Imperfect

oatmeal on ai

In Online comics and AI art, Povuh linked to Matthew's A cartoonist's review of AI art.

After having read and annotated Matthew's overlong comic in its entirety, it convinced me that it's pro-AI art propaganda disguised as an anti-AI art hit piece.

Matthew asserts that disclosed AI art evokes feelings for him when consumed, similar to undisclosed AI art and art in general. He feels deflation, disgust, boredom, and ultimately disappointment toward disclosed AI art. Even if you don't work in the arts, you may admit you feel it too. However, how true is the claim that "you have to admit you feel it too" across the board? What other emotions - positive, negative, or both - have people seen and unseen expressed toward the same stimuli?

Both Jurassic Park's novel computer graphics (CG) effects and contemporary AI art are not only rendered by computers, but also "expressions of human beings making human decisions". Matthew feeling that only the former passes said benchmark does not preclude other people from feeling otherwise.

Matthew further illustrates how "seeing AI art" makes him feel:

It feels hopeless. Like there's no point in making anything because your average twelve-year-old can do it in seconds.

If you genuinely feel like Matthew does above, what does that say of you? Is comparison busy thieving your joy? Do you have enough intrinsic conviction in yourself to continue producing your art?

An aside: thank you, Matthew, for the laughs had toward someone prompt engineering their way around the scourge of copyright. Funnily enough, it reminds me of how sora's a friend:

Seeing Sora sidestep the above by showcasing Mario, Pikachu, and other fan favorites in such high-fidelity generations brings a tear to my eye. People once again experienced such characters partaking in situations Nintendo strikes down fan creations of or never greenlights in the first place.

"Using AI image generators is a technical skill" not only for those who don't use Google well, but also for those with higher standards demanding complex workflows beyond typical prompting and button-pushing. You can acknowledge that many people can use a tool in simple ways for simple projects without betraying other use cases.

Matthew pivots to AI videos:

And when I watch AI videos, I get the sense that the people making these things are unable to come up with anything genuinely clever beyond the feat itself. They aren't commenting on anything but themselves.

It's perfectly fine to dislike AI videos. That said, how widespread is his impression of AI video creators among the population? Even if it is widespread, does the target audience for said videos share his sentiments? They might just be laughing, having fun with, or thinking "clever" or "thought-provoking" of the video.

I like Matt's framing of art as "emotional nutrition" for its individual perspective. Cohorts believing that consuming art, besides AI art, nourishes their feelings have counterparts with wildly different diets. Art of all kinds - disclosed AI art, undisclosed AI art, traditional art, and more - can taste like ambrosia or styrofoam. One man's farce is another man's fancy.

I'm not entirely convinced that actual creation must be dependent on feeling the specific emotions of pain and joy. Even if that is the case, AI art can require so much practice, iteration, and even interdependence with other working parts that such emotions arise like they would in other art forms.

As another angle of attack toward AI art, Matthew constrains "hitting the button" of "one of those little Casio keyboards where you could hit a button and it'd automatically play a song" to "pretending to make music". Can you think of other artistic interpretations, if not augmentations, that people could possibly offer toward the same process?

Matthew drops an anecdote:

In my experience, the people who are excited about AI art also happen to be some of the most talentless fucking people I've ever met.

They're middle managers, executives, or marketers whose LinkedIn bio reads, "I'm the Chief Brand Officer of UserEngagement at DataRectal, but what I really am is a storyteller."

LMAO.

Virginia Woolf was a storyteller. Shel Silverstein was a storyteller. You work in tech, shitbird.

Like "talentless" people excited about using AI art, Matthew was excited enough about the subject to have dedicated an entire comic to it. I wish his anecdote included the counterweight of comparatively talented people that are excited about AI art. Even with distaste toward the tech industry and its constituents, I'm sure people like that exist in Matt's eyes. The contrast he presents doesn't need to be as black-and-white as most of his comic is.

I agree with Matthew that talent is most likely derivative of skill, practice, and study, rather than being "more naturally gifted than others". Achieving one's desired results on the first try is worth celebrating. If that doesn't happen, then one perseveres until they get the results they want. This understanding leads me to applaud "your average "Chief Brand Ambassador" or whatever the fuck their job title is" being able to "bypass that training and churn out really pretty Clipart" as them getting their job done. One man's "talentless" loser is another man's talented storyteller. Calling a storyteller a loser enough can make him and others that much more genuine storytellers.

Yes, AI art can usefully replace the administrative minutiae of drawing like a spellchecker to writing. As for jobs within "an entire industry of people who are passionate about creating what others might consider minutiae" being destroyed, how will the artists involved beat, join, or meaningfully deviate from what they think is causing their job loss?

