AI Art is a Tragedy

If you ask 10 people what art is, you will get 10 answers. The more you try to nail down the answer, the more it slips away.

That's a good thing. Art is not some solved thing like engineering, where the wrong answer can lead to disaster and the right answer does not. Opinions existing in harmony (and sometimes not) makes the world a beautiful, vibrant place to live. As much as anything else, this is emblematic of art.

That being said, I've always been most interested in paintings where I can glimpse some small part of the person who made it. As an artist, I try to find the artist, so to speak. To my mind, art is a form of connection as much as it is a skill or craft. 

In more emotional words, you can say it's a kind of proof of having lived. 

It might sound strange, but sometimes when I look at paintings in a museum, I walk out strongly believing things about the people who made them. Things like "I would have loved to have met you when you were alive" or even "wow that guy was probably a jerk." After looking at a painting for a while it can feel like you made a friend. Even for paintings I struggle to connect with on a personal level, I nearly always find a way to respect their confidence, self-awareness and criticality. That much comes through no matter what-- if the paintings in the museum are any good, anyway.

Sometimes paintings are intended to be communicative, sometimes not. All the same, I think paintings do have a voice. 

I think artists look at paintings differently than non-artists. Knowing about something changes how you appreciate it.

When we look at a red part of the painting we might think, why did you choose red here? Why did you choose this level of saturation? Why did you make it more purple than that red? Stuff like that.

We ask questions. We try to understand. Sometimes it's to learn, or for fun, or just to appreciate how skilled the person was. Maybe the answers are ingenious like the masters of old, or maybe they are obscure and hacky. Maybe they are lazy, uninspired. Maybe the artist makes it obvious in their painting that they themselves don't understand the tools they are using. Maybe it's obvious they are never-the-less having a ton of fun. These are all part of where the personality of a painting comes from.

As someone who is analyzing, looking for the reasons behind decisions, I approach it as someone who thinks artists are interesting people, and wants to get a feeling for the person who made it.

How should we think of good art versus bad art?

It doesn't have much to do with skill level in my mind. No, I think the clearest marker of 'bad' art has more to do with the artist themselves...

These are paintings which, when you go looking for answers, you find a vague shrug or sigh. They simply didn't care. I'm not saying every painting has to be some masterpiece or the result of great effort. But if you take a painting to the finish line, put it on display, and the only thing it seems to say at the end is "Eh. Whatever. I didn't care," then I think that's bad. 

Be bad, be lazy, be offensive, whatever. That's fine. I make bad art all the time. But at least care about what you are doing. At least show me something. 

Anyway, I hope you'll understand where I am going with this as it relates to AI. 

For many reasons, the least of all being categorically, I don't see AI art as real art. But that's not where my main distaste of it comes from. I am used to understanding art as a manifestation of passion, something I can interact with and learn from. Something that lets me see into another person's life and dare I say it, soul. To see paintings done without any emotion behind them-- to see paintings with no voice or anything to say, to not even be able to describe them as indifferent-- that's just uncanny.

AI art is creepy.

You can't look at a painting generated by AI and think "wow that stroke is beautiful" or "wow you really got lazy here, huh?" There's no relatability. Even saying it's 'bad' doesn't even really make sense when you think about it. It's not good, it's not bad, it's nothing at all. You can't engage with it as you would a human-made artwork. 

Copying an AI painting feels gross, like what I imagine touching a corpse feels like. It's like something out of a Stephen King novel-- it looks familiar, speaks words like something familiar, but when you reach out and touch it, you realize it's not human at all. 

I remember a great viral post a couple years ago that said AI proved the existence of the soul, by showing us art made without one. I really agree.

To explain the difference between AI and human made art until now, artists have pointed out the obvious. We point out the number of fingers being wrong, or a mistake in the logic of the drawing, and so on. These things are easy to point out and easy to understand. But as AI models fix those mistakes, where will we be? 

AI art gets better all the time. Technology can't be put back in Pandora's box. We are headed to a future where, particularly to laypeople, there is no difference between AI and human works, other than what we artists will be able to explain verbally. 

And I don't think we have many convenient ways to explain the differences.

