Review
Humans include some of their experiences and ideas in their art. This creates "puzzles" that the fans can solve. For example, you learn something about the artist's life, then you look at their pictures, and realize that some part of the picture represents something that happened to the artists. Like maybe some woman in the picture is similar to painter's wife, or maybe a daughter who died young. And now that you know it, the picture appears more meaningful to you; you know the story behind it.
But with AI there is no "puzzle" to solve, no story to learn; the picture is what it is simply because other existing pictures were made that way. Even if the AI makes something original, it will be original in the sense of "random", not in the sense of "the artist felt a strong emotion, and found a unique way to express it". (At most, the AI will be able to simulate a human feeling strong emotions, and make the art the simulated human would make. Which is... not really what we want.)
It's like, you can discuss math with the AI and it can be better than talking to a human. But if you ask the AI "what did you do during winter holidays?", there are just two options: First, it will lie, and tell you something a human could say when asked the same thing. Second, it will tell the truth: "as a LLM, I don't really experience winter holidays". Both options are disappointing, each in a different way.
(On a second thought, there is an analogical problem with human artists: just because someone found a nice way to express an emotion, doesn't mean they actually feel it. Maybe the guy who writes amazing poems about love then goes home and beats his wife. But we prefer to imagine that artists' feelings are genuine.)
Just an additional observation here. Similar concerns can also arise without AI being involved.
There's an artist whose works I've seen, and I am wondering if he is cheating. (Not a public figure that anyone here is likely to have heard of.) He makes strikingly photorealistic paintings on canvas. I have seen these canvases close enough to be sure that they really are painted, not printed. And I know that there are artists who indeed perform artistic miracles of photorealism. But I still have the suspicion that this artist is doing a paint-over of something printed onto the canvas. Perhaps a photograph of his intended scene, reduced to grayscale, edge-enhanced, and printed very faintly, to resemble and serve the same purpose as an artist's preliminary pencil underdrawing. Then he might paint using a full colour print of the image alongside as reference.
This suspicion somewhat devalues his art in my eyes. This method (if that is what he is doing) eliminates the need for any skill at draughtsmanship, but at the same time it removes the possibility of any creativity in the draughtsmanship. And if he is then slavishly copying by hand the original photograph onto this automated underdrawing, then he is just being a human photocopier. The only human thing left is the technical skills of mixing and blending colours, and handling a brush.
I've heard that Jehovah's Witnesses use a similar technique in their Watchtower publications for years. Except, sometimes they change things, for example if they want to make a Biblical scene of some guys fighting with swords, they just make them hold sticks, take a photo, and then somehow repaint it, but replacing the sticks with swords.
I've spoken with a morally-indginant professional artist about this issue, and my own conclusion is that her identification as "an artist" gives her a sense of specialness, purpose and value in the world; so the possibility that anyone and everyone can now "create art" threatens to make her identity and chosen career irrelevant. This would be a profound loss of power, and thus provokes an understandable fear reaction from a deep level of her identity.
That would explain the artist, but what about the fans? Maybe the fans also consider themselves special by having a "connection" with the special artist.
But what about Hatsune Miku fans? It could be interesting to explore where they draw the line.
Something I've been surprised by is just how fierce opposition to AI art has been. To clarify, I'm not talking about people who dislike AI art because they think it looks worse, but specifically, people with extreme animus towards the very concept of AI art, regardless of its aesthetic quality or artistic merit.
I'm interested in this issue because it's just one component of a broader societal conversation about AI's role in human society and it's helpful to see where the fault lines are. I suspect the intensity of the reaction to AI art stems from this serving as a proxy battlefield for larger anxieties about human value and purpose in an increasingly AI influenced world
My impression of this opposition comes largely from a few incidents where there has been an allegation that AI was used to create some form of art, and the overwhelming reddit and other social media comments treating it as a moral outrage. Please see the reddit threads at the bottom of this post for more details. Let me share a few incidents I found interesting:
In July of this past year, there was a scandal over a Tedeschi Trucks band concert poster that might have been AI-generated. Over two concerts, all 885 posters made available were sold and many people seemed to like the poster. Despite this, once the allegations were made, the response was immediate and intense - fans were outraged to the point where the band had to investigate the artist's creative process files, apologize to their community, and donate all profits from the poster sales to charity.
Over New Year's 2023, Billy Strings faced a similar situation when a poster and t-shirt from their run were alleged to have leveraged AI art. What's fascinating is that Billy himself had vetted and approved the art, thinking it was cool. The poster and t-shirts also sold quite well. But once AI generation was suspected, fans freaked out and Billy Strings felt compelled to make an apology video, stating he'd want to "kick the artist in the pecker" and would consider it fraud if proven to be AI-generated.
