> The point is, generative AI images are not widely regarded as good art. They're often seen as passable for some filler use cases and hard to tell apart from human generations, but not "good".
> It's not not-there-yet because AI sometimes generates sixth fingers, it's something another level from Gustav Klimt
My point is: yes AI is different — it's better. (Or, less provocatively: better by my specific standards).
Always? No. But I chose Der Kuss specifically because of the high regard in which it is held, and yet to my eye it messes with anatomy as badly as if he had put 6 fingers on one of the hands (indeed, my first impression when I look closely at the hand of the man behind the head of the woman, is that the fingers art too long and thumb looks like a finger).
wait what? Isn't that missing the point of expressionism? Klimt's Judith I is basically a photo, surely he can draw sh*t if he wanted to?
But myriad predecessors such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, da Vinci, et al., have done enough in realism, and also photography was becoming more viable and more prevalent, that artists basically started diversifying? Isn't that what lead to various forms of early 20th century arts like surrealism(super-real -ism), cubism, etc?
I don't mean offense but that's just, surely that level of understanding can't be basis of policy decisions when it comes to moral rights and licensing discussions and "artists should just use AI" and such???
I think you're conflating "good" in the sense of "competent" with "good" in the sense of "ethical" or "legal".
I am asserting here that the AI is (at its best) more competent, not any of the other things.
I suspect that the law will follow the economics, just as it often has done for everything else before — you're communicating with me via a device named after the job that the device made redundant ("computer").
But I said "often" not "always", because the business leaders ignoring the workers they were displacing 200 years ago led to riots, and eventually to the Communist Manifesto. I wouldn't discount this repeating.
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I've just looked up "Judith I" (I recognise the art, just not the name), and I don't even understand why you're holding this up as an example of "basically a photo".
As for the other artists demonstrating realism: photography made realism redundant despite being initially dismissed as "not real art". Artists were forced to diversify, because a small box of chemistry was allowing unskilled people do their old job faster, cheaper, and better. Photography only became an art in its own right when people found ways to make it hard, for example by travelling the world and using it to document their travels, or with increasingly complex motion pictures.
I suspect that art fulfils the same role in humans as tails fulfil in peacocks: an expensive signal to demonstrate power, such that the difficulty is the entire point and anything which makes it easy is seen as worse than not even trying. This is also why forgeries are a big deal, instead of being "that's a nice picture", and why an original painting can retain a high price despite (or perhaps because of) a large number of extremely cheap prints being plastered onto everything from dorm rooms to chocolate wrappers.
> It's not not-there-yet because AI sometimes generates sixth fingers, it's something another level from Gustav Klimt
My point is: yes AI is different — it's better. (Or, less provocatively: better by my specific standards).
Always? No. But I chose Der Kuss specifically because of the high regard in which it is held, and yet to my eye it messes with anatomy as badly as if he had put 6 fingers on one of the hands (indeed, my first impression when I look closely at the hand of the man behind the head of the woman, is that the fingers art too long and thumb looks like a finger).