This feels like the example of (world-famous violinist) Joshua Bell playing violin in the DC subway and getting just a few bucks. It's totally different than paying money to see him in a concert hall, context matters so much...

> How much of our opinions are driven by context

I’d say for art, a lot? There’s a ton of art that a halfway decent painter could do now, the art of it was being the one to do it originally. At least that’s how I, as an absolute philistine in that regard, understand it ;)

I just saw a screenshot of someone pasting I think the US bill of rights to one of those AI write detectors; the site concluded that the text was written by AI.

There is a similar experiment where a famous violinist plays in a subway station. Nobody really notices or appreciates him and his music. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw&ra=m

Yeah I agree, in art a lot is driven by context: there's so many paintings or songs that are not outstanding in itself, but the full human context around it makes it significant.

For an edge case: people will be impressed and interested if you tell them that a piece was painted by an elephant, and then suddenly unimpressed if you tell them you were lying about that. So one function of art is as a sort of experiment, like the art is experimental data, where authenticity matters, because the interest is in the demonstration of a perspective, the reactions of an artist in the situation. Consider noir: a movie is much more plausibly authentic noir if it was made before about 1963, that is, if it was made by actors and directors who actually wore those hats (and lived through other tropes). Later on, it's imitation, regardless of how accurate: the experimental data is invalidated, it doesn't (seem to) mean so much.

You're not surprised that people's judgement seems to be worthless?

it was all engagement bait to auction off some NFT nonsense.

> Seems the poster is the one fooled by the AI

I think this HN commenter is also being fooled by the AI. It's likely that a lot of comments on HN are bots, so here you got an AI to comment about AI criticizing AI.

But they’re confidently asserting a whole bunch of specific made up reasons this is shittier than a real Monet.

It’s like the sommeliers who can’t detect red vs. white wine when blindfolded.

A proper experiment wouldn't have cherry picked the data. This seems more like rage bait than an experiment.

If we learn anything from all studies in this field, that is barely possible if not impossible at all, to change people’s mind. Even when they face clear evidence of their own mistake.

I do think this reveals peoples' biases, but not in the way you probably do.

I think Monet just wasn't as good as his renown purports.

EDIT: I doubt this experiment would go similarly for a Caravaggio or a Michelangelo.

> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.

It proves that people don't actually know what they like about "art" or even why they think some art is good, and some is bad.

These people criticized and trashed a widely regarded, famous painting because they were told that it was a cheap imitation.

If the AI generated a real imitation and the Met hung it on their walls I guarantee these same people would celebrate it just the same because they are told that it is real.

> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.

It goes beyond that. It proves that many people have an inherent bias against AI itself that's unrelated to whatever it generates. "This was made by AI, therefore it's bad in every way".

Good points, but consider what this post does prove: people’s arguments against AI art are shallow; they often attack the artifacts themselves instead of making your deeper argument.

I remember this old episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor scoffs at a postcard with the Mona Lisa on it and derides souless "art made by computers."

As a digital artist, of course I rolled my eyes at the time, but these days I just keep thinking about that storyline more and more.

We've basically transitioned to a world where digital art is almost the default, but I think the world is going to value physical art much more highly in the coming years.

It just proves serious bias and weakness of humans. We really "want" to believe we are special but in the end, you will soon never know if something is made by AI (autonomously or not) and it will trigger the same exact set of emotion as any human would, because in the end it changes nothing, we just want to believe it does (sadly).

Trading on pretentiousness in cliques has been a thing in art long before the internet and Twitter.

I loathe the blasted copyright washing machine as much as the next intellectually honest person, but:

> AI can't create anything original.

Can we? I mean, don't we base our output on experience and reprocess references + memories of things past to create what we deem as "new"?

This is a real Monet.

Define «original».

Under many definitions, where novel composition of existing knowledge or techniques is counted, it certainly can.

AI can absolutely create an original book, absurdly false.