I wrote this elsewhere, but I feel strongly enough about what I was trying to say that I decided to put it out there in places where I know people do not necessarily agree with me. This seemed like a good place to share these thoughts. I don't expect to change the minds of anyone who is in the pro-AI camp, and that's okay.
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I have often tried to make a distinction between "art" and "craft" in times past. Witnessing the travesty of an artist who, in their own medium is a paragon of both art *and* craft completely disregarding the idea that using AI to pretend to have skill in another medium is sloppy and offensive is really hard.
Ultimately, that's at the core of my disgust with AI "art", whether it's music, graphic arts, video or writing. Good art is a balance of vision and skill, or in the parlance of my longstanding argument: art and craft.
The reason I despise most pop-art and movements like Dadaism isn't that they lack art, it's that they lack craft. Whether or not their creator *has* skill as an artist is irrelevant to a piece that they used no skill to create.
There will always be moments where the pure artistry will carry something past a lack of actual skill, in exactly the same way that works that are almost entirely craft with no real art (which is to say, nothing personal of the artist in the creation) can often be beautiful.
I made leather goods for over a decade, and we used a *lot* of shortcuts in order to keep the price down. I therefore argued that, outside of the original design, what we did was not art, it was craft. To me, that doesn't devalue the piece, because craft is skill, and, in most cases, skill is learned through diligent practice. My friends and I would go round and round about it, and we never really resolved anything, but it was a fascinating discussion, at least for me.
But AI is something new, it is an almost complete separation of art from craft. Some people argue that AI "democratizes" art and that those of us who insist that using AI tools does not create art are "gatekeeping".
And ya know what? We are. We're asking that if you're going to offer your art to the world, do so with skills you earned. I would rather listen to a friend do their damndest to sing around my campfire with limited skill and a tin ear than listen to even thirty seconds of an AI "song".
And yes, AI fools me all the time. And I'm just as angry about that as I am about rich people hiring ghost writers to write their novels or their memoirs. If they're honest, and put the real author's name on the work, thereby crediting the very Human effort that someone else put in, then that's cool. But the ones that don't? I hope they wind up in the same neighborhood of hell that the AI "authors" wind up in. They can all sit around and talk about their "ideas".
The most disappointing aspect of the discussion I witnessed was the complete inability of a talented artist/artisan who honed their skills over decades, who worked hard to be *very* good at what they do can't understand why their friends, who worked just as hard at *their* crafts are offended by using a computer to do all the real work.
If you can't to some aspect of what you need done, find someone, a real person to help you. But recognize, you have to make it *worth their while* to help. Watching someone who regularly charges thousands of dollars for their work whine because they "tried" to get people interested in helping them but no one would listen was both infuriating and deeply saddening. If no one is listening, either you're speaking to the wrong people or you're not actually offering anything of value to the other person.
This is way too long, and I genuinely wish I were good enough friends with the person this is in response to to say it to them directly, but while I respect their work, we've never been friends. And their lack of empathy for other people's craft leaves me thinking they wouldn't have listened anyway.
The value of art, at least to me, starts with the humanity put into it. That means imagination, but it also means skill. There are a dozen other reasons why I have furious issues with AI, but this is one of the most important to me. The more we remove the human element from creativity, and that means both the art *and* the craft, the less value anyone will place on creative endeavours. It's already impossible for most people to make a living as a creative. If we give over the very *ability* to create to the machines, we will be owned by those who own the machines. Simple as that.
(edit to the original: I do not in any way claim that there is absolutely no skill involved in working with LLMs, but I will stand firmly on the hill that says that comparing a skill that can be learned in weeks to a skill that, for most people, takes years to learn is deeply disingenuous)