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[-] hperrin@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago

I hate that it’s built on theft. The idea of AI art is fine, but so much of it is just art theft. “Picture of A in the style of artist B.” That kind of shit really makes me hate AI art.

[-] murd0x@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago

It's not art. Expanding the sense of the word to all kinds of nonsensical phenomena is both damaging art and artists as well.

I take the liberty of a personal definition of art, or if not definition, at least prerequisites for something to be considered art, and that is that art must be made by the hand of the artist and that it's conception must include deliberate thought/mental process of the artist. It may not be the best definition, but I consider it to be good enough to draw a definite line between Michelangelo and the internet lady who vlogs about the art of tying your shoelaces or some similar shit.

[-] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

I don't hate AI art. I hate AI art being passed off as "traditional" art.

[-] hansolo@lemm.ee 26 points 4 days ago

I don't hate the "art." The AI can't do much about it.

What I strongly dislike is people who manage to draft literally 40 words or less and think they "created" something.

You didn't. You a mathematical model to do something for you. You therw 175 tokens into a whirlpool and got am 87% what you wanted image out. If you even had an idea of what you wanted before hand.

[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago

Yes. It's flooding places, and suddenly people decided that "smooth looking" was the absolute end goal of any drawing/music/creation/etc. It's not. Some of the most famous art piece are completely wrong, some aren't. That's not the endgoal. Nobody's gonna care that you can take that very simplified drawing and "generate" an extremely high-detail, fully shaded image that looks like it, as it was never the purpose.

Creative direction, intent, consistency (or absolute lack of consistency), execution, style, and a lot more goes into any creation, art or not. That's what make a piece feel interesting. There's a reason even now, with generated content being plausible as far as glaring mistakes go, we can still point out which image "feels" AI across a lot of different styles. At best, to remove that feeling of it being wrong, you'd have to spent a lot of time on the output of a model to touch it up everywhere and change details, which requires time and proficiency, which a lot of people jumping on that trend definitely lacks. Some of the worst results I've seen have been from people trying to make other "pay" for their output.

There's also the issue of how these works. For decades, creative people (among other) have been sued by big companies, some very harshly, to protect IP from such overexploitation as "using a three second excerpt in a video" or "using the vague likeness of a character". And now, these same targets are getting fleeced of their work by more big companies under the cheer of the people. That's a gut feeling of disgust right there. Combined with the utter lack of creativity in these, we're really watching the potential death of an activity (artistic creation), and that's not a good place to be. If one wants to argue that "generated art" is also a form of creation, keep in mind that these models can't be trained on generated pieces without extreme prejudice. Killing the very source they need to operate does not seem like a good long-term plan. But who cares about long-term when you can make a quick buck, right?

I'd also like to point out that all this rambling is about generated content that goes from "output of a model" to "final piece" with little to no afterthought. The "common" piece, where people will be happy to see twenty broken pieces because "well, there's a lot of them, so it's good". AI and LLM models, as a tool, may or may not be useful in the long term, but I can see smaller applications, even for art. A lot of menial tasks can be improved, general posing, references, simple background that are marginally considered part of the product, guides, etc. Taking something you've drawn/created, and locally use an AI "filter" to remove an extra line cleanly or touch up a mistake you want out? Great. The tool carries the intent of the artist, the same way a pen do.

But AI generated content? Make a prompt, a stick-figure sketch, and call it a day? These, IMO, will always look and taste like garbage, no matter how pretty they look. Because it was never "pretty" we were looking for.

[-] SnotFlickerman 45 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

What I hate about AI art: How it's based on stolen work. How it is purpose built to replace real, talented artists and devalue their labor. How it uses way more energy than it needs to and is pretty wasteful

What I love about AI art: Instant stupid shit for meme madness.

If AI art was all just stupid jokey shit like this that a friend of mine made when we were discussing how people were making Ghibli-fied versions of important moments in history, and we decided to go with "George Bush doesn't care about black people" but make Mike Myers dressed as Austin Powers, I'd be okay with it entirely. It's not for profit by devaluing artists and using this work instead of a real artists work, it's just stupid shit that makes us laugh. Everything else aside, I can get behind stupid shit that makes us laugh. The rest of the issues with AI art suck though.

