Is it okay to love something and then hate it once you find out that it was generated by AI? Absolutely.
A few months ago, large swathes of the Northern Hemisphere were treated to a spectacular display from Mother Nature. Thanks to a spike in solar activity, the aurora borealis reached farther south than usual, and, having failed to spot the reports, my partner and I were shocked late one night to find ourselves staring up at a faint, nebulous glow in the sky that we couldn’t explain. Eventually, we realized, and, like countless others, snapped photos on our phones and shared our excitement with friends and family.
Northern Blights
Countless images swirled online, and inevitably, what went viral was contaminated by AI slop. Casually scrolling on a tiny device, you’d be forgiven for not being more discerning, and I’m sure that many of those liking and sharing some of the crap that emerged would feel embarrassed at having been taken in. Promoting their engine, Meta suggested that if anyone had missed out on seeing the northern lights, they could make up for it by creating their own photos using MetaAI. Inevitably, the response from the public was not kind.
In the words of XKCD, some of my most valuable adventures were driven by a desire to go and take a photo. The idea that AI can give you a shortcut to that experience is so mind-bendingly obvious that it’s no wonder that people were so quick to tell Meta where to go. “This is a massive **** to so many photographers and artists,” wrote norcalstormchasing on Threads, reminding us that the images created by MetaAI are built on the hard work of people’s creativity.
The Death of Experience
It goes further than this, however. It’s not just a **** you to photographers and artists; MetaAI is promoting the idea that experiencing something can be replaced by a simulation, as though all of the value of a photograph is embedded solely in the final product and not in the processes that led to its creation. The photographs represent an experience that people value; the AI images represent nothing.
My Four-Year-Old Could Have Done That
Before Christmas, I finally made a trip to the Musée de l’Orangerie, home to Monet’s immense Water Lilies, eight huge canvases displayed in two oval rooms where signs politely ask you to engage with the artworks in silence. This creates a unique, meditative atmosphere, making you stop, be present, and engage with what’s before you. I’ve not experienced anything quite like it. Monet’s work is deliberately loose, with thick brushstrokes and little detail; when taken out of context and with no knowledge of Impressionism or the piece’s significance, you’d be forgiven for assuming that it was the work of a novice painter or perhaps even a child.
Emerging in the 1870s, the Impressionist movement heralded the phrase “my four-year-old could have done that,” exploring human perception and experience through depictions of scenes—often unremarkable—characterized by freedom, a break from traditional painting techniques, and a shift toward abstraction. At a glance, without any knowledge of the history of art or the artists’ intentions, it looks like bad painting. However, when you learn about why this style emerged and what the artists were trying to achieve, there is a human connection, a social understanding that has the potential to expand your mind and take you beyond the surface.
Pushing this further is the work of Mark Rothko, himself inspired by Monet who had “a direct awareness of an essential humanity,” as Rothko described it. Many of Rothko’s works are huge canvases featuring minimal blocks of color, one of the most extreme examples being “Untitled (Black on Grey)”, with the title offering almost as much information as the painting itself.
The Medium Is the Message
Regardless of whether you’re bored by Monet or have no time for Rothko, you can’t deny their processes—not just the act of putting oil on the canvas, but all of the social dimensions that caused these artists to emerge. They each had a distinct process and a clear intention, responding socially, politically, and culturally to the world around them. Can you argue the same for AI-generated artwork? To a degree—it’s a response to the rapid social and technological changes, perhaps the difference being that AI art offers little beyond what’s on the surface. To misappropriate the words of McLuhan slightly, the medium is the message, and when the medium is built on a few lines of text submitted to a machine, what depth can that message contain?
Last year, direct Guillermo Del Toro explained that AI can achieve “semi-compelling screensavers.” “The value of art is not in how much it costs and how little effort it requires,” he went on. “It’s how much would you risk to be in its presence?” Art is a reflection and an expression of our humanity, so why would we invest our emotions in an art form that is built on removing as much of it as possible?
Art Is Social
Art is fundamentally social; it is built on an understanding that the artist experienced something, whether that’s the concepts of minimalism and purity guiding oils and a paintbrush across a canvas or a 4 a.m. start to climb a mountain in a snowstorm. “Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks,” said Rothko, and beyond the occasional social media backlash, AI art is all but void of risk. When you see a photo of the northern lights, you know how it feels to be overwhelmed by nature, a feeling that creates a shared bond—albeit a small one—between you and the photographer. The image is representative of that experience, and sharing it is part of our social connectedness. With AI, that social bond does not happen, as the humanity barely existed in the first place.
It’s okay to love AI art. Equally, there’s no hypocrisy in suddenly hating an artwork upon discovering that it was created by AI. Once there is the realization that the intention and process were not what you assumed, and that the humanity—the emotion, the effort, the artist with whom we share a culture—never existed, our connection to that “artwork” is destroyed.
I’ll leave you with one more fantastic quote from the incredible mind of Mark Rothko:
The appreciation of art is a true marriage of minds. And in art as in marriage, lack of consummation is grounds for annulment.
Full disclosure: The lead image was generated by ChatGPT 4o. I hate it.
