AI has completely replaced clip art at my job. I miss those old clip art CDs from the 90s

Clip art is actual art, unlike AI “art”.

when people talk about AI art they aren't talking about using photoshop smart select to remove a lamppost, and it's pretty disingenuous to pretend they might be.

Clip art was created for specific purposes by humans, and continues to find use in those niches.

> AI is going to do better than I could

I don't know about that. Lots of people use AI to write text for them, saying "AI makes it sound better"—but the truth is, it doesn't make it sound better. It makes it sound a lot worse, and pisses off the people you want to read it. So does AI draw better than you could? Well, if you did the drawing, would it make your customer base hate it? Because AI art probably will. I don't know if that's "better".

Reframe it. Don't look at it as a business failure. You wanted something to exist, and were willing to pay $x to make that happen. Hobbies don't have to generate income. It would be nice, but does it have to? If I pay $x,000 to go on a ski trip, I don't expect it to generate income for me somehow, so why should making PCBs or iOS apps be any different?

Honestly the blowback against AI in "art" feels overblown to me, but I'm not someone that's actually appreciative of art in general (I don't visit art exhibits etc)

However, to understand their viewpoint you only need to think about what art originally meant: it is something with which the artist tries to convey something. It is - in is purest form - an expression of another person.

This is somewhat offset by "art" as a salaried job. But it's worth noting that this profession has generally been seen as a necessary evil to make ends meet.

Now AI art comes along and generally removes the humans expression from the equation. To the artist, this is like a complete perversion of what they consider core to their identity.

And artists have always been am incredibly loud minority - hence you hear their complaints a lot. Complaints which are understandable, but honestly are exaggerated. Esp. If you consider where AI will go from here over the next 10 years.

Right. AI is probably the biggest "umbrella term" we've yet had to wrestle with as a society. AI art as a concept is mostly hideously soulless and anti-human, a disgusting abomination that is rightly reviled, and that's all totally orthogonal to the fact that it's mostly very ugly.

But it's absolutely lovely and heartwarming when my brother uses it to make environment art to go with a D&D campaign for his children.

It's hyper-polarized.

And just like the author, you offer no rational justification for the argument you are making.

> A hero image at the top of a post: good, can be great, do it, make sure it's not AI. But like, a random dinosaur giving a thumbs up in the middle of the post? Don't do that at all.

That's a weird intentional example to make: spam-adjacent marketing content needs a stock art hero image, but a random dinosaur randomly inserted into a random post shouldn't be done at all?

We seem to be disregarding the cohort of people who like articles with some visuals more than a text-only article. They exist. Probably not HN readers though, if we're being honest. Adding some images quickly and easily would make them and the writer of the article happy.

> Corrected: a certain type of very loud and very online person in your audience hates AI art and thinks less of you for using it.

Correcting your correction: a lot of people have terrible taste. It's not polite to say it, because it's condescending and presumptuous, but it's true nonetheless.

People with good taste will agree with TFA. Your Uncle who sends you cheesy postcards that make you groan; your grandma who watches reality TV; your coworker who always used to forward the whole company chain letters about poor Jessica who's 4 years old and dying of cancer; they will all clap enthusiastically at the GenAI T-rex. That's because they have bad taste and don't know better.

In other words, TFA is right. "Socially illiterate" is a very apt definition.

chillll dude it's ok to like bad "art"

> Corrected: a certain type of very loud and very online person in your audience hates AI art

The language evolved "slop" for AI art. There's no corresponding new term for good AI art. Pretending it's a minority that hates it is transparent cope.

We need to be OK with shaming people we see as doing anti-social behaviours.

More even, something AI is quite bad at is combining different imaginative elements.

Compare the AI dinosaur in the article to the commissioned dinosaur. The commission has a vibe created by the eye expression and the glasses. I'd maybe call it chill. The thumb-up is present but it isn't leading the vibe, we might infer that it is something the dino is doing because he is chill. The gesture is only a tiny part of the image, almost an afterthought.

In the original AI image the dinosaur has its thumb up and seems to be really happy. Big smile, relaxed face. Thumb looms large in the foreground. That would be totally normal for this sort of prompt, I don't expect the AIs to have a lot of thoughtful variety on body language.

So what is interesting is getting the AI to generate the commission image - one where the thumb-up looks like a natural consequence of a broader scene - is actually quite hard. The prompter needs to think about all those details of what the character of the dinosaur is and such that make the gesture natural. It might be too hard to one-shot prompt. Image generators don't do that the last time I checked, they just provide what is asked for. Human artists (especially the good ones) will identify that as boring and start adding flourishes to keep people's interest.

People end up hoist on their own petard. "A T-Rex giving a thumbs up" isn't an interesting idea and a good human artist will - instead of following an instruction - give people what they asked for and slip some actually interesting elements in, which usually comes back to more body language and facial expression that is hard to describe.

