People Hate AI Art

Corrected: a certain type of very loud and very online person in your audience hates AI art and thinks less of you for using it.

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.

Most “AI art” is art like “clip art” is art.

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.

People hate AI compositions, especially from a publication. There are many valid uses for AI image generators. My nieces and I have a blast coming up with stories and illustrating them with generated images. It is even better when they hallucinate an extra finger or ear, we can work it into the story.

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.

This post is right over the target. I see others posting that the author is out of touch, so here’s a humble +1 to the view that they’re not. Cathartic stuff here

In my opinion, AI art is best when it laughs at itself in a meme context. For e.g. the recent General Grievous Pawn Stars video, or the Indian Hulku-re meme. When it tries to take itself too seriously to approximate reality, then it becomes icky.

I can draw. But since I didn't keep at it for decades now, I am, at best, at the same level as I was when I was in my twenties. It sucks but I suppose computers came along and stole away all my leisure (and later professional) time. My choice. (I regret it often though.)

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".)

This trend of “everybody hates AI!” articles from bluesky people is becoming really tiresome. Every week it’s a new variant on that theme, and never substantiated. Major yawn.

Good article, I think most hero images are pointless in the first place, so having them diffusion-generated now feels like a signal to just not read the piece. It goes from "look at this irrelevant image" to "look at this irrelevant image, and I have bad taste by the way!"

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?

People with low social literacy need to hear more that they have low social literacy. Bad behavior is objectively bad, and just because some people have exuses doesn't make their behavior less bad.

Its not that I'm against AI as a tool for artists, but there's this cousin of uncanny valley where art looks like waaaay too much effort went into it for what is needed. I find that off putting, but not because of some moral sentiment like unemployed artists, but because it just looks gaudy, out of place, or just inappropriate. Its like the modern version of the filigree. Looks like we might need a new word for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filigree

There's a small strategy game on Steam I've considered picking up a few times.

It's published by a publisher I trust in the genre, but it has a certain amateurish/primitive look to it. Personally, I found the style charming. Overall the game seemed really well received at first.

Recently, I learned they were successful enough that they had released a new DLC. I had also returned to find the game review bombed to hell. Apparently, the team decided use AI generated imagery for the new DLC. Not only did it kill off the character and charm the games graphics had previously had. People were unhappy.

I do feel bad for them. I don't like the new art style, but I wouldn't review bomb their game for it, as long as that part remained fun.

Very low quality article. Makes a lot of unsubstantiated (though probably true) claims. Spends unnecessarily many words shitting on AI generated images and the people who prompt them.

This is exactly how I feel about people who participate in human behaviors that I do not like and find distasteful. Except a lot of people find my voicing of these things distasteful in return.

Lo, I'll have to wait until the tides of public opinion stream to my advantage. Or find my own proxies to voice my disdain.

I'm more than just a rabble-rouser.

(Disclaimer: I'm working on AI related stuff, so I'm not exactly impartial.)

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 ...

By definition, there is no such thing as AI art or generative art. All I can se in article are images.

Maybe we should focus more on how to use correct terms of why our language is changing?

it's creepy and soulless and evil and lacks any artistic value and trained on data stolen from real artists while simultaneously devaluing our work, of course we hate it.

I think one of the reasons for sloppy images is that non-artistic people don't have the vocabulary to describe images to be produced in interesting styles.

Yes, you can do image-> text on existing styles, but something always gets lost in translation.

Midjourney probably has the best baseline, and --sref is a really easy way to differentiate

It's inevitable that AI Art will be used everywhere and haters will get desensitized due to over exposure. There is a right time and place to use real artwork vs ai art as long as someone doesn't try to claim ai art as real.

Flagged… incredible. Mockery is the way

It's a fascinating article and trend to me. I've been rather obsessed with the amazing technology of text-to-image generation since 2017, when state of the art was an LSTM+GAN and resulted in a blurry image. Now that the technology basically works great, it's just upsetting to a lot of people. I kind of think of AI like making things out of plastic - works pretty well, but basically always resented. Notice that the article couldn't identify anything wrong with the generated image except for how it was made and how no one got paid.

It'd be so funny if the first three examples are AI-generated too.

(Not accusing that they are)

Recently Blender removed Anthropic from the sponsors while taking Nvidia and Google's money. This is the epitome of the nature of the anti-AI trend: If you just don't make it obvious nobody cares.

