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There's an amazing viral twitter thread where someone claimed a real Monet painting was an AI generated imitation, and it got an avalanche of comments from peop
by glenstein 15d ago
There's an amazing viral twitter thread where someone claimed a real Monet painting was an AI generated imitation, and it got an avalanche of comments from people who claimed it was an obvious fake and a poor imitation at that.
It's not tracking a real thing as much as people would like to think.
- AndrewKemendo 15d agoIn fact it’s only tracking the quality of the produced image Every single person I’ve asked, and I’ve asked hundreds, say that knowing it was AI irrespective of anything else was enough to think it was bad. There’s millions of genai images that people aren’t commenting on because they don’t know it’s AI.
- deleted 15d ago[deleted]
- qarl 14d ago> knowing it was AI irrespective of anything else was enough to think it was bad. That's prejudice.
- paulhebert 14d agoThe definition of prejudice requires the judgment to be unfair. Do you think it’s unfair for people to dislike AI generated art based on their principles?
- qarl 14d agoUnfair in this context is judging the art without even looking at it.
- paulhebert 14d agoYou don’t think it’s fair to factor how art was created into your judgment?
- qarl 14d agoFactor? That's not what was described: "knowing it was AI irrespective of anything else." And no - I don't think it's fair to call the art bad when in fact what you mean is you don't like the way it was made. Saying "I don't like AI art" is not the same as "This piece is shit", which is how it is almost always framed.
- HelloMcFly 13d agoArt is not evaluated based solely on the isolated output. Intent, context, and human effort are fundamental parts of why people value a work. People calling an AI piece "bad" by default are responding to that lack of human agency and intent. The process is part of the work, so factoring how it was made into your judgment is entirely fair, even as the primary deciding factor. A fair retort is that holding every creative output to this standard, like a flyer for a community fair, is needlessly critical. That is not an unreasonable position. Still, I think it is fair for one to believe that using an AI image is a clear low-effort signal that strips away the human element that makes community events appealing in the first place. And for commercial products: if your ad is low effort, why should I believe your product is not?
- qarl 13d agoSoley? Factoring? Again, that is not what is being described here: "knowing it was AI irrespective of anything else." > And no - I don't think it's fair to call the art bad when in fact what you mean is you don't like the way it was made. Saying "I don't like AI art" is not the same as "This piece is shit", which is how it is almost always framed.
- AndrewKemendo 14d agoWhich is extremely socially acceptable currently and I don’t see that changing anytime soon
- qarl 14d agoHEH. Well... so long as you agree it's prejudice... that's a good start.
- AndrewKemendo 14d agoBiased evaluation is the default human behavior so it’s not saying as much as you think it is
- qarl 14d agoAll I'm saying is that it's prejudice. And it is.
- necovek 14d agoAs GP perhaps implied, "prejudice" is "biased evaluation" with a negative tone — if you are looking to be fully objective, a different term might be better.
- qarl 14d agoOk... ? It does seem biased (judging the art without even looking at it) and it does seem negative (it's shit) so I don't understand where I'm missing the boat? Can you elaborate?
- hnlmorg 15d agoThis is exactly the problem. Most of the time when people criticise the output of genAI, what they’re actually commenting on is the ethics of AI rather than the output of it. And they then attempt to use the demonstration as a proof of their point rather than forming an unbiased opinion of the output based on its own merit. Now I’m not saying there isn’t legitimate criticisms that can be made about the ethics of AI, I’m highly concerned about the problems that AI brings too. But that’s a separate argument entirely. It’s a little like people who are pompous about expensive wine, whisky’s, etc and then fail blind taste tests (plenty of studies there too).
- sfn42 15d agoIn my world view, the phrase "People are stupid" explains almost everything. Very few people are actually able to think for themselves. The vast majority are basically just sheep, they think whatever the media, their colleagues, friends etc tell them to think. They don't fact check, they don't think critically, they can't understand a well reasoned argument, they basically just believe things based on how much they like whoever said it. They won't accept evidence that disproves those beliefs. They don't care about the truth, it's all just about being part of the right herd.
