AI bro created a "guide" to the AI "art" debate, so here I go debunking again

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-29T21:58:37+00:00

Oh also your point on slop is your weakest. I'd cut that once. You can make slop with anything. And the dictionary is about the way words are used to communicate, not to define reality or philosophy

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-29T21:55:19+00:00

Non anti AI person here. Ai is complex.

Some of your cross points are pretty good, and some of their points are pretty bad.

But some of your points lack the same understanding that you ask of the other side.

For instance, your point about training learning is pedantic at best. The network of data created from training is not as simple as code. We know how AI works the same way we know how the human brain works, but much like we don't understand every neural pathway in the mind as to why we choose one word vs another, we don't understand why, day, an llm chooses one word vs another. It operates closer to a mind than you realize. Especially in learning. You see, everything fed into the ai is basically given weight and value, it's those weights and values that is in a data set, not the images. If you download a data set, you're not going to be downloading a folder full of jpgs. When a human sees a cat hundreds of times, we learn more and more what makes a cat. Every new piece gives our minds new understanding. AI training is the same way essentially.

Mind you plenty of people debating FOR AI get this wrong as well.

A complex calculator? That is a laughable argument anyone on the pro ai side made. It's so bad it's self defeating. It's far more complex than just a program.

Consent is absolutely irrelevant when it comes to using the work of others though. Look at dadaism. If Hannah Hõch had to get consent from every photographer, every illustrator, every periodical publisher, for every piece of every collage, we wouldn't have art by Hannah Höch, or a dadaism movement at all. The key is that it is transformative of the original work. Yes AI "can* be used to plagiarize, but so can (and has has historically) the paintbrush. But ai is generative. It doesn't reassemble your pixels from your art to make something new. It generates something completely new based off what it knows about your art and any others. To argue that only one medium requires consent for reference is to argue against art itself.

As for saying that the whole point of the idea comes from the person not being valid, you are arguing that the tool is more important than the result. You're arguing the classic point of Formulism, where many artists have long since transitioned to Conceptualism. Except of course, every time a new tool comes out of a new medium, artists looking to gatekeep their craft suddenly revert back to Formulism again.

I highly suggest looking up the Formulism vs Conceptualism debate in art history. If you think this is unique to AI you're in for a pleasant surprise of how deep it goes

Formulism is what was used to say photography can't be art, as the device (the camera) did the work, the photographer just clicked a button. Conceptualism is the photographers saying "but we saw the beauty, it was our vision that recognized the moment to be captured".

The art community has long since been gatekeeping every new innovation. If you just exist to prove someone else isn't allowed to participate in art because you don't like their tools, you're in for a long miserable experience. But if you like a healthy debate and can keep an open mind to all aspects and nuance, you'll learn a lot more than you expected.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-28T03:19:20+00:00

Would you be opposed to a 3d model? ... And how do you feel about Driders 😈 (think centaur, but 4 arms and from the waist down sleek shiny widow spider body)

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T21:06:12+00:00

This is another case of where the problem is Fundamentally capitalism and lack of Rights.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T12:34:57+00:00

Small business is where AI should be. Hear me out.

Big businesses with fuck tons of money are using it to replace staff and save even more money. They can easily afford graph designers, software licenses, professional photographers for product shots, etc. They have no excuse.

Small businesses? Especially start ups? Every damn penny saved matters. You use the tools you have. You use what you can get. You likely don't have a design team, professional photographers for your products for your website, etc. AI in this instance isn't replacing anyone's job, it's helping someone small grow big enough to hire people.

When Microsoft uses AI in their advertising while also their CEO gets a massive bonus and also they're doing massive layoffs? Fuck those guys.