[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 12 points 5 days ago

I'm with you on this one. I have no issues with AI being used for shit posting and memes, other than the ecological impact I guess.

[-] Snowclone@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

As an artist I'm conflicted. I like new technology and methods and mediums, but it's entirely unethical to make models on unconsenting artists with no compensation or recognition.

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[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 41 points 5 days ago

In general - yes. There is a flood of shitty and lazy “art” that has infected search results and creative spaces. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with it being trained on artists work without their consent - for all the talk about it being equivalent to human inspiration I’m pretty sure there have been examples where it’s started generating attempts at signatures.

It’s terrible in knitting and crochet spaces (I imagine woodworking and sculpture and architecture too) because there are lots of things generated which are physical impossible and just wrong to anyone who enjoys the crafts. It gives false understandings of what those art forms look like.

I think the entire point of art is the human intentionality aspect. Art is humans using materials to do things that don’t serve an immediate practical purpose. There has to be some element of “desire” on the part of the artist.

So it’s not that it is impossible to use AI tools to generate art (there’s stochastic computer generated pieces from the 70s that are lovely iirc) To me though, the way these tools are used is what is important - if you’re using an AI you’re training and adjusting yourself, if you’re spending hours tweaking prompts and perhaps sifting through hundreds of pictures to combine and really participate in “making” something.

The current trend is really just a bunch of content sludge. I don’t see the appeal in either the process of creation or in what can be appreciated from it. The best stuff is mostly memey topical political jokes, where it rests more on the symbols rather than the art itself.

Like, when I make art - my process is adding layers over weeks and weeks. It’s noticing that I don’t like the way this section looks, so I go back over it, come back to it later… it’s a process - I engage with and shape the work. I’m just a guy who glues trash to things and paints them, my art doesn’t really have external value - but it still feels like art in a way that getting Midjourney to make pictures of Gandolf with big honking naturals isn’t.

[-] callyral@pawb.social 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I hate those who call themselves artists when they're just commissioning a computer to make a picture for them. I also hate it when those same people deny the unethical aspects of AI generation.

Edit: to add more, I also hate the AI images themselves. They are filling up the internet with slop. This is very annoying, and the same goes for LLMs. I don't want to get AI generated results when I didn't search for them specifically.

[-] Paid_in_cheese@lemmings.world 28 points 4 days ago

I'm not sure hate is the right word. When you've got someone stabbing you in the back multiple times, is it really hate you're feeling toward them? Or is it anger, fear, and danger?

I "hate" it in the sense that it's built on theft and requires the exploitation of underpaid workers to develop and maintain it. I "hate" it in the sense that we're living on a burning cinder with dwindling fresh water resources and "AI" is adding fuel to the fire. I "hate" it in the sense that it's being used to further undervalue artists and writers. I "hate" it in the sense that it fills our spaces with crap that so often looks like it was cribbed off of Rapunzel, Wreck-It-Ralph, and some other things.

[-] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 32 points 5 days ago

It's soulless. A mere imitation.

[-] mtchristo@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

It looks so detached from reality.

[-] magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 32 points 5 days ago

I don’t hate AI art. I hate people who pretend they’re artists when all they do is writing prompts.

[-] ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 5 days ago

Yes, I hate it. I hate that it fills every image platform. It is not art at all.

It’s a fun toy thing and can make decent images but its not art and can never replace actual art. When you compare for example an anime art of someone who actually drew it and the AI image, the drawn art is 9 out of 10 times better.

It’s also petty pretty easy to spot whether an image is AI or drawn made.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 10 points 5 days ago

It’s also petty pretty easy to spot whether an image is AI or drawn made.

Doubt. Most studies have shown that people are horrible at actually picking out AI art. You suffer from selection bias because you don't realise which ones you didn't spot.

its not art and can never replace actual art. When you compare for example an anime art of someone who actually drew it and the AI image, the drawn art is 9 out of 10 times better.

That implies it's solely about quality? At the inevitable point where AI gen gets better than drawn art, is the AI gen image now art too?

