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I find it interesting that there's so much pushback against ai generated art and music while there seems to be very little for ai generated code.
by codexon 9mo ago
I find it interesting that there's so much pushback against ai generated art and music while there seems to be very little for ai generated code.
- ffsm8 9mo agoWhat??? Every thread on HN that touches on the topic has countless people talking about how LLM generated code is always bad, buggy and people that utilize them are inexperienced juniors that don't understand anything. And they're not completely wrong. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll absolutely create dumster fires instead of software
- codexon 9mo agoSure, I am one of the people who will say that. But where are the people calling for it to be banned? Where are the stores and websites that are banning AI generated software?
- input_sh 9mo agoThere's one popular platform that requires disclosing whether and how AI was used (Steam), and if you search anything about it, all you can find is like a sea of articles opposing it.
- codexon 9mo agoYes and it was probably only done because of people complaining about AI art, not AI code.
- codexon 9mo agoRecent update proving my point https://www.notebookcheck.net/Steam-updates-AI-disclosure-form-requiring-developers-to-report-visible-and-in-game-AI-but-not-background-tools.1206103.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Steam-updates-AI-disclosure-fo...
- jesterswilde 9mo agoI feel like part of the difference is how art vs code is viewed. You could make the argument code is art, though most don't have that stance. Visual art and music tend to be made by a few people, there is ego involved, you care who the artist is. Code tends to be made by shops and consumers don't know who the coders are. Programmers are already faceless. I think it's also about money. Places code and code samples are stored tend to be large companies that are in tech and on the AI hype wagon. Bandcamp is not one of those places.
- spopejoy 9mo agoReally? You've not seen the numerous open source projects banning AI-generated PRs with extreme prejudice?
- codexon 9mo agoThat's not really the same as stores outright banning AI code. An apt analogy would be like a shared drawing taking merge requests and having to spend 30 minutes looking at every single merge request zoomed in to see if there was a microscopic phallus embedded somewhere. It is completely fair for an open source project to have their own standards, and you are also free to fork it so you can accept as many AI PRs as you want. None of these options are available for someone that wants to sell AI generated music. There are really only 2 marketplaces to sell your own music and if both of them banned AI, then you are effectively locked out of the entire market.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pousada 9mo agoPositing that AI generated code is always bad and buggy is delusional. I have dozens of little programs and websites that are AI generated and do their job perfectly.
- netbsdusers 9mo agoThe pushback is motivated by the interests of the petty-bourgeois class, and those are a larger proportion of the former.
- anigbrowl 9mo agoImagine being a Marxist and not respecting the craft and labor required for art production. Couldn't be me.
- yellowapple 9mo agoI think a key factor there is that programmers (in the actual sense, rather than so-called “vibe coders”) are more likely on average than (current) artists and musicians to have intimate knowledge of how AI works and what AI can and can't do well — and consequently, the quality of their output is high enough that it's harder to notice the use of AI. Eventually that'll change, as artists and musicians continue to experiment with AI and come up with novel uses for it, just as digital artists did with tablets and digital painting software, and just as musicians did with keyboards and DAWs.
- codexon 9mo agoAI music from suno sounds indistinguishable to non-ai generated music to me. In terms of how well it works, the quality of AI music is far better than art or code. In art there are noticeble glitches like multiple fingers. For code, it can call non existent functions, not do what it is supposed to do, or have security issues or memory leaks. From what I can tell, there is no such deal breaker for AI music.
