> Whether something is a forgery is innate in the object and the methods used to produce it. It doesn't matter if nobody else ever sees the forged painting, or if it only hangs in a private home. It's a forgery because it's not authentic.

On a philosophical level I do not get the discussions about paintings. I love a painting for what it is not for being the first or the only one. An artist that paints something that I can't distinguish from a Van Gogh is a very skillful artist and the painting is very beautiful. Me labeling "authentic" it or not should not affect it's artistic value.

For a piece of code you might care about many things: correctness, maintainability, efficiency, etc. I don't care if someone wrote bad (or good) code by hand or uses LLM, it is still bad (or good code). Someone has to take the decision if the code fits the requirements, LLM, or software developer, and this will not go away.

> but also a specific geographic origin. There's a good reason for this.

Yes, but the "good reason" is more probably the desire of people to have monopolies and not change. Same as with the paintings, if the cheese is 99% the same I don't care if it was made in a region or not. Of course the region is happy because means more revenue for them, but not sure it is good.

> To stop the machines from lying, they have to cite their sources properly.

I would be curious how can this be applied to a human? Should we also cite all the courses, articles that we have read on a topic when we write code?

>Me labeling "authentic" it or not should not affect it's artistic value.

The problem with automated imitation generators is that they can produce thousands of painting that imitate Van Gogh, but does not have the same soul.

It is the same reason why these things cannot create genuinely funny jokes. They cannot assess the funnyness of the themselves. They cannot feel, and cannot do the filtering based on emotion.

It is easy to recognize the emptiness of a joke, but not so easy for a painting, or some other form of art.

This is why it will never work for art. But the sad thing is that that will not stop them from being used to create art. Because it just needs to sell.

I would say that for art, at least for most of the movies, music etc, this was already the case. So nothing much to lose.

Regarding art, what do you feel about museums? Why would you go see an original instead of simply looking at a jpg.

Even if you aren't in the group, there is clearly a group of people who appreciate seeing the original, the thing that modified our collective artistic trajectory.

Forgeries and master studies have a long history in art. Every classically trained worth their salt has a handful of forgeries under their belt. Remaking work that you enjoy helps you appreciate it further, understand the choices they made and get a better for feel how they wielded the medium. Though these forgeries are for learning and not intended to be pieces in their own right.

Art in general is a bit weird like that.

The value of a piece is definitely not completely tied to its physical attributes, but the story around it. The story is what creates its scarcity and generates the value.

It is similar for collectible items. If I had in my possession the original costume that Michael Jackson wore in thriller, I am sure I could sell it for thousands of dollars. I can also buy a copy for less than a hundred.

Same with luxury brands. Their price is not necessarily linked to their quality, but to the status they bring and the story they tell (i.e. wearing this transforms me into somebody important).

It can seem quite silly, but I think we are all doing it to some extent. While you said that a good forgery shouldn't affect one's opinion on the object (and I agree with you), what about AI-generated content? If I made a novel painting in the style of Van Gogh, you might find it beautiful. What if I told you I just prompted it and painted it? What if I just printed it? There are levels of involvement that we are all willing to accept differently.

> An artist that paints something that I can't distinguish from a Van Gogh is a very skillful artist and the painting is very beautiful.

There are a lot such artists who can do that after having seen Van Gogh's paintings before. Only Van Gogh (as far as we know) did paint those without having seen anything like it before - in other words, he had a new idea.

> I would be curious how can this be applied to a human? Should we also cite all the courses, articles that we have read on a topic when we write code?

Yea this is the kind of BS and counter-productiveness that irrational radicals try to push the crowd towards.

The idea that one owns your observations of their work and can collect rent on it is absurd.