Are you not entertained (by AI art?)
If true art asks “why?” and astonishes us without the promise of a definitive, concrete answer, that would make AI art the epitome of inauthenticity. in the pursuit of fame, attention, or money, we scrub off all of the necessary uncertainty and detritus and anxiety out of the art — and because our perception is what makes our reality, the sanitized renditions of art we consume flatten our experience of the world.
What we're left with is a formula, not unlike a Starbucks latte. It's consistent. Not in output — LLMs are still notoriously bad at continuity and keeping a character on-model — but in giving us what we expect. Rather than allowing us to think about why certain creative choices were made in a simple still life of an apple, AI simply says, "Here's your apple." Art becomes a product, or a featured photo to accompany your (AI-generated) Twitter take.
Yes, you can generate an apple that looks like Paul Cézanne made it 150 years ago. But did you learn anything? Did the process astonish you, beyond the novelty of saying, "Wow! That was fast!" Did your AI art make you think — like, at all?
When art is reduced to a formula, the only astonishment we find is in the precision and accuracy by which it reinforces our the comforting collective delusion that art, and life, are problems we're somehow capable of solving.
Links
- Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice by J. F. Martel, 2025
- AI Artists Seem Desperate in a Way That's Not Sustainable by Lisa Martens
- AI is Eating Itself by Art Chad
- We Are the Art by Brandon Sanderson
- Now
Member discussion