[-] d0ntpan1c 28 points 5 days ago

I'm not entirely against LLMs as a tool, but I especially despise the image-based LLMs. They are certainly neat for some fun things. I've used them a little bit here and there for a dumb profile picture or a "I'm kinda thinking about this..." Brainstorm, but even in those cases I noticed the capabilities of the LLM and its tendencies quite literally pidgeon hole my artistic vision and push me in other directions that felt less and less creative. (Sidenote: I feel the same way about coding LLM tools. The longer I use them at any given time, the less creative I feel and it has a noticeable impact on my interest in the code I'm writing. So I don't really use them much. Also I consistently manage to point out coding LLM code in PR reviews because it's always kinda funky)

I've avoided using AI art tools for a while now. I'll consider some limited use if the cost, billionaire ownership, blatant theft of real IP without compensation, and environmental impact problems are solved. (No, an "open source" model doesn't solve all of these problems, especially since nearly all open source models are not truly open source and are almost always benefiting from upstream theft)

You know what I do like about AI art? I like the older Google machine learning art experiments from the mid-2010s. They invoked a strange existential curiosity. But those weren't done with LLM's.

Outside of LLMs, I like that there are some newer tools for editing that can do a better "lasso" select, that can mix and match into brushes as an alternative to something more algorithmic, the audio plugin that uses a RNN to simplify or expand upon an audio technique. Things that are tools that can be chosen or avoided and have nothing to do with LLMs.

I honestly cannot wait for this bubble to burst and for these tools to return to a cost that they'd need to be for these companies to turn a profit. A higher cost would eliminate all this casual use that is making people worse at research, critical thinking, and creativity, as well as make the art tools less competitive to just paying artists, even for scumbags wanting to cut the artists out. And it'd incentivize non-LLM, non-insanely costly ML techniques again instead of the current "LLMs for everything" nonsense right now.

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[-] temporal_spider@lemm.ee 21 points 4 days ago

It's ruined art for me. Someone posts something, and I don't know if it's real art or a theft of other people's work.

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[-] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 14 points 4 days ago

AI art is fine being used as a tool. What I have a problem with is it's users calling themselves "artists".

A person who types a prompt into an AI is no different than a person who hires a painter and describes what he wants them to paint.

Just because that "painter" in the first case happens to be a computer, that doesn't mean that by default the title of "artist" defaults back to the person who wrote the prompt. That person is still just someone telling someone (or something) what to draw.

In other words, you don't become the artist just because you eschew paying an actual artist and instead have your computer do it for you.

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[-] Generic_Idiot@lemm.ee 20 points 4 days ago

Art is cool cos it’s like holy shit a person did that!?

If it’s just an algorithm it’s not very impressive.

[-] mellitusgull@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Environmental impacts 🤷

[-] tauren@lemm.ee 22 points 5 days ago

No, because I don't have an irrational fear of AI. I don't like when poor or unfitting AI art is used, but it isn't AI who makes that decision to use it.

[-] shortrounddev@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

There's nothing interesting about it. It's a waste of storage space and computational power. It makes the world worse

[-] ItzzMe@midwest.social 7 points 4 days ago

of course! aside from detracting from artists with actual talent and creativity, there is one example i’ve seen in my school that makes me hate it even more: teachers deciding to print out posters, flyers, etc. with obviously ai generated images, despite the fact that we have an entire art department in the school, full of students who’d be very much interested in making something up for them. even then, tools like canva and the sort are always available, hell, even mspaint could work! i’d rather see 10 poorly made posters than have to see one more ai image used in the school.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 13 points 4 days ago

Not a fan. It admittedly can be an amusing toy - type something in and wow look what it did! But the costs are high, and our society isn't a utopia where people don't need to labor for survival.

Maybe if we were post scarcity it wouldn't matter that much. But we're not, and this AI stuff is going to hurt labor, benefit the ownership class, and probably be mildly bad for end users too.

[-] Evotech@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It's fun to play around with but it has zero value and wherever I see it used anywhere I cringe

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[-] pepperjohnson@lemm.ee 5 points 4 days ago

Good for memes, bad for the environment.

[-] FenderStratocaster@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago

Hate it? Yes. Respect people who use it? No.

[-] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 7 points 4 days ago

Hate is too strong of a word. AI art is sometimes freaky to look at, sometimes it's pretty. It is usually devoid of a certain intangible thing that you can get from human art, even shitty human art. But it's occasionally a fun toy too? I can't conjure up any strong feelings for AI images unto themselves.

