u/Pato_De_Sapatos

To get some things out of the way before making my point about this,

-I do think AI can be considered art. Art is subjective, so anything can be considered art if you see it as such (does NOT mean it is necessarily good art. Art can suck too)

-I don't immediately hate anyone who made art/someone's work just because it's AI. I dislike the art form, not the artist.

Ok, now, to better explain my point, i'm gonna state my arguments about it and also try to answer a few counters i've seen being made against it.

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Traditional AI art is objectively shallow because not only do you not make it yourself, you also couldn't possibly convey your own individuality/style as a artist for that is counter to how AI even works.

You do not make the art yourself because, even though you have some sort of input into it, it is not you making the product itself. You're only directing something to make it as closest as you want it to be, without having to actually put in the effort to learn and master the harder aspects of making the thing.

A comparison i could make that you've definitely seen a million times before is that making AI art is the same idea as ordering pizza. You tell whoever's gonna make your pizza what you want it to have, and they'll give you the product with those things. AI art is you telling the machine what you want in the drawing through prompts, and it delivers you that.

"But there's effort put into prompting." Indeed, there is. SOME amount of effort. Isn't a lot, though. It's similar to writing down an idea you had for something, or just very basic coding. Requires SOME amount of thought and some things you have to take into consideration, but not nearly as much as, say, drawing something with a pencil and trying to make it look good.

To add to this, i've seen a lot of people talking about how they have prompted things hundreds of times to achieve the result they wanted, and how there is definitely some meaningful effort put into that. Sure, i won't deny that it's more effort. But the thing is:

Effort does NOT necessarily mean value, and i know a lot of Pro-AI people agree with this. If i spend my entire life sweeping floors, (putting a lot of time into doing mostly the same thing over and over again, see a pattern?) does my sweeping of floors become renowed in any way? Special, even? Not really. Not unless i add something to it, which i will bring up later on.

I've seen quite a few people saying that AI art is a sort of cheat-code into making good, interesting, complex art, without having to actually put in any effort or learning all the nuances that go into making it, and the answer to why i don't think this is the case at all ties in with my next argument:

The way that AI art is made means it can't be meaningfully original or unique, since it is made by essentially feeding a program with other people's arts and artstyles, and delivering something based on those things it has without being able to create something outside of that. In other words, it is inherently incapable of making something that is entirely new/unique, for it lacks imagination and new ideas completely.

This leaves a final result that is, while visually impressive and/or objectively pretty a lot of the time, is not really unique or interesting and is closer to giving your idea to someone else and having them make it. All of that considered makes AI art a very shallow and unimpressive form of art.

To finish, another thing i've seen a lot of people doing, especially on this sub, is saying how their AI art is actually meaningful because they've edited/added other things over it, and to that i say, yeah, you're right. You made it more meaningful and interesting than before.

If you add something of your own that hasn't been AI-generated into your AI art, you are creating what might be the only actually interesting thing in that piece of art. You're actually doing the very opposite of what AI art is, you're putting effort into making something look more interesting, and you don't need to contain yourself to what other people have made to achieve that. That's great, and i'm absolutely supportive of people doing that more often.

Not necessarily the biggest fan of doing it over AI art since, all things considered, you're adding to a rather weak basis because of all those things i mentioned about AI being shallow, but it is an addition nonetheless.

If you have any counter arguments to my ideas, feel free to state them on the comments, i'm more than willing to discuss this and i will not be toxic about it