Sure, but let me flip the question - how would the user react if they knew the said prompt-crafted image is AI generated? Industry will need to do better to sell it to the young generation, which is usually the tastemaker for the future. It is considered "low class" to use AI-generated images. If the game is "conceal that it was AI-generated", then... lol.

The point of the article is to state that if one needs an explanation or a breakdown of why the AI-generated image is upsetting, then that person might not be a good judge of the qualities and impact of an image in the first place.

That's not to say that this same person isn't the perfect target and consumer, as far as OpenAI is concerned.

AI images had a cool aesthetic and had kind of unpredictable results until around 2022 or 23. Now that anything can be generated quickly and with little effort, it kind of lost the novelty. I'm sure there are people doing some cool things still, but I mostly lost interest.

I mean isn't it like the uncanny valley? it's sort of like "the real thing" aka human created artworks that we traditionally love and connect with, but just far enough that it gives us even more disgust that something completely not human created(like an inanimate object) would.

I personally find AI art both visually pleasing at an unconscious level and vapid at the same time

This is a good prediction that is likely to come true. Almost everything else is already slop and we're desensitized to it. Almost all products in stores, almost all websites, almost all apps, almost all video games are slop. We still recognize the good ones that aren't slop but we're accustomed to most things being slop, we don't get angry at those things, we buy enough of them for them to make a higher ROI than the good things.

"Its the year 2076. I can finally post my AI generated art without people being mad at me. Its a paradise."

I talk to a lot of people not in tech and the divide is clear: they hate AI, they hate AI art, and they hate AI companies. They seem to hate it all less if they are unsure if it's AI, but that's a different discussion.

Yeah so, tech people tend to be in a bubble with regards to AI perception. I implore you to just ask around outside of your immediate sphere. Bring it up, let them talk.

I'm sorry - you are in a bubble. Humans, on average, hate the idea of genAI art, specifically.

lol bluesky people? as opposed to what? the white supremacists bots on x.com?

Lets just put that aside for a minute because right now, in the present, people often can tell. And when they can tell, which is often, it is a net negative choice to use AI art.

Which is my point.

In this case use of an AI image, if people can clock it (which is super funny people are thinking "well, what if they can't tell!"), is the issue unto itself.

There is no using AI image generators _well_ if you care how people perceive you and your work.

Note that you don't think its awesome. The best case scenario for someone normal is for them to be totally neutral. To think "its fine." The worst case is they think less of you and anything associated.

That is not a worthwhile risk - and thats the thing I am super confused more people don't have an intuitive sense of.

Why? Do you think that artists would mind if there are no programming jobs out there? I expect no because I know much artistic people that now just say 'Cool, AI can now program my website or some other stuff for me'.

an economy with no work for creative people(or engineers) makes me hate AI products way more

The two sets should be disjoint for any self-proclaimed human being.

Author here. It was the first one. (Not to take away from your point - but i will die shameful if anyone thinks I "spent time prompting.")

Gemini one shotted it.

>Irrational people hate art made with AI as a tool.

No, it's OK to care about the source/process. It is not irrational. You may disagree, but it is utterly human - as rational as things get.

Care to elaborate what it is for us naive fools?

>It seems like there might be just a small vocal minority that hates AI art.

Certainly, clearly not

For now.

In the future, I despair that the next generations will adjust. Horrifying, but possibly true.

If you ask me, the rise of the term “slop” in recent years is a sign that a considerable amount of people do care.

Art without human input is pretty meaningless. It's just pretty colors, even if well executed. I guess there are people that vibe purely on kitch aesthetics. They don't have good taste ofc, but I guess from a capitalist perspective that's a market.

People are confused because since the 1960s literally the CIA intervened to disrupt the transmission of meaning in art, because it was a field dominated by "subversives" who were opposed to capitalism and imperialism. They promoted meaningless post-modern art that was purely aesthetic. So decades later, starved of good examples, people have no idea what art is anymore.

Please, please stop with the AI analogies. Just make your argument on its own terms.

"It's different from X" is no more meaningful than "it's the same as X".

Okay but sometimes people despise things and then they go away or get stigma'd into a corner. There is selection bias in that list.

But either way, I'm talking about *the present* which is the time we all live in. Opining that in the future maybe it will be different is like - sure? Not super relevant though.

They were right about cars, to be fair

When you ask me, headphones are for much people the sign for beeing antisocial, especially for the people that want to be antisocial. Online chats and online dating are now so much monetized and hyped that I would be happy when we would back to the old times where it was a nerdy thing or when we could remove it from the history completely.

So yes, all things that I accepted first I hate now. The others I was born in, can't tell much about them. Maybe the people are right but accept the shit later.

A complete lack of human input and, as such, no genuine human feeling or expression. This sounds like it has everything in the world to do with the “content.”