I came close to gifting a dear friend and AI generated work of art - my prompt, my idea but not my art. Reading this Wired column made me glad that my effort had failed - I had to come up with something more personal and original. In my case, the AI was not able to execute on my vision and what it produced was a far cry from what I imagined was possible.
I would not have been able to create what I had in mind on my own lacking the artistic talent needed to do so. However, I had an interesting idea that a competent artist may have been able to do something with. But that would not feel genuine or real - the artist is supposed to draw on their own imagination to make art, not try to fit into someone else's desire to express themselves artistically.
..any genuine encounter with art completely obliterates the usual logic of fairness and economic value. When you stand in awe of a Hokusai painting, you are not thinking, typically, about the price you paid for admission to the museum, or wondering about whether it was a good deal. The gift of these encounters leaves the recipient inspired to create something herself, and so the generative energy continues to pass from one person to another.
There is a temptation to believe that AI can lend wings to the imagination of people who like me lack the skills to make it reality. But as my own experience showed, it's not so easy and I was glad to have failed - despite initial disappointment. It would be a sad world where we no longer have "genuine encounter with art" and random hacks were getting AI to generate pseudo-art and it crowds out what is real.
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