Am I the only one really depressed about AI art?

On despair and finding hope in dinnerware

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it hard not to be upset about the new wave of generative AI art. If you missed the story, OpenAI updated their image-creation engine very recently – and the new version is scarily good. The distorted pictures we’re used to seeing with too many fingers and weird nonsense text are gone. Now it makes pictures far closer to something you’d see from a professional (albeit derivative) visual artist, illustrator, graphic designer, or photographer.

Of course, OpenAI’s image creator will make nothing truly original. It’s like a carrion bird pecking indiscriminately at the arts, and regurgitating its foul slurry into the eager, open mouths of the public.

Frankly, I fucking hate it.

One Reddit user transformed a meme into a realistic photo using the latest engine.

I know there are always hyperbolic and hysterical predictions when new technology appears. You might recall that TV was dangerous brain rot, 3D printers were going to lead to a gun epidemic, and realistic video games would make children violent. I’ve already seen many moral panics come and go in my 36 years. I was sure I’d never be one of the people standing on the shore, shouting at the waves as the tide comes in.

But I really do think that Generative AI — particularly any flavour which dabbles in the arts — is an affront to humanity.

Perhaps I’m taking this more personally than most. All my life I’ve been compelled, on some level or another, to draw. I wouldn’t call myself an artist, precisely, but I am reasonably proficient at sketching. I wasn’t born with any God-given gift or natural aptitude. Instead, I improved by being prolific. Some of my earliest memories are being seated at a restaurant, happily doodling in a notebook while the adults around me talked. I haven’t stopped since then.

A drawing of my living room.

Plenty has been written about why people make art. But for me, being able to sketch a scene is to capture time itself. To show someone else is to share, not just what I’m looking at, but how I see.

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a wanker. Everyone has their own motivations for making art, and not everyone feels the need to intellectualise their doodles. But what drives the compulsion shapes the product. You take from yourself, give the universe your art, and are eventually rewarded with a style or a way of seeing that’s unique.

Another drawing of mine, a house in Bondi opposite one of my favourite coffee shops.

AI is does none of this. It’s Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together with stolen parts, but without the nascent humanity or, unfortunately, the angry villagers bent on its destruction.

Personally, when I look at any image that’s been made with AI, I feel a bone-deep sadness. The images are profoundly hollow. They contain no story, no struggle, no reckoning, no craft. It makes a mockery of one of humanity’s most redeemable traits – its compulsion to create beauty for its own sake.

The internet is already flooded with generative AI excrement. It’s only going to get worse. In this tsunami how will we find anything that is worthy or good? How will art or the written word retain any of its value?

On my weaker days, I despair. But usually I can see a glimmer of hope. I find it in mugs and dinnerware, of all places.

Let me explain.

There was a time where fine porcelain was an expression of artistic mastery. Plates, bowls and teacups were considered beautiful if they were delicate and uniformly decorated. A full set was a precious thing. But then factories came along, and fine dinnerware with identical plates and designs became the standard. Too much perfection can be monotonous.

These days, thin, bone-white dinnerware is worth very little. Meanwhile, something that’s clearly and obviously made by hand has much more value. To see the potters thumbprints in an artfully wonky mug, is to know it’s been touched by a human. We inherently know there is value in that.

Two buildings in Surfers Paradise

This, I hope, will be the case for art and writing. As the world gets clogged with a perfect but homogenised machine-made paste, more people will seek out creative works which show the personality of their maker.

Perhaps this will lead to a resurgence of physical media, printed papers, oil on canvas, sketches in pencil. As I’ve written before, big media companies are hastening their own demise by rushing to adopt AI. But from those ashes, there could be another resurgence of indy creators and publishers.

Hopefully, these will be the kind of people who don’t ‘make content’ to feed a hungry algorithm, and instead write stories, paint pictures and film videos. Who create things that matter, not because their work is overly worthy, but because it’s unique and born from human experience.

And may we all get to enjoy more art which has thumbprints, for feeling their indents is to hold hands with the maker themselves.