[jprete]

There’s also a lack of actual communication. Yes, an AI image generator can stick a pattern into an otherwise totally different kind of image. But there’s no communicative meaning there other than what I just mentioned. There’s no cleverness, nothing interesting to discover in the details, no space where the imagination can fill things in because it’s all plainly arbitrary, no deeper meaning other than a shape embedded in a pattern fill, however complicated the fill might be.

I went looking at the details of the original spiral medieval town and all I found was a woman’s skirt standing on its own with no body. And I know perfectly well the AI isn’t trying to say anything clever with that.

[toddmorey]

That’s true. Even when AI learns to not put torso-less legs, the wonder will be gone.

Prior to AI, you’d stare at an image like this and I believe most of the magic was marveling at the cleverness & craft of the person who painstakingly created the illusion. That you could think, “wow I’d never have the patience, talent, or dedication to make something like that.”