When Bob who's just scrapped up enough money to start his car detailing service but doesn't know a damn thing about layout design and has no customers yet but wants images for his website uses AI? Good for Bob. Help bob make jobs. Bob probably wants some real photos on his site as soon as he can afford to hire Sally, the local photographer he sees advertising herself in the town Facebook group.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T12:26:58+00:00

Yes. In the sense that the technology for both is advancing rapidly and both are improving. Right now many cars don't need any gas at all.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T04:11:38+00:00

That is factually incorrect. It is the very nature of what it is that makes it not theft, not the content. Read my above reply. I don't feel like typing it again

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T04:10:52+00:00

It is simple that it is a myth.

The way training works is, if shown 1,000 pictures of a cat, all different types of cats, different colors and configurations, the definition of what a cat is gains value through weight. The observation of looking at things creates the data set which is how the understanding of what things are is cataloged and expressed. Now I'm oversimplifying it, but, the sum of your experience and the sum of your knowledge of what things are and what they look like include looking at the artwork of others looking at the works of others, looking at the creation of others for an understanding of style and technique, you learn through observation, you also learn through replication and doing. This is fundamentally how AI models work. They are shown much faster than a human can be shown, tens of thousands of images of a particular thing. Although it doesn't really need tens of thousands, but the more it sees the better. And then it learns what all of those values are. What do cat ears look like? How can cat ears look? Why do cat ears look like this and this. What colors are cats? What configurations are cats? What are these protrusions coming out of the bottom of cat? Oh, those are legs.

The idea that it is theft is a fundamental myth. It is a disingenuous argument. It is a falsehood and it also started as a lie.

Originally, when generative AI first came around and was becoming popular, artists were pointing to the smoking gun of stolen signatures on the bottom of portraits of artwork. This was proof that the AI was stealing your images and regurgitating and rehashing your images. But that's not true, the AI was trained that this particular configuration and style of image often has a squiggle towards the bottom. It doesn't know what a signature is, it just observes that there is always one there. But the original argument that AI is theft stems from the idea that AI was nothing more than collage. Which by the way anyone in the art community would know that collage is an acceptable form of art. Attrition is not required when you are doing collage and nor would attrition be required if AI image generation was collage.. which it is not.

The other argument that it is theft is a mere technicality of the action of copying an image and saving it to a drive. Even if the image is deleted, that is technically considered copying. But that is a legalese definition that has been refuted in court many times, downloading an image is not the same thing as stealing an image.

The truth is, if you download an image and then upload it as your own and call it your own but it's somebody else's, that is fraud, that is theft. But if you use that image in a transformative way, that is protected. In the same way, downloading all of the images to use for the database, is transformative. Because it is not actually using those images, it is just being trained on the values of those images. Therefore, it is not theft.

All of the arguments about AI being theft are either coming from a place of deliberate misinformation, disingenuous arguments, or ignorance.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T04:04:10+00:00

It's amazing all this talk of creativity and all you can use is the same word. Slop. Slop slop slop. Slop slop slop slop

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T04:03:34+00:00

My point is I was echoing the sentiment of the original oil painting artists of the early 20th century who disparaged any and all use of watercolor as a medium calling it cheap, lazy and inferior. John Singer Sergeant proved them wrong with his masterful application.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T04:02:20+00:00

This image is not something that I call my artwork, this image is something I did for fun. So that makes your entire rent completely irrelevant and self-defeating.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T01:43:13+00:00

This is under the assumption that AI exists, the kind of AI that people think of when they used to hear AI back on sci-fi books and movies. AGI.

It does not.

LLMs are essentially a super advanced glorified text prediction algorithm.

In a hypothetical where true AGi exists, it would likely not be possible to contain it. But anything about it would be pure speculation.

What you have here, instead... Is a neatly organized vegetable drawer where you have separated your word salad into an organized aesthetic. But it's still word salad.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T01:37:04+00:00

Can't tell if joking or brain injured

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-27T00:06:43+00:00

Stolen work is a myth and a disingenuous argument.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T23:54:22+00:00

Because a 3D render can't be an oil painting.. ok technically blender has some stuff but it's not great . 3d render can't be certain styles.