- SilasX 14d agoEarlier HN discussions about it (both got flagged): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134400
- ryandrake 14d agoUnsurprising that they're both flagged. HN commenters really, really don't like to think about a world where they can't tell the difference between real and AI. One commenter really nailed it[1]: "We didn't get worse at judging art. We just got better at doubting everything." 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158160
- dgellow 14d agoMakes sense, no? That’s a pretty terrible world
- pembrook 14d agoDid you think the same thing when Photoshop became mainstream? Did you even realize basically all commercial images you've seen for the last 30 years were already heavily modified?
- paulhebert 14d agoThere is a big difference between a real image or video that has been modified and one that was created out of thin air via AI
- pembrook 14d agoCan you articulate those differences? Most people aren't aware of the prevalence of stock imagery during the 2000s. AI is just synthetic stock images, which I have zero problem with. Artists with taste are the ones creating the best AI images, just they were the ones who photoshopped the best things out of stock images when that was the main mode, and just as they created the best stuff when everything was manual typesetting and dark room photography.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- Chance-Device 14d agoYes, I think this is exactly right. The labelling of a thing as “AI Generated” or “AI Assisted” makes the viewer perceive it as worse in quality. And they really do think it’s worse. It’s similar to a well known finding about price: people value things that are more expensive more, and tend to think they are of higher quality. You can give people the same thing for a high price or for free and they’ll say the high priced one is amazing the free one is lacklustre. It’s like an optical illusion driven by labelling.
- hattmall 14d agoYeah, but the issue is we are getting constantly exposed to a barrage of really low quality obvious AI generated content. Except a lot of people seem to not know that it's AI and interact with like it's real. The people posting it are being reward by monetization platforms. Low quality baiting content was a problem before but the barrier to entry has been significantly reduced and the.amount of content is growing quickly.
- paulhebert 14d agoBy many people’s criteria it automatically is worse, because part of what they value in art is thinking about the artist and their intentions behind their creation. Similarly people may view an IKEA book stand as worse quality than one built by hand even if the hand built one has flaws. Or they might view a microwaved meal as worse than that created by a home chef. People value the human intention and care that goes into creations. Without that it’s worse even if the output is fundamentally the same. A drawing by my young niece may not have the same finesse as an AI generated one but I like it a whole lot more
- Chance-Device 14d ago> By many people’s criteria it automatically is worse, because part of what they value in art is thinking about the artist and their intentions behind their creation That’s a bit separate to what I’m talking about, but I don’t think there are many of these people. I think this whole thing is about AI anxiety coupled with American social norms, and as soon as one of those things changes the artists are going to be left out in the cold again.
- dpark 14d ago> claimed a real Monet painting was an AI generated imitation This is like the transvestigator creeps who think they can tell with 100% accuracy who is trans but they are regularly fooled by pictures of cis women when seeded with the notion that they might be trans. Some AI is obvious. Some much less so, and a lot of non-AI content is being caught up in the amateur dragnets.
- glenstein 14d agoOne version of this I really loved was some viral clip that I believe was like a local newscast where one guy who really seemed to dislike vegan products was challenged to tell the difference between a real meat product and a vegan alternative, I think sausage or something. And he made a big performance of how instantly he recognized the meat in comparison to the vegan product only to be shocked to learn, after he confidently declared that one of the two dishes was meat, that both dishes were plant-based. If nothing else, simply as a matter of self respect you've got to make your peace with a certain amount of healthy uncertainty if even just to avoid making a fool of yourself. But more importantly, it's important to be honest with yourself about what you actually know versus what you're very motivated to believe. Because I think AI equals bad is poisoning some people's ability to talk about this in a healthy way.
- kergonath 14d agoYou can see it here in the discussions for about half the stories. It gets sidetracked into people talking past each other. The thing is, people are really bad at judging this, except for the most stereotypical cases. You have people crying wolf the moment you use "genuinely" or a dash. Different people use different criteria for their personal heuristics and the result is threads full of tedious, completely irrelevant comments from people in a crusade. People don’t seem to realise that we are very good at tricking ourselves and that a lot of the patterns we think we recognise are actually just noise.
- DonHopkins 14d agoMonet got Seinfeld Effected. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/seinfeld-effect https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/seinfeld-effect
- nitwit005 14d agoI've seen two resdit threads where people insisted the hands were wrong, and people took photos of their hands in the same pose. But, then, people did this for digital editing before. Insisted there were "clear signs of photoshop", from people who never opened that app.