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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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.