[dtn]

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what people use "slop" to describe.

> Most human made art is slop too.

I'm assuming you're using the term "slop" to describe low-quality, unpolished works, or works where the artist has been too ambitious with their skill level.

Let me put it this way:

Every piece of art that is made, is a series of decisions. The artist uses their lived experience, their tastes and their values to create something that's meaningful to them. Art doesn't need to have a high-level of technical expertise to be meaningful to others. It's fundamentally about communication from artists to their audience. To this point, I don't believe there's such a thing as "bad art" (all works have something to say about the artist!).

In contrast, when you prompt an image generator, you're handing over the majority of the decisions to the algorithm. You can put in your subject matter, poses, even add styles, but how much is really being communicated here? Undoubtedly it would require a high level of technical skill to render similarly by hand, but that's missing the forest for the trees- what is the image saying? There's a reason why most "good" AI-generated images generally have a lot of human curation and editing.

Here's an example of some "slop" from the AI Art Turing Test (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-ar...) from a while back: https://i.imgur.com/RAMFKP1.jpeg There's definitely a high level of technical expertise that a human would require to paint something like this. But it's very clearly AI-generated. Can you figure out why?

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As a side note, here's a human-made piece that I appreciate a lot. https://i.imgur.com/AZiiZj1.jpeg The longer you explore it, the more the story unfolds, it's quite lovely. On the other hand, when I focus on the details in AI-generated works, there's not much else to see.

[esperent]

> I think you fundamentally misunderstand what people use "slop" to describe.

I don't think I do, actually. It's not a term with a technical definition, but in simple terms it means art that is obviously AI, because it has the sheen, weird hands, inconsistencies, weird framing or thematic elements that are hard to describe without an art degree but which we instinctively know is wrong, or is just plain bad.

I used the term slop to describe bad humans art too, but I meant something subtly different. It's a term that has been used to describe bad work of all kinds from humans since long before there was AI.

In this case, it's art from humans who are learning what makes good art. You say there's no bad art, and it's a valid viewpoint, but I'd say bad art is when the artist has a clear goal in their mind, but they lack the skills to realize it. Nonetheless, they share it for feedback and approval anyway, and by doing that on a site like DeviantArt they learn and grow as artists. But meanwhile, to me or anyone else who is visiting that site to find "good", meaningful art made by skilled artists, this is slop. Human slop, not AI slop.

[noch]

> here's a human-made piece that I appreciate a lot

I like your art. I'm glad you made it. What I like most is that it's fun to look at and think about which is what you say you intended. I hope I get to see more of your art.

> To this point, I don't believe there's such a thing as "bad art" (all works have something to say about the artist!).

As a classically trained oil painter, I know for sure there is bad art especially because I've made more than enough bad art for one lifetime.

Bad art begins with a lack of craftsmanship and is exemplified by a poor use of materials/media and forms, or a lack of knowledge of those forms (e.g. poor anatomical knowledge, misunderstanding the laws of perspective), or an overly literal representation of forms (a photograph is better at being literal, for example).

> Here's an example of some "slop" from the AI Art Turing Test […] But it's very clearly AI-generated. Can you figure out why?

It's only "clearly AI-generated" because we know that AI is capable of generating art. If you saw this without that context you wouldn't immediately say "AI!" Instead, you'd give it a normal critique that you'd give a student or colleague: I'd say:

- there's too much repetition of large forms.

- there's an unpleasant hierarchy of values and not enough separation of values.

- The portrait of the human is the focus of the image yet it has been lost in the other forms.

- The composition can improve with more breathing room in the foreground or background which are too busy.

- Here look at this Frazetta!

However, my rudimentary list could just as easily be turned into prompts to be used to refine the image and experiment with variations. And, perhaps you'd consider that to be a human making decisions?

[dtn]

> I like your art. I'm glad you made it. What I like most is that it's fun to look at and think about which is what you say you intended. I hope I get to see more of your art.

Just to be clear, it's not my art.