this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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I'd argue that AI tools defer our intent onto the tool and that this reduces the art. Like, when using a traditional medium, every movement you make in an individual moment and every factor from the materials you use to the conditions you are working under is contributing to that creation.
But when making a text prompt, the only choices we're making is the vocabulary we use and possibly the language we're writing in. The end product will not change if the prompt is written by someone who is suffering or if it's written at a specific time of day or if they're getting paid to write.
So I don't know if this makes it not art but I think it makes it objectively less art, by a very huge margin
And you think that this applies to buying a urinal off the shelf and then signing it?
you missed the bit that pointed out the urinals match no production model, and would not actually function if you tried to plumb them up.
They are unique, handcrafted pieces made to make you think they came off a factory floor!
That's a good point, he definitely did less. And that seems intentional, perhaps Duchamp would have supported the freedom to call AI outputs art.
But there's also more going on. He lived in a political context where art was being gatekept by fascists trying to limit cultural expression, he chose an object that is perceived as vulgar and unbelonging in an art installation, and he placed it somewhere in a social strata where it was considered to not belong. These are artistic choices, the art was in what he did and not the toilet itself.
You could say that you can do all those things with an AI creation. I think it would take a lot more work than feeding a prompt and getting an image. But maybe getting an image of something like one of those hideous AI slop babies and putting it in an museum would suffice. Or projecting it on a underserved community from a place where only tech moguls can see it in full resolution. I'm admittedly pretty stupid but it would make me reconsider.
Intent is not action. Intent is what you want your hand to do. If every child's indecipherable stick figure is True Art, why not a plain-English description of what you want to see?
... and art for money doesn't count?
Because the stick figure is held in regard to who made it and when. We preserve and display our children's stick figures all the time, not because they're ever good but because of the conditions they were made under. So, still actual art.
The plain-english description would not be art because that's a tool to make AI art with. It has no value without being used in a prompt.
No, art for money definitely counts as art, but it has a quality that distinguishes it from art that was made for no money. As an extreme example, see debates about zombie formalism and how it's essentialy used for money laundering and power brokering. However AI generated art that is commissioned (for whatever reason) will be practically identical to a hobbyist's output. So AI art is less art.
I'd argue that torturing GPUs into generating thousands of extremely similar but still unique pictures of anime titties has a bit of poetic artistry to it
(I'm mostly shitposting here, but there might be a kernel of truth somewhere in there)
that's not bad. somebody else in the thread said that the outputs aren't art but the tool itself is. I kind of like the idese ideas
Self-professed AI haters insist every shitty scribble has Meaning™ in a way no render possibly could.
Because AI haters have a deeper relationship with Meaning™ than a person who got fascinated by a new seratonin-manipulating toy. If AI art enthusiasts were capable of understanding how the toy even worked beyond "magic machine makes my thoughts real", they might feel a little more inclined to treasure their children's drawings as well
Claiming that you have a deeper connection to meaning or artistic appreciation than someone who disagrees with you is about the most pretentious thing I've heard in a long while.
Consider that some people can understand how AI generation works, and still somehow disagree with you. Oh, and they can also appreciate art.
Do you think a photo of a can of soup can be art? What about the output of a math question specified to the point that the output is just a formality?
What about a urinal?
Statements can be pretentious and also entirely correct, your hurt feelings do not constitute a rebuttal
Whose feelings are hurt?
Did you stop reading after the first sentence? Calling someone pretentious isn't typically intended as a rebuttal. Maybe finish reading next time.
Oh, and since it doesn't seem like you know: "that statement is correct" isn't an argument. It can be rubutted with a simple "no it's not".
Then they obviously don't understand it very well since it's still somehow providing them with novelty. Seriously, the parlor trick has a threshold if you've seen it enough. I happen to think object permanence is beyond infants but by your logic that would also be pretense because I just I haven't met a baby yet who had it.
And as I've mentioned before, I'm pretty stupid. The fact that the "infinite art machine" couldn't keep an ape like me pressing the novelty button kind of speaks to its inability to create anything meaningful. I am a very low bar for overcoming pattern recognition.
Ah, yes, because the disagreeing with you means "infatuated by the random picture machine", right? No room for someone to think that it's, I don't know, another tool a person can use in the creation of art? Kinda like how not every cellphone picture is high art, but you wouldn't say you can't use a camera to make art.
But no, clearly you're the arbiter of knowing how stuff works and, what art is, and how others appreciate it.
Yes, because developmental psychology is exactly the same as "art critique".
It's pretentious because you're responding to someone who disagrees with you by asserting that either they don't understand the subject technically, or their entirely subjective experience of art is somehow lesser than yours.
There is definitely room for that. I have encountered several of the people you're describing in this thread. They were rather nice.
If it seems like I'm being arbitrarily harsh on you and that one other guy, it's probably because 12 hours later you're still in this thread reply-guying everyone who disagrees with you into exhaustion. If I go "hey great point man" another master debate lord is going to come along and demand my time to do it again for his petulant take.
Kind of like how you're doing now when somebody more well adjusted already got me to reconsider. Release me from this thread, I'm out of energy for AI debate bros
What? I replied to you once because you were an asshole, and then in reply, you were an asshole.
Do you think I'm following you around reading everything you do? How the hell would I know you changed your mind? I've replied to you twice.
If you can't stand having people reply to you, a conversation thread might be the wrong place to post messages. You're entirely in control of your engagement, so it seems odd to reply, insult me, and then whine about how the conversation keeps going.
In any case, I'm glad you changed your mind!
Toxic even in retreat.
