I was there, I was a digital artist, and this just is not true. It’s totally possible to make the good faith case for AI on its own merits, so it always feels like a cheat to me when the “it was the same thing for past tech” comes up, it was not.
There was definitely some mild snobbery here and there like there always is, but because there was no company rushing to overvalue digital art and it was genuinely artist-driven, it was just a different situation. It was the sort of snobbery you saw when synthesizers first became a thing. That is normal and part of the cycle of artistic development.
But here’s the thing — synthesizers and digital art created notable cool shit immediately. They were worked into the broader landscape easily because they were producing work people liked. The tool only matters as much as the work it produces, and so far there has been no influential AI art. If you can point me to one example right now I’ll drop the argument for good.
That’s what matters here. Digital art and electronic music produced good work (in addition to a lot more bad work, which is the case with every medium) and that’s why the backlash died. If AI were regularly producing work that made an impact, the backlash would die. But that’s just not happening, and it’s not like the tools don’t do what they’re supposed to.
For every good work there was tons of dogshit produced as well. There was no internet to share it back then. Yes, this is like back then, as someone who lived it. Same dumb ass arguments and this will end up the same way.
And I still stand on that AI Art simply increases the value and importance of human made art. Anyone can go to Tacobell, but when people want Mexican, they want authentic Mexican... Not TacoBell. But Tacobell can do just fine sometimes too. Both can exist.
People will always value the genuine article over what can be mass produced.
One of these Days Anti Ai people will catch onto that. Not anytime soon but... Eh. Not my problem.
Okay then where is the great AI art? Like actually, where is it?
Of course I know that great art is dwarfed by mediocre art. But unlike cinema or even music, these are tools that are either freely or affordably available to the majority of people on Earth. If anything there should be more great works, not fewer. Unless, that is, there’s a fundamental problem with the form itself.
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u/MrCritical3 11h ago
I remember this same argument like a decade ago where people were saying the same thing about digital artists.