- GoatInGrey 9mo agoThe tells in music are there. The most common being: vocals have a subtle constant hiss to them, voices and instruments sound different in the second half than they did in the first, the hiss filter gets more prominent and affects all instruments towards the end of the song, auditory artifacts like volume jumps or random notes/noises near transitions. More subjective tells: drums are hissy and weak, lyrics are generic or weird like "Went to the grocery store to buy coffee beans for my sadness", weirdly uniform loudness and density from start to finish, drops/climaxes are underwhelming, and (if you've listened to enough of them) a general uncanny feel to them. I've generated about 70 hours of AI music and have listened to all of the songs at least once, so it's become intuitive for me to pick them out. Some examples for listening for the hiss filter: https://suno.com/s/qvUKLxVV6HDifknq https://suno.com/s/qvUKLxVV6HDifknq (Easiest to hear at 0:00 with the inhale) https://suno.com/s/QZx1t0aii0HVZYGx https://suno.com/s/QZx1t0aii0HVZYGx (Really strong at 0:09) Some examples for more hiss and other (subjective) tells like weak drums: https://suno.com/s/tTYygsVFo88SX6OV https://suno.com/s/tTYygsVFo88SX6OV https://suno.com/s/CzFgC6dxSQLWyGSn https://suno.com/s/CzFgC6dxSQLWyGSn
- shimman 9mo agoMost code people interact with are creations shat out by soulless corporations, why would they care? Being honest here, the vast majority of people have their code experience dictated by less than a handful of companies; at their jobs they are told to use these tools or get file for welfare. The animosity has been baked into the industry for quite a while, it's only very very recently that the masses have been able to interact with open source code and even that is getting torn down by big tech. Compare this to music where you are free to choose and listen to whatever you want, or stare at art that moves you. IF you don At work most people are force to deal with code like SalesForce or MSFT garbage, not the same experience at all. Why would people care about code coming from an industry that has been bleeding them dry and making their society worse for nearly 20+ years?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- kazinator 9mo agoI won't merge anything AI generated in any of my FOSS projects, unless I'm successfully deceived. In the first place, I do not regard a copyright notice and license on AI generated code to be valid in my eyes, so on those grounds alone, I cannot use it any more than I could merge a piece of proprietary, leaked source code.
- anigbrowl 9mo agoThe copyright office agreed with you about the non-copyrightability of AI generated media so in that sense you can safely ignore copyright claims on anything AI-generated.
- kazinator 9mo agoYou can safely ignore claims made by the operator of the AI who had the material generated, true enough. You cannot ignore a credible/plausible claim from a third party. It's not simply the case that the output has a public-domain-like status.
- JohnFen 9mo agoPerhaps that's because there's an enormous difference between fine art and computer programs. Also, there's quite a lot of pushback against AI-generated code, but also because unlike music, normal people have no interest in and aren't aware of the code.
- codexon 9mo agoThey are obviously different things, but aren't the people who spent thousands of hours honing their coding and releasing their code spending just as much time and effort if not more than the people who made non-ai images and music?
- ZoomZoomZoom 9mo agoThere certainly are. If you by chance imply equivalence based on time and effort spent, neither is the thing that differentiates arts, crafts and other activities.
- AlexandrB 9mo agoMusic is art, code is engineering. "Hackers and painters"[1] was always wishful fluff, unfortunately. When it comes to code, I don't think anyone cares how the sausage is made, and only very rarely do people care by whom. The only question is "does it work well?" Art is totally different. Provenance is much more important - sometimes essential. David is a beautiful work, but you could 3d print or cast a replica of "David". No one would pretend that the copy is the same as the original though - even if they're indistinguishable to the untrained eye - because one was painstakingly hand sculpted and the others were cheaply produced. This sense of provenance is the property that NFTs were (unsuccessfully) trying to capture. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
- likium 9mo agoIf someone painstakingly hand sculpted an exact replica of "David", does it make it art, or a forgery? Is hand written code to produce generative art not art? It's difficult to pin down the line. Ultimately it's up to the individual to define them. "The relationship to art, and this kind of painting, to their work, varied with the person entirely."[1] [1]: https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/31/berkeley-voices-transformation-series-ep-6-art-replicas/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/31/berkeley-voices-transfo...
- ZoomZoomZoom 9mo ago> If someone painstakingly hand sculpted an exact replica of "David", does it make it art, or a forgery? Is hand written code to produce generative art not art? No and no. If you raise and teach a child and they generate a painting, are you the artist?
- vitaflo 9mo agoDevs are quite used to using others peoples work for free via packages, frameworks and entire operating systems and IDE’s. It’s just part of the culture. Music has its history in IP, royalties, and most things need to be paid for in the creation of music or art itself. It’s going to be much easier for devs to accept AI when remixing code is such a huge part of the culture already. The expectation in the arts is entirely different.
- alisonatwork 9mo agoThis doesn't make sense to me. I mean, the term "remix" literally comes from the music scene. Artists are constantly getting inspiration from one another, referencing one another, performing together or having their works exhibited together... While there are some big name artists who are famously protective of the concept of IP, those artists have made headlines exactly because when they litigate they seem so unreasonable compared to the bedroom musicians and pub bands and church choirs and school teachers and wedding DJs and millions of other artists and performers whose way of participating in "the culture" is much less tied to ownership.
- falloutx 9mo agoMusicians and artists are under pressure to make money, but they cant rush it while programmers have to rush it these days or they lose their jobs. Programmers don't have much of say in their companies.
- driverdan 9mo agoCompanies sell products built on code, not the code itself. Code is a means to an end.