Scared for the same reason I found last year's 'Ghibli filter' craze upsetting, I would have personally hated to have seen this artist's legacy used for promoting AI image generation.
In case that happened then the rest of the world would probably appreciate the art, and a subset of it, the artist (and even a small subset of ~whole Internet-connected population is a lot of people). Some silver lining, perhaps.
I like the idea that a piece of art, in addition of ultimately ending up as pixels on my screen, is also a window into a world that has been dreamt up by real human imagination, driven by their hopes and fears.
Semiconductors based generation may give me the first part, but not the second.
I'm speaking for myself here, I agree with your point though.
> I like the idea that a piece of art, in addition of ultimately ending up as pixels on my screen, is also a window into a world that has been dreamt up by real human imagination, driven by their hopes and fears.
I guess this actually defines the fringe between ai-art enjoyers and haters - some people prefer what art does to their imagination, while others look at what art does to others'
Going further, the latter perspective may not even be about "what art doe to others", but about being able to talk about it.
This friction has been present for a long time, probably since before printed media, and way before anyone had any notions about generative AI. You can see it particularly clearly at the border between pop-culture and nerd world. Think of works like, e.g. "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings", or "Game of Thrones" - hugely popular, but you have two distinct groups that don't mix well: people who enjoy the work of fiction for its intrinsic characteristics (like lore/worldbuilding), vs. people who enjoy it as social object, giving a different flavor to the daily socializing with friends. Nerds vs. Normies, if you like. They talk past each other a lot.
Prompting is to coded 2d/3d art what ZBrush is to Blender. If you believe an OpenSCAD construct can be artistic, then it must be the case for prompting, too.
> In case that happened then the rest of the world would probably appreciate the art
What art?
We’re talking about generated pictures, aka slop, not art made by a real human.
And I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention but people seem to be pretty tired of the slop. I don’t think it would be appreciated nearly as much as you think.
This definition of "slop" doesn't cut reality just quite at the joints.
People are tired of marketing. AI generated slop people are annoyed with, is garbage produced for marketing reasons, and it's distinctly noticeable precisely because all the bottom-feeder marketing houses switched to using it. But it's not the AI itself that's the problem here. Slop was here before, but it was made with cheap protein-based image generators. Silicon-based generators are just cheaper.
> This definition of "slop" doesn't cut reality just quite at the joints.
> People are tired of marketing.
You know what, I'll give you that one. I find most generated art pretty tasteless, but I have enjoyed the occasional piece of fiction with small generated elements for atmosphere. I still hesitate to call it 'art', but I will grant it's not all 'slop'.
But for the second part:
> But it's not the AI itself that's the problem here. Slop was here before, but it was made with cheap protein-based image generators. Silicon-based generators are just cheaper.
I think the problem is how much cheaper it is now. I would estimate generating a picture is at least 2 orders of magnitude cheaper than paying even a cheap human, so with the same amount of money being invested into slop we are due for - and seeing - a huge tidal wave of it, because the same amount of money turns out way more crap now.