Posted by Jare 2 days ago
Before AI, the only question was who made a particular artwork. Human-created practically a certainty.
When AI-generated art was new, it was all exiting & the process described to boast about AI capabilities or the skills of people deploying AI. But human-created still the default assumption.
Now, AI-generated <anything> is everywhere, and that default assumption of "human-created" is often questioned.
The natural next step is "AI-generated" as default assumption, unless claimed / shown (or even proven) otherwise.
Imho: assumption is the root of all evil. Investigate! Or take an author's word for it unless they're shown to be a liar. But as another commenter noted, it's a kind of tragedy of the commons. Methods to prove you as a human created <artwork> will be a thing.
When a machine weaves fabric, no point in sticking to handloom and sell it as handicraft. Use powerloom and add your artistry on top of it.
If you have a soul and aren't an awful creature that sees the world as a series of zero sum interactions, other concerns play into this. Things like you actually enjoy the work or you feel proud of making the piece or you care that every last detail is as perfect as you are able to make it.
Now I won't say that it's never right to use AI (goodness knows I do). But its totally wrong to suggest there is "no point" in ever doing things a different way from the cheapest possible technology
We have video cameras and movies, yet stage actors on Broadway are celebrated like movie stars. People still read books. We have cameras and photoshop, yet a huge market still exists for oil on canvas. We have synthesizers, drum kits, and all the tools we need to make music on a computer, yet live concerts with guitars and drums sell millions of tickets annually. We have the technology to deliver payloads on another continent with millimeter precision, yet every few years, the whole world gathers to watch people who have trained a lifetime to run, jump, and throw stones.
“The old way is dead” doesn’t hold up in the arts like it does in the sciences. Technology moves on, but humans are the same. You can inspire and awe us today using the same tools and methods that were used hundreds or thousands of years ago.
AI has removed the human element entirely. This is a paradigm shift, and there's more merit in bemoaning using AI to wholesale generate a "photo" than there ever was in a film photographer bemoaning digital.