work
I would back that claim though with some citation cause like in my “circle” (personal and professional) nothing but big fans of AI art
Not saying AI is blameless, but I'm seeing a trend where the problem is clearly more about social media and how it enables every one of us to live in our own algorithmically fed bubble. Like, look at this:
> If your initial reaction to reading that and seeing [an AI image] is some variation of "ughhh" or rolling your eyes or "fuck this guy" congrats. You are normal.
> If it wasn't I cannot stress to you enough that you are an outlier. Whenever you pick key art for a presentation or blog, your business, or whatever - if you use AI art you give a clear signal that you have low social literacy. You immediately associate yourself with a huge bundle of negative emotions because people, largely, hate this shit.
See how confident the author is that their own view is the normal, socially acceptable one, and they "cannot stress enough" that any other view is a social outlier. This has all the same "If you don't care about what's happening in Gaza you're not normal and nobody likes you" energy, except at least people are actually dying in Gaza.
And of course it should make perfect sense for the author because, unironically, everywhere they go online they will see people talking and thinking like that! Largely thanks to those profit-driven corporations and their massive data centers.
I don't know what's the solution but this can't go on forever ...