The internet and now AI has slowly separated the experience from the final product. That's absolutely an emergent pressure that comes from digital sharing simply because sites that encourage that are more likely to get more engagement due to the resulting superficiality when art is separated from experience. Indeed, once we are separated from a true thing, the search for that thing becomes eternal.
As much as I hate AI, I think AI itself should be considered an artistic reflection of machine experience. But by elevating that, we lower ourselves and forget the true meaning of sharing art for the purposes of human connection. So we are giving up a legacy and tradition for economic short-term advantage and the opiate-like qualities of advanced technology.
It's a sad process and one I think we should fight against, although I acknowledge I am in the minority.
The problem with these AI generated 'realistic photojournalist' images is that they erode the belief in these images as being factual representations of real world events.
Just think of the impact that, say, war photography has had on the world, and our understanding of the horrors that our governments decisions have had on people's lives. Would Nick Ut's 'The terror of war' have had the impact it did if AI image generation was available at the time? I believe there was at the time an attempt to say it was staged, but there are many many ways of dismissing an image these days.
So, I think we have lost something, but it's much greater than the connection with a subject that the author is concerned with.
That isn't the problem. The problem is people will believe inherently that they are factual representations, because there will be no non-AI mediated sources of truth available, Or worse, people simply won't care, since the concept of "objective reality" simply doesn't exist in a post-truth culture.
if we want "certified" images, we have to tie a personal identity to the photo - e.g. a gpg web of trust approach and signature. I trust this picture because my friend who trusts his friend who trusts his friend took it.
The equivalent for digital photography is that cameras can sign images - I believe there are some canon/nikon cameras which supported this to allow digital photos to be used in court, but I don't think this idea was widely adopted, so a typical snap on your phone doesn't provide any sort of trust, which is surprising really, but there we are, this is the world we live in.
I also dislike heavily edited photos for the same reason. At some point it is no longer real. That point is debatable, but AI generated art is the complete end of the spectrum of not real.
Do people enjoy looking at nice things which humans (or, perhaps God/science if we are talking about nature) did not create? Its a genuine question because I don’t get it myself.
It’s different now when everyone has a camera and the results are available instantly.
I have to go back through my photos and sort and group more. This is something I feel ai would be supper helpful with.
Not to be an ai art snob but I would value a picture which takes billions of years to happen as more valuable.
Nonetheless photography is valuable primarily to the maker anyway.
Same can be said about fake music, paintings or soon fake movies. Do you put the same impact or value to old masters paintings vs endless cheap AI generated stuff? AI novelty already wore off quite some time ago for those.
Can it be consumed and enjoyed? Of course, everbody has their preferred fun, ie people already wasted millions of lives in virtual worlds for fun, relax, or to cater to their loneliness or addiction. Usually but not always to detriment to their real lives but thats another topic.
Everybody enjoy whatever works for you, but dont hijack widely accepted words and meanings just because it momentarily suits you or you try to push some narrative, on 0 effort lazy things like this.
They'll just do it and come up with convoluted rationalizations.
