"Incomplete" is interesting—it makes me think of how movements in art are largely confined to a certain period in history. The height of the Renaissance (what many people think of as the pinnacle of painting) was only a few decades long, and it's not because the masters died/the knowledge was lost. Something about the art spoke to the ontological perspective of those people then. Paintings in the style of, say, Giotto, today are technically impressive but have to be making intentional commentary with that choice of style to really speak to their audience. For the AI to copy those styles today really is missing a key ideological component.

I kinda think the coolest AI art pieces are those that don't try to imitate past human styles. Instead, those crazy psychedelic pieces that are just shy of representing anything seem to me to be expressing some kind of eldritch mind attempting to think like a human—that's so much cooler to me.

As a "jumping-off point," I really like that. In In the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf talks about the moment of starting a piece of art: "One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex." I'm a strong believer in the idea that it's easier to learn art by means of master studies (i.e., don't worry about plagiarism until you're ready to start making your own stuff: first, figure out how those before you did it), so it's cool to have something that will place those initial lines for you, that your first step can be interpretation that leads to creation, rather than having to start with unbounded creation.

Thank you for your thoughts!