'I'm bored now, you should check out all the other places this comment section went...' but what kind of asshole replies to other people, an entire twelve hours after a thread started? Debates end exactly five hundred minutes after beginning! We will have ordnung! I claim to have reconsidered, in a way that's a backhanded insult to whoever I'm talking to now, and if you expect that to produce a correction or apology for my original claims, get stuffed.
There he is. Speak of him and he comes like a dog. Well played millords your tantrum has made the comment section very cringeworthy and I learned a valuable lesson about interacting with anyone who mentions AI. Be sure to continue reaching out to me because I promise your raving will reach my inbox
Troll, your shit shows up in context links for other replies. I gotta scroll past you claiming absolution, en route to "I shidded." Fuck you.
You told me to look elsewhere, and I find you sneering about how you're done sneering.
'It's not art because you're shallow idiots' is not an argument.
Functional adults can also draw incomprehensible squiggles, and haters insist that has magic qualia. Like any napkin scribble fully captures artistic intent, but a crystal clear depiction of a concept is disqualified.
It's not art and you're shallow idiots, happy now?
Well, incidentally I'm not particularly interested in arguing with people who are a certain level beyond touching grass for the foreseeable future. I don't actually set out to change anyone's mind, you actually just asked a very interesting question in this thread so I engaged.
If you are genuinely interested in exploring deeper, you should check out all the other places this comment section went. Some other people made some very excellent points. I can't guarantee anyone can make you see art the way people who actually love art do, but you should at least be entertained.
'It is too late, I have already drawn you as the soyjak.'
You never cared about this topic. You just wanna be in a club.
Hold on, getting my "art club" medal to show you. Plz make a prompt of it. You know, in good faith and stuff
I think it’s really weird how people who are categorically opposed to considering AI generated to be “art” seem really uncomfortable with the idea that some art can just be really bad or mediocre.
I concur with the sad detective, but disagree on one point. The prompt can be art in itself. After all, it's literature, and literature is art. But the output of a machine that you feed that literature into isn't art. It's a commission, a request for someone else to draw a picture. But because no one is actually drawing a picture, the picture produced is not art. At best, it's a preview of what it might look like of someone did draw the thing.
Like a photograph? A machine actually produced the image, the human just indicated what they would like the image to be of.
I feel like there's a lot less need to apply caveats and exceptions if we accept that a machine can create art, but that what makes art interesting is what the person using the machine puts into the process.
If I take a picture of a bird with my phone while walking past, it's less impressive than in I carefully find the right shot and angle, and meticulously take a photo. Same for an oil painting.
Some methods of creating an image require less work than others. What matters isn't the difficulty, but what you actually put into it.
Direct correlations, like I told mindbleach. A camera is a tool that does exactly what the photographer makes it do. An image generator takes the place of a commissioned artist. You describe what you want to see, and the machine generates it. Prompters aren't artists, they're commissioners. And since machines aren't artists either, the output of a such a machine isn't art.
Why do you draw a distinction between the "direct correlation" of a camera and how an image generator works? Image generators are just as deterministic as a camera is. If you give it the same inputs, it returns the same output. A lot of tools implicitly put a random input with the user supplied input, but if you keep that the same, there's no difference.
Do you know how they generally work? Technically, not from what an interface presents you with since that's variable.
Beyond that, I don't think that determinism or simple relationships between action and output are what constitutes an art tool either. Otherwise any artistic tool that intentionally plays with randomness wouldn't be art, and neither would a complicated tool or medium.
I'd go further and say appreciation is enough. If bliss.jpg was taken accidentally, it would mean the same thing to all the people who saw it.
This idea that beauty requires deliberate authorship is giving creationism.
Well, in that regard I'd agree. I don't think beauty and art are the same though. :)
Something is art, in my opinion, if it's it's presented as art or perceived as art. I think art is often more interesting if someone puts more thought, effort and skill into it. Beauty and aesthetics are a different thing.
That is one of the more baffling tells for the sneer-club absolutists. How can a person spend hours tweaking a block of text and not imbue it with meaning?
But consider: I don't play any instruments. I have written music. If you're hearing it, did I make that?
The text can have meaning, but the image generated when you feed that text into a machine does not. You have no control over what the machine does with your inputs—there is no direct correlation between the words you type and the resulting image. If you're commissioning an artist to make a work for you, then no matter how much care you put into describing the picture you want to see, you aren't the one drawing it.
If there's a direct correlation between the music you write and the output of a machine interpreting it, then yes.
How can an image not mean anything?
Your control over what the machine does is that input. It put your ideas into a JPEG, and that JPEG put those ideas into my brain. What do you mean, that cannot have meaning?
But it's not music. Right? The part you're listening to, the playback or the recording, is just a machine doing things. What you're hearing is not music. It's something else, somehow. What is it? Fuck if I know, but y'all are convinced there's some other thing that a song can be.
Re: images. You have no control over what the machine does. You give it a prompt, it generates an image, you decide it's good enough and save the picture, or it's not good enough and tweak the prompt. You don't control the machine. It doesn't put your ideas into a jpeg, it generates a jpeg that's consistent with the description you gave. If that picture is also consistent with your ideas, cool. You can't give the machine an idea to put into the JPEG in the first place, because the machine cannot have ideas.
Re: music. The part I'm listening to, the playback or the recording, is a machine doing things that have a direct correlation with your input. You do control the machine, because it only does precisely what you tell it to do. You decide where every individual note goes, how every individual note sounds. There is, again, direct correlation between your input and the output.
Tweaking the prompt is control. The tool is weird and limited, but that is how you use it.
If you can describe your ideas, then an image consistent with that description... contains your ideas.
Damn, you're right, so anything conveyed by the image must come from a human being. Wild.
Re: music, all the music I've written is procedural.