How do you know if an artist drew it for you versus an AI? I think social proof and long term observation of artists help.

Approps of nothing, I think art is worth your while to make an investment of effort. I found Drink and Draw and made acquaintance of another maker from a local makerspace(not mine) and an artist. I wasn't technically adept but I want space to learn how to draw and they treated beginner(or at lease those three) with good vibes even though I was a clear beginner.

I don't consider AI art to be "art". Art isn't just the end result, it's the labor of an artist. AI art seems rather pointless, other than to fill space. Just like AI music doesn't provide any value; it's just used to fill up space, like annoying elevator music.

I'd like to know on what basis was this flagged and remains flagged?

Whether you agree with the author's take or not, it's relevant.

List of things that the public despised when they were new:

- Cars (expensive toys for the rich that endangered normal ppl and spooked horses)

- Recorded music (similar complaints about it not supporting artists)

- Bicycles (commonly called the devil's work)

- Novels (morally dangerous)

- Headphones / Sony Walkman (anti-social)

I remember when chatting online was nerdy, anti-social, and uncool. Now celebrities casually talk about sliding into each other's DMs.

The initial "it's unfashionable" backlash to new, useful, and threatening technology has been so repetitive and predictable throughout history that it's almost passe now. Most people aren't students of history of course, so history will repeat itself.

But that also means the second act will repeat, not just the first act. And the useful technology will almost certainly become fashionable and accepted once it's more commonplace.

Especially Indians!

I love that silly dinosaur with the emoji thumbs up.

Here's the really funny thing. Crafting the prompt to make the original image probably took more time than that crappy mspaint job.

I'm being serious, think about it. What are the chances that image came out of the first prompt fed to the AI? How much time did it take to craft the prompt to get that weird uncanny valley trex with a thumbs up?

Compare that to googling "trex", grabbing an image. Finding the thumbs up emoji. He didn't even bother removing the white background layer! It probably took two minutes tops to make and I enjoy it more.

What I especially hate are slides of diagrams that could have been made with Draw.io or Excalidraw but were made with Nano Banana instead. They ALWAYS look jank. Better than late last year, but still very jank.

I hate these overly grand clickbaity statements. AI is a tool. You can use it well. You can use it poorly. "AI Slop" is the category of lazy AI tool usage. It is the same with AI code. Do you ask Claude to implement a feature and then not do a manual code review? If so, you're likely to get slop.

I think the AI Dino is fine. Just don’t claim it as anything but AI.

I don't always hate AI products, I do hate an economy with no work for creative people.

I don't, to me this AI generated image has more value than this human generated content.

This is just cope over time you won't be able to tell if an image is Ai generated, human coded or the way things are going real pictures or video. As Ai at the end of the day is a tool if people don't like the output they keep changing till they like it.

People make wrongly future predictions looking at current output ie first encounter but fail to count for improvement over time. 3 years ago the biggest topic was that llm are not going to replace coders as they are not good but over time as llm have improved that has changed from llm are coming for coding jobs. It has been the same for solar, batteries and ev's etc which were not economical in their location at the time they might have done the research but they are still stuck in that first encounter while prices have dropped so much for the tech that economics are completely different.

I love that this succinctly explains not only that people largely hate this shit, but also gives simple examples of doing better. The photoshopped thumbs up was really good, I love that shit. It is the antithesis of ai slop; the human presence is felt.

so called AI Art is OK for those pic themself. but it's far too often abused.

All you get are these pieces of glossy junk, yet they expect you to believe it’s some form of creative work. "People with minor cases of major brain damage", indeed

Let me propose another alternative.

People generally hate low effort AI slop.

Irrational people hate art made with AI as a tool.

"By invading the territories of art, photography has become art's most mortal enemy." - Said someone who nobody knows because it's a long and dead opinion.

LOL

lol

I don’t hate AI arts in general I just hate those AI arts that I personally think are badly executed with tastes that don’t align with mine.

You have no idea what "AI art" is these days. And if you think you do, well, you are very naive.

It seems like there might be just a small vocal minority that hates AI art.

Most people probably don’t care.

I bet there were painters in the 1800s who talked about how people hated photographs and how they were uncanny and creepy compared to paintings.

I think people who don’t like it genuinely don’t understand it enough to be fascinated by it or have some other issue with it that has nothing to do with the content itself