I do have intense loathing for the capitalists who want to use that AI art to replace human work. And for the AI "Artists" who are enabling them by acting like this is the next evolution of art and anyone with concerns is just holding back "DA FUTER".

I also have concerns about the environmental/energy costs of AI -- Just in general. Not just AI Images or Chatbots or whatever. AI can be a good thing, a tool to help us. And even when it's useless, it's kinda fun to mess about with. But the energy and environmental costs of all that computing, especially the amount of it that is wasted because even if AI ultimately becomes a part of our lives, it is DEFINITELY a wasteful investment bubble right now -- THAT sucks. And THAT seems to have no obvious solution.

[-] engalion@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago

As an art appreciator it just looks bad

[-] HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone 5 points 4 days ago

i'm utterly bored by it and annoyed that it mucks up all the places I'd usually steal images for my TTRPG games.

[-] Corno@lemm.ee 12 points 4 days ago

As an artist who had her art stolen for usage in AI, I hate AI generated images for several reasons. I've personally had my art stolen to be used in a prompt without my permission, and said art got mangled so much that it looked terrible. AI image generators scrape the internet for art so they can amalgamate these pieces of art together to correspond to a prompt, and this art is taken without the permission of the artists. In some AI generated images, the mangled remnants of artists' signatures are still visible. Beyond art theft, it's instant gratification with zero effort. A huge part of why I appreciate art is because someone made it, someone spent potentially hours to create this beautiful picture! When I look at my old art, I can instantly get a feel for what vibes I had going through my mind at the time, like I could almost take a peek into my past self's brain, and this applies to other artist's work too!

Prompting an AI image generator, in my eyes, is like prompting an artist to draw something for you, except that artist turns out to be someone who traces bits of other people’s art without their permission, or copy and pastes it. Sometimes AI generated images aren't immediately recognizable, so me and a lot of other artists have tried to make it a trend to post progress pictures and other receipts along with our art.

[-] heavydust@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 days ago

Art is about expressing one emotion from one person to another.

We have a word for fake pictures: advertising.

[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 11 points 5 days ago

The first phrase is true.

The second, I'm not sure. Some really talented artists have worked in advertisements for a long time, and many of their works are celebrated internationally. Alphonse Mucha is one name that quickly comes to mind - tell me his advertisement work isn't art. You have probably seen more amateur ripoffs of his style in your life than the real deal.

[-] Puzzlehead@reddthat.com 7 points 4 days ago

I prefer real people and real artwork hand painted or hand drawn. Yes, doing it digital with your hand and mouse count as hand made.

[-] Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 13 points 5 days ago

Art is an attempt to communicate (usually to communicate something of the human condition). Current 'art' AI is too far away from intelligence to have anything to communicate. All it can do is mindlessly try to copy and blend what it's seen before without understanding it.

I don't hate it, but I also don't value it.

[-] Arbiter@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago

Yes, as it conveys nothing more than the prompt it was given. Art is a means of communication, but when all it does is chop up pictures it’s seen to match a prompt there just isn’t anything to analyze.

It may look pretty in the moment, but lacks all substance and will be forgotten as quickly as it was generated.

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Just playing devil's advocate here. Let me lay out some counter points .. (it'll take me an edit or two to format this right, btw.)

  1. Instructing a machine to assemble bits in a specific way takes creativity. My prompt to AI is that creativity and without it, you can't even get much of a copy of anything. Even though AI is generally assembling stolen bits, the end result (ignoring copyright law) can be original.

  2. Music has been mostly "figured out" and many songs we have heard over your lifetime use many of the same exact chord progressions. I-V-vi-IV being one of the most common and used in the following songs:

Journey -- "Don't Stop Believing"

James Blunt -- "You're Beautiful"

Black Eyed Peas -- "Where Is the Love"

Alphaville -- "Forever Young"

Jason Mraz -- "I'm Yours"

Train -- "Hey Soul Sister"

The Calling -- "Wherever You Will Go"

Elton John -- "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" (from The Lion King)

  1. Musicians may use patterns or progressions from other songs. Painters may use the same colors and brushes designed by other artists. In both cases, techniques that have been known for thousands of years are being used in self-expression.