A new restaurant in Toronto perfectly captures how deep this opposition runs. The restaurant put up an inexpensive vinyl wrap on a large brick exterior, displaying a large artistic mural (so no painting took place)— which may have been AI-generated. People didn't just criticize the art on the mural - they called for boycotts of the restaurant, alleged the use of an AI art generated mural was stealing jobs and even questioned the authenticity of the restaurant's food based solely on the possibility of AI involvement in their art.
What's striking about these reactions is how they reveal a deeper cultural anxiety. These aren't isolated incidents - whenever this topic comes up, there's a vocal contingent that responds with genuine moral indignation. The arguments they make on the surface often feel incomplete or unpersuasive, so I wanted to evaluate what the possible kinds of arguments against AI art are.
I should note that this isn't an entirely new concern - we've seen similar patterns before - from the introduction of photography to the advent of recorded music to digital editing tools etc. I will note that we already use extensive technological assistance in art creation - much of which already is some form of "AI".
Before getting into the constructed arguments, I will note that most anti-AI art crusaders seem to hold an unstated premise: that AI-generated art provides no value to the world. A world with more AI art, all other things being equal, is not in any way better than a world with less AI art. IE in the story above about the restaurant, if the restaurant didn't have any mural, that would be better than having an AI generated mural. It seems many people fail to appreciate that AI art is already creating new art styles, winning awards when people don't know it's AI-made, and helping people who couldn't make art before actually create things.
There's also an interesting selection effect at play here: we only notice and talk about AI art in the cases where it's revealed as AI-generated. There's probably lots of AI art out there that people enjoy without ever knowing its origin, which skews our perception of AI art's quality and creativity. And many critics treat AI as if it's replacing artists entirely, rather than being a tool that augments human creativity - like how cameras and digital editing expanded what artists could do.
One: The Human Connection Argument
People value art not just for its visual qualities but as a form of connection to human creativity and experience. Psychological essentialism - our tendency to believe objects carry something more than their physical matter - explains why we cherish game-worn jerseys, autographs, original paintings etc.. When viewers discover art they connected with is AI-generated, they experience a form of essentialist violation - the human "essence" they believed was embedded in the work never existed. Arguably, if all AI art was disclosed as such, people would feel less upset about it.
(I also wonder how many people who oppose AI art would actually prefer an AI piece designed to look human-made over a human piece intentionally mimicking an AI aesthetic?)
Two: The Systemic Change Argument
This isn't really about any specific piece of AI art, some of which may be okay or even good. Rather, it's a slippery slope argument: if we don't stop the proliferation of AI art, because there is no natural barrier to its spread in terms of cost, there will now be art everywhere — but because there isn't a good curation mechanism, we could end up in a world inundated by mediocre art — a form of AI slop, which could overwhelm our senses and ability to digest art, thus taking away from the actual good art we want to be appreciating. Just as social media's flood of content has made it harder to find and deeply appreciate meaningful work amid the noise, AI art could accelerate this dynamic dramatically.
Three: The Economic Innovation Argument
AI art threatens to undermine the entire economy that supports artists. I think embedded in this argument is the idea that AI art could replace some functions that artists typically do - not the meaningful, innovative work, but rather some of the dull commercial work that financially sustains them. These commercial projects serve as de facto subsidies, enabling artists to create their truly significant art. When you take these subsidies away, artists won't be in a financial position to create their more meaningful work. In other words, AI art might kill the conditions necessary for artistic excellence to emerge.
It's unclear how much of this belief is predicated on the current existing artists and fear of unemployment, or about the idea there should be some specific minimum number of artists in the world. In the year 2050, should we have the same number of artists? Twice as much? Half as many?
Four: The Human Flourishing Argument
This isn't really about AI art per se, but rather how we view the future of our society. Many people view the core promise of technology to help us live richer lives with more time for things like art, beauty, and other parts of the "good life". But instead of using innovations like AI to deliver on this promise, our neo-liberal optimization-obsessed society keeps pushing us to work more and create less. Art isn't just something humans do on the side - it's central to what makes a human life meaningful. We face a stark choice: we can use technology to maximize our time for genuine human flourishing, or continue down our current path where we sacrifice these essential experiences in an endless pursuit of economic productivity.
Five: The Metaphysical Impact Argument
There's something intangible but real that's lost when art isn't human-generated. Even if you can't consciously tell the difference between AI and human art, the origin matters in some fundamental way that affects how the art influences us. In the Billy Strings and Tedeshi Trucks examples above, people were buying these prints — but that doesn't matter, because even though they thought the art was good in the moment, their longer term appreciation would suffer. This isn't about conscious appreciation - it's about some deeper level of impact or meaning.
The above concerns may or may not be valid, and like everything else in life, I’m sure its a combination of multiple arguments, but collectively, these points hopefully explain why so many feel so strongly about AI art.
Further reading: