I live in San Francisco, and my personal sample of “normal people” think AI generated imagery looks like shit, abhor the proliferation of slop, and are doing their best to avoid this stuff at all costs.
You can prompt up some really cool commercial-grade art within the limitations of the models.
Getting more precision and consistency in the images requires additional technical configuration and actual artistic skill such that it more resembles using Photoshop and similar software. But what can be done with prompting is a lot more impressive than what can be done with rudimentary Photoshop skills and a big photo library to work from.
And even if it was, it would be art stolen from the poor to profit the wealthy. The worst "art" there could possibly be. And then it's so tacky and mediocre on top of that.
Either way, I can't draw a line between art and non-art, but I can draw one between humans I respect and humans I don't.
We basically have the situation that some people thought they were super clever by finding out that you can steal from a blind beggar, enhancing their productivity, getting those results. Sure you can do that, they're blind after all, just yoink it; but you cannot undo it, and we all saw. A person who would do such a thing will never understand why people who would not do such a thing are appalled at them. And they think they don't have to care because they now have "AI" and can just brute force or work around consent. I don't know how exactly this will fall on their feet but what goes up will come down.
What is art? How is it not art? Collage is art, photoshop itself is used for cut n paste of photos, and people call that "art". AI image generators go through a much more interesting process to make their art.
In my experience there's a bit of a generation gap here (particularly outside the SF tech bubble). Parents excitedly gave e.g. giclée prints of AI-generated art of their adult children's pets to them as gifts last Christmas, but were met with muted-to-negative responses.
This feel like the same kind of problem as my favorite exec coming to me with an AI generated multi-page document explaining why the decisions he hired me to make are wrong.
It's on the same level as giving someone like, a box of chapsticks you picked up at Walgreens on the way over for Christmas dinner. No effort or thought, not really worth anyone's time, the giftee's or the gifter's.
That's one perspective. I would love so much to go back and revisit a birthday with my mom and be gifted a framed pic of my dog and I in matching outfits
Getting more precision and consistency in the images requires additional technical configuration and actual artistic skill such that it more resembles using Photoshop and similar software. But what can be done with prompting is a lot more impressive than what can be done with rudimentary Photoshop skills and a big photo library to work from.