I assert that given the correct instructions, you can still give someone plenty to analyze, via prompt, that has enough detail to extract a deeper meaning:

FWIW, I am extremely fed up with this AI hype now. "AI" is just a tool, and that is it. I could go on for hours about this mess, but I am trying to make a valid point: Regardless of how you interpret copyright, art is just self-expression.

There are endless examples I could give about technique re-use when it comes to creating art with machines. From my perspective, a particular brush stroke might be the same as using a specific bit at a particular depth of cut on a CNC. The art theft for AI training is one aspect, for sure. The biggest issue I see is that many people don't understand how to create original art and the AI just spits out a copy of something it was trained on and something the user already saw.

Edit: After reading many of the other comments here, many people have a strange definition of "art". Yes, art can be about communication, it can be about sending a message, it can express a style of creativity or hundreds of other things.

Art is just.. art. It's something a person sketches, composes, speaks, signs or farts. You don't have to like it or agree with it. Hell, you don't even need to recognize something as art for it to be art. Art is just self-expression. It's a feeling that is converted into some kind of other medium that others might happen to see, feel or hear, smell, taste or a combination of all of those things.

As much as I hate to admit it, a banana taped to a wall is art. Someone eating said banana is also art. I think it's fucking stupid, but who am I to not call it someone's self-expression?

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[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

Bad for artists, but for the environment, low quality, low effort, and the most annoying people in the world love it.

[-] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 12 points 4 days ago

I'm an artist / writer and I don't see problem with generative AI when you're at a really early concept stage. Exploring ideas, try to get over creative blocks, that sort of stuff. Maybe the AI hallucinations and fuckups can give you ideas worth exploring.

But using them as a literal basis for artwork you work further on is a fool's errand. It's easier to maybe take ideas from there, but work from scratch anyway. And I do realise that even that is controversial.

Also, could be a legal quagmire. Also not happy about the copyright appropriation situation or the environmental impact.

[-] Chocrates@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

I hate it because of the theft.

It's possible AI could be interesting but the current iteration is garbage.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 11 points 4 days ago

I don't hate it, some of the images generated look awesome. But that's just an image that "literally anyone could do". It's the equivalent of instant lamen or cup noodles.

Afaik, it can't come up with new styles and most of the stuff pumped out just wholesale copies existing stuff: the majority either looks like a Disney 3d animation, or fancy anime-esque render. Some try to look like realistic oil paintings, those look cool and pretty, but nothing worth making a poster.

I think the only people, besides tech bros, who are happy with this are those that hate giving art any value.

[-] rickdg@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

Almost all of the images generated by AI models are just eye candy and not art. It can be eye candy based on a bunch of art, but it still isn’t artistic. It’s often just an image aimed at farming engagement. “Here’s a picture so that your algorithms don’t ignore my post. Do I have your attention now?”

[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Most of it reminds me of that tacky clip art that got bundled with word processors and Corel Draw in the 90s. It’s just all got this “uncanny valley” sheen to it.

[-] daggermoon@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yes, because It's not art. I have a very liberal definition of art. I'd call John Cage's 4′33″ art. Art requires concious effort, an AI has no conciousness.

Edit: I thought the question was do you like AI art? I can't read apparently. I wouldn't say hate. I just don't respect it from an artstic standpoint.

[-] YungOnions@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)
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[-] Fixxelious@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

AI “art” has made me realize how important part human behind art is to the point where I will never pay for any AI “art”. AI “art” is worthless and I would even say it devalues rest of the thing, if its part of some bigger whole like game for example. I do not want to see it, I dont want even glimpse. When I see AI “art”, its only a reminder to me of theft that has been done to make it happen and of some smarmy slimy techbro behind it. Whenever I see AI “art” only thing I feel is either sad or angry depending on day.

If I was religious type, Id even go as far as say I believe in soul now because how soulless AI “art” is.

I am fucking sick of it and deeply despise AI “art” in its entirety with every fiber of my being.

I am sure I will get downvoted to deepest depths by techbros and people who dont care and simply consume whatevers brought in front of them, use every AI filter they get their hands on. But hey, I was asked, I gave my answer.

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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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