Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
I have a degree in Studio Arts in addition to being a software developer (and recently I&#x27;ve started making a lot of creative work with AI). Back when I was in school, there was already plenty of debate about &#x27;what is &quot;Art&quot;&#x27;? It&#x27;s always been hotly contested. Most of my teachers felt that &#x27;technique&#x27; was not Art. Others were more purists – life painters, etc – and felt that, no, technique <i>is</i> art.<p>Duchamp poked the art establishment in the eye with his &#x27;readymades&#x27; (urinals on the gallery wall, etc.) Warhol with his &#x27;factory&#x27; making silkscreens.<p>The &#x27;reverse Monet&#x27; (too lazy to link) that caused such an uproar when it was shared last week was ironic – apparently people aren&#x27;t aware that the impressionists themselves were considered &#x27;not artists&#x27; by a lot of people at the time.<p>The camera and photography made many painters sit up and say, &#x27;hey, it can&#x27;t just be about &quot;image&quot; anymore&#x27; – enter abstract expressionism, fauvism, cubism, etc. Work that shifted the focus from the image represented in the painting (&#x27;a window into a world&#x27;) onto the surface of the canvas itself: Rothko, Albers, etc.<p>The thing is, people have wild misconceptions about what this technology does. Many clearly think it&#x27;s a photocopier. As if StableDiffusion is hiding copies of all these works inside. When in fact what&#x27;s been done is to take all of this online knowledge and create an incredible new tool with it. Like a music synthesizer times a million.<p>It&#x27;s understandable why this technology makes people uncomfortable. There are legit fears about displacement, economic uncertainty, etc. But we are fundamentally tool makers – it&#x27;s arguably intrinsically part of what makes us human (borrowing from Carl Sagan&#x27;s &quot;Dragons of Eden&quot;).<p>If I were back in the art department last century, I&#x27;m pretty sure we&#x27;d be really excitedly discussing how these new tools will enable entirely new forms of expression. And sure, there&#x27;d be the old guard saying it was awful, and &#x27;not Art&#x27;.<p>This is a really interesting debate – I just wish it scratched deeper than the surface more often than it does, with a bit more historical context.