We may turn to explaining the difference between paintings with more emotional language. Or, we may go the other way and try to explain technical concepts, like shape language, anatomy, or line quality, or style. But in my opinion these are not convincing.  Emotion and jargon are both extremely difficult to explain and I struggle to imagine them being worth the effort to listen to either.

Well, I think many of us artists won't even try to explain. We will give up by that point. Frankly, it's exhausting.

I think this is a problem.

At first I didn't want to give AI art any attention at all. I hate doing pointless things-- and I saw all the AI discourse as supremely pointless. AI art has nothing to do with art as I understand it, and it has nothing to do with me, I thought. People are just being angry online-- haha, classic. Plus, some people might be getting something positive out of it, I guess. If we can ignore all the other problems with AI like environmental concerns, loss of jobs, ethics of art theft to train models, a pervasive and seemingly ever-encroaching dark path for humanity, etc, then maybe it's not so bad?

I saw CEOs generating Ghibli-style profile pictures and the numerous AI advertisements for political parties posted along the street during my walk to work. I didn't think it was worth taking an active stance against. I know that I'm biased.

Then one day I heard someone say "I wish I could draw, but what's the point of drawing now that we have AI?" I heard it said casually from a coworker. Then I heard it from another person. And then from another friend. And then similar sentiments from another coworker. 

This made no sense to me. 

But I kept hearing it. And I kept having experiences where I'd talk to people who seemed to think AI represented some new age of art, or some democratized skill that would enable everyone to become an artist, or something. Basically, people really didn't seem like they could tell the difference. 

I love art. I love people who make art.  I know AI doesn't have anything to do with art. But is that the same for everyone else? And what are we losing when people can't tell anymore?

When I realize that from now on AI will just be there for all further future generations, well... It changed how I was thinking, somehow. I can't see it as anything other than a great shame. 

Proliferation of AI is not just an erosion of ethos for artists. It's a new barrier to our collective cultural inheritance.  It's a confusing new thing that will need to be adapted to over the coming decades and be counterbalanced by art education all over again. In the meantime, there will be casualties, annoyances, and countless wrenches thrown into the cogs of the minds of developing young artists. Small, but certain casualties.

This really eats me up inside. 

The counter is, I think, exhaustingly, just public awareness and education about what art is... This sort of moment has happened many times throughout art history, like the camera being an obvious example as a revolutionary change. So in that sense it's not unprecedented. 

I would argue though that between photos and paintings, which everyone could tell the difference between, AI art is rather gross how it crawls into bed and acts like it was always there beside us. It's like the cuckoo bird pushing the other eggs out of the nest. 

This can and will confuse people. 

Well, I guess we will see over the coming years how AI use really settles into society and gets adopted. Frankly it's not looking so hot in 2026 because the insane AI bubble pushing solutions to problems we didn't have, and all these crazy economic pressures pushing AI into our faces... 

I would like to wrap this up with a small call to action for my peers. I think its easy to fall into apathy in this situation. But if you call yourself and artist, I believe you can make a difference during this tumultuous period of societal upheaval. 

I think its as simple as having pride in what you do. 

This isn't something that comes easily to all of us. But I think you should love what you do, and be your own best advocate. I genuinely think this will help out all of us. 

Even if you don't want to stand on a pedestal, shout your passion out loud and be judged, that's fine. Draw what you love and be proud of that-- that pride, and the record of you trying, has a value that can only come from you. It doesn't have have much to do with things like technical skill. If you can make art that is interesting to you, that is most of it, I think.

And, I guess if you feel up to it, try and explain it to the people around you too. The society we find ourselves born into, one relatively supportive and tolerant of our ilk, only came to pass from generations before us. It's not a given that in 50 years from now, painting as we know it will be of any particular relevance in society.

To those who will come after us, I think we owe it to them to show off how fun drawing is. 

Anyone with a real interest in learning to draw, or any craft, should do so. It's great time to learn to draw! No matter your age, no matter your situation, and regardless of technology. The value of doing it hasn't diminished at all. The erroneous thinking that it somehow has-- that is a tragedy we now face. You can be a part of the counter example just by enjoying what you do without reservation. 

Many of my peers may remain unbothered by the unfolding of this tragedy. If you think it doesn't involve you, of course I don't hold that against you. I hope you're right. But I know it involves me. 

 

I hope you will make your work.

See you next time.