Art has a broader purpose than just unique artistic expression, indeed. Sometimes it is used to help visualise, create an atmosphere, communicate ideas, so on and forth. AI generated art fulfils these utilitarian purposes, doesn’t it?

People are a bit snobbish about art, but they forget there are thousands of printed t-shirt mills where tons of art is being pumped out so people can wear a message on their body. And thousands of homes and hotel rooms with Kinkade paintings no one will search for meaning in, to make the atmosphere “quaint”. Thousands of home developments with 3D renders on their construction site walls and PowerPoint presentations.

And that’s alright, art has many purposes and applications, even AI. I disagree with the elite-ish tone of the article.

Yes agreed, and not to knock people, but I worked with and around other artists for some years, and frankly many people really don't have some deep meaning around what they make, they just have a "style" and make things around that with a sprinkle of some meaning (which in some cases I suspect is added after the fact).

When I was younger I'd get into mild arguments with people that style !== meaningful art, and especially when they'd question why the things I made were sometimes wildly different styles.

AI can generate around a style almost effortlessly and I think it may expose a lot of people who have nothing else to define themselves as An Artist.

Same. Also, I spend just as much time curating what I consider to be the right elements of the Suno music I generate as I did before GenAI. I just get a lot more mileage out of it. Consequently, when I generate that final cut, I feel a strong sense of ownership over it, even though I understand clearly that I didn't "make the music". I described it. Doesn't stop me from listening to it over and over again and feeling pride.

There may also be a lack of awareness around the current capabilities of these tools. You can replace individual sections of a song seamlessly. You can use non-vocal prompting patterns to elicit desired elements, textures, and transitions. You can capture the essence of different patterns and apply them to new creations.

This space is rapidly converging towards DAW-like capabilities, and it won't be long before we reach similar levels of control that we had when we were in complete control. Midi support, nobs and sliders for discrete elements. You can already export vocals separately from the main music track, so separating elements for individual processing and modification doesn't seem far fetched.

Yeah agreed, I think issues come from people's misunderstanding (and likely companies misrepresenting) what "AI" does.

It's not correct to knock down creators using it as some magic box that just pumps out worthless "AI Slop" on its own. If you have no taste, no ideas, AI won't turn you into a fine artist. But that's similar to buying an expensive camera won't make you a great photographer.

Conversely, AI is also not just an English alternative UI for perfectly understanding what you want and make something to your exacting specifications.

I see it as a 3 tiered hierarchy of satisfaction:

* 1 - If you manage to do something interesting/beautiful after struggling, doubting yourself and working through it, you come out with a tremendous sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, even though the day to day might have been miserable (in that sense the mountaineering comparison from the article is apt).

* 2 - If you get something interesting/beautiful after little (I don't mean no, I mean little) effort, you still enjoy it somewhat.

* 3 - If you struggle through something for a while, and come out at the end with nothing to show for it that you like or are proud of, it feels pretty terrible.

So it seems in your case you used do do (3), and now can do (2), which must definitely feel nicer. But for people that can do (1), such as proficient artists, having to move to (2) feels like it's completely destroying the entire reason why they like to do this in the first place.

it's a great tool if you aren't an ornery artist who refuses to adapt to new ways and means.

most ai art is bland and worthless and has no meaning behind it.

im not postmodern enough to say its all the struggle, but regardless of if AI us used or not I expect the artist to have some idea of what they're trying to do or say, and typing a sentence into a box ain't it

95% of everything is shit. That doesn’t make the remaining five percent worthless.

i would prefer instead of an ai stock photo, an ugly unprofessional doodle. that would tell me something about the person drawing it, how they see the world, and if its bad at least its human.

ai stock photos also tell me something about the person making it and not much about it is endearing

> most art is bland and worthless and has no meaning behind it.

FTFY. There is no such thing as AI art.

Art is often still something people do to sell to others. Possibly sport and fitness are the real examples of what machines can't do for us. I spend hours a day over years as a kid perfecting my jump shot and my fastball. Ran miles a day. Here in middle-age, I haven't been in any team sports since school, but still spend a lot of time lifting, working on basic range of motion, and have quite a bit of fun getting as good as I can get at skateboarding and rock climbing.

If you gave me an exoskelton that I could put on that would allow me to just do those things without any practice, I would not want that. I'm not just looking for the thrill of being on the board or hanging from a rock wall. Building the skill to do it myself is the point.

I haven't been into any more explicitly artistic creative endeavors since high school, but I think I'd have said the same thing then. I spent 60-100 hours per painting back then, and I did it because I enjoyed doing it, I enjoyed seeing the fruit of lots and lots of practice, developing skills. If I could have just pressed a button and had the same paintings but not done them myself, it's hard to see what the point of that would have been. The effort involved was most of the reason I even wanted to do it. But this was 30 years ago and I guess it was different days. We had schoolwide and district-wide art shows and it was cool to win awards, but I wasn't selling anything or trying to gain fame in an attention economy, never hoped to make any kind of living off of art and I never did.

I would have said the same about school band, too. Probably a programmed synthesizer could have produced better melody than me, but physically practicing and playing the instruments myself was part of the point to me.

But I think this reveals at least two entirely different purposes to art, creativity, skill, whatever, reflected different in the author, myself, and you. I don't mean to invalidate your approach by any means. Creating something you and others love, by any means at all, even automatically by machine, is entirely valid. There is still that other side, though. Think of the whole meme of engineers who take up woodworking. I highly doubt they ever really make better furniture than could have been made by some more automatic means that doesn't involve their own labor, only expressing a desire and letting someone or something else do the work. But that isn't the point. They're doing it because they want to make something they tangibly did themselves, even if it's shit at first, shit for a long time, or even shit forever. It's why my neighbor (we live in downtown townhouses) insists of growing her own peppers. They're not better than she could buy from the store, or cheaper. DIY is its own reward.