Matthew describes Adobe's Magic Wand Tool as a single-click selection for areas of a similar color. To me, categorizing both that tool and AI art generators as soulless fall flat. In both instances, "a machine did the work" with the intention, choice, and strategy of a human being at the helm. Especially in the case of AI art generators, people don't realize how much soul is embedded into their inner workings.

As for reserving AI art for administrative work, Matt's threshold isn't universal. People may think using innovations as commonplace as the Magic Wand Tool replaces their creativity. Others may think that more advanced tools, which replace what Matthew considers creative work, instead replace administrative work.

The part of art that matters to an artist also differs across artists. Compared to "Photoshop artists" who are "drawing the subject of the composition, (and probably the background too.)", other artists may want much more or less control. That doesn't even account for how artists can blend or oscillate between AI art generation and more traditional methods.

For how many artists think that "jumping to the "fun" part" is "denying yourself the process", many do just that. In that vein, many different factors collaborate to make your art beautiful, whether for you or for anyone else. Your toil can be a part of that, but it doesn't have to be, nor does it have to be the only involved factor.

Matthew adds to an earlier beat:

I mentioned the Sistine Chapel earlier.

Michelangelo suffered horribly while painting it. He craned his neck upwards. His body twisted. Paint dripped in his eyes.

This misery went on for years.

So, does knowing that Michelangelo suffered for his art make the art better?

Matt's statement that "I suppose that depends on the viewer and their experience" feels like it could be slathered all over his comic's points. What different, if not better art would Michelangelo have graced us with had he not suffered? As for Matt's experience of Wyeth's "Christina's World" painting, "the suffering made a difference. The pain mattered." But Matthew realizes that such an outcome isn't a requisite for art:

I don't think that artists or writers need to suffer in order to be authentic.

Matthew sees the stories of "alcoholic Bukowskis or suicidal Woolfs" as "just an added layer of richness". Compare that to how supposedly bankrupt he finds "AI art". Casually ignore the countless human stories embedded at every touchpoint of the process (on the side of the producer or the consumer) and in the data that AI art tools interface.

If you're reading this, whether alongside Matt's comic like I did or not, you might also agree with the guy staring at his phone in bed:

Can you get to the point soon? This comic is long and my dopamine is fading.

Matthew replies, "I'm almost done, I promise", then shares his friend's question to him:

With the invention of AI, are we cyborgs now?

I find his answer neat, if not underselling synthesis via mundane examples:

It's a great question. AI has accelerated our abilities like that drug from the movie Limitless. It's writing our papers, analyzing our bloodwork, and planning our weddings. Now your average Keith has the critical thinking abilities of a supercomputer running at ten-trillion teraclops per floppyshart.

It's nice that "it enables ordinary minds to have extraordinary abilities." I can see how it's even more exciting with how well extraordinary minds can leverage it for outsized bad and especially good abilities. The value alignment of said purposes will probably differ for you, at least in some remote way, compared to anyone else like how it differs from Matthew and I.

I'll say that Matthew denouncing prohibitive calls to action like "Let's ban AI" is a welcome reprieve. I'm similarly relieved with his understanding that "AI is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for good or for bad." However, his train starts to fall off the tracks again after he says, "Unfortunately, AI art seems to be headed toward the latter."

Can Matthew paint with any broader of a brush when he says that:

AI art is an interesting technology because despite its growing popularity, nobody seems to want it.

Artists hate using it. Consumers hate consuming it.

He doubles down:

Nobody worth giving a damn about wants this technology. No one with a modicum of taste, patience, or culture gives a shit about AI art.

Nobody? There isn't a single person Matthew can think of that fits his bill? Not even Matthew himself, who toiled so much to present this beauty of a comic that clearly expresses how much he "gives a shit about AI art"?

After much meandering, Matthew finally closes his comic out:

I need you to know from one artist to another, that every mark you make on a page, even a squiggly, imperfect one is still beautiful.

To be clear, I approve of his message. However, I'm not going to lie to you: the first thing that came to mind after reading this was how Anon demonstrates the progress of AI art. Yes, even the "human" imperfections that AI art can generate can be considered beautiful. Humorous and thought-provoking too, for that matter.

Now, let me close my post out. At some point early in the comic, Matthew expected reader conclusions along the lines of "The Oatmeal hates AI art." Contrary to that expectation, I believe he loves AI art to the extent of spending however long writing, drawing, and thinking about it. He doesn't stop there, though. He implicitly shows how much people in his sphere of influence care not only for traditional art, but also AI generated art and hybrid methods too. If there were no AI art for him to comment on, his comic strip wouldn't exist. Neither would the very post you have somehow finished reading. I, for one, am thankful. Are you?

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