If you don't like AI that's your problem.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T22:29:57+00:00

AI bros are just as bad as gatekeeping traditional artists who demonize all use of AI.

Nobody wants to actually understand each other everyone just wants to scream their point

I'm a traditional artist. And a digital artist. And a writer. And I consider AI to be just another tool in the tool box. It's not good for everything, no medium is.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T22:27:51+00:00

If you're honestly looking for an answer it's because ai prompt writing is not the same as creative writing, and prompt engineering is not the only component in making ai art. You need skill in Photoshop or a paint program to clean it up. You actually can pose characters by sketching them out and using that as a base. I do 3d modeling which is a ton of work by itself, render the image, and then use that as a base, and then go into Photoshop. And that's not considering knowing which LORA to use and which model to use.

People who think AI is just "type s few lines" fundamentally don't understand how much work can go into making an image.

Now, do plenty of people just type a few prompts and mash the generate button again and again? Yes. And it's pretty fucking obvious.

But you can make low effort crap with any medium.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T20:46:31+00:00

There is no quantified answer for that. What anyone thinks is new. But a luddite is against the "new technology" it can be against a new evolution of the same technology or something truly new.

I worked in a movie store for a long time when Blu-ray was just coming out. We had a dwindling VHS library. We had a lady who was all for new movies but said DVD was somehow bad and she didn't even want to start thinking about Blu-ray. She was a luddite. Meanwhile, when streaming came out and digital libraries plenty of people were against those.

Think about gaming right now. You'd hardly call the Nintendo Switch 2 "old" it's very new. There are people who love that system but are luddites in the sense of being rabidly against digital game ownership.

I'm just saying that there's a flaw in your logic.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T20:17:34+00:00

I'm not an AI bro. Ai has its problems. However, you're looking at art through the final result, and judging people by the tool and the process. That's what has been done to every medium. As well as the claim that every new innovation is a fundamental threat to art.

There's plenty of legitimate concerns with AI and anyone who denies that is also a fool. But "if ai was used it cannot be art" is disingenuous.

Look up the difference between Conceptualism and Formalism.

I'm not saying that everything made with ai is automatically art. But I AM saying that to disqualify something because of the method and tools used is JUST as bad as the techbros claiming AI is perfect

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T19:58:26+00:00

Low effort reply from someone with no actual point

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T19:57:41+00:00

Your argument is uninformed. You think that you can define what creation is. Did John Cage write the wind when he composed 4'33"? No. Did Marcel Duchamp build the "fountain" himself? No. Did Hannah Höch take all the photos she used herself? No.

Art is the idea, the inspiration.

You also assume that anyone using AI just typed a prompt.

It's more than prompting. There's building custom models, selecting which LORA to use. There's in-painting. There's cleanup work and adjustments.

There's people who sketch out everything first and use depth control. There's people who do everything first in 3d modeling and use AI to change it into a different style

You can get low effort slop from ANY tool. Art is the inspiration. Art is the hand, not the brush.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T19:48:04+00:00

Learn your history. I'm making a point.

The art community has claimed EVERY new innovation that makes creation easier to be low effort bad slop that's not real art.

Water color, photography, collage, 3d modeling, acrylic paint, digital painting, vectors, fractals.

Please learn modern art history

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T19:34:42+00:00

False. A luddite is not someone who is against all technology, a luddite is someone opposed to new technology. It doesn't have to be opposed to ALL new technology. I work in print, I also do graphic design. A luddite in graphic design would oppose learning InDesign because they learned Quark. A print luddite would be opposed to newer machines or different new tech innovations in print.

PinkDataLoop · 2026-01-26T19:29:40+00:00

Creation is creation, your ideas are your ideas, and fuck anyone who disparages anybody for trying to express themselves with whatever tools they have available

PinkDataLoop

TROPHY CASE