Because I myself am left ice cold by the “AI art” being shoved in our faces today, I was probably the perfect audience for this brief essay, “Alchemy,” by John Collinsworth. What a great metaphor, invoking just how stupid the literal attempt to turn lead to gold was. I especially appreciated this part:
The existence of the work itself is only part of the point, and materializing an image out of thin air misses the point of art, in very much the same way that putting a football into a Waymo to drive it up and down the street for a few hours would be entirely missing the point of sports.
The struggle that produced the art—the human who felt it, processed it, and formed it into this unique shape in the way only they could—is integral to the art itself.
The human behind it, and their story, is the missing, inimitable component that AI cannot reproduce.
I personally agree with this, but with the (big) caveat that all available evidence suggests that a whole lot of people don’t actually care about filling their lives with art. So many folks seem more than happy with different varieties of muzak providing a soothing background track to their lives.
Today we have muzak on the music streamers (see “ghost artists”) but also increasingly on the video streamers (I loved this Will Tavlin piece in N+1 about today’s Netflix) and even in novels (the Write a Book a Month Club—yikes).
Some people really like their AI slop! But art it ain’t.
