The author manages to somehow be even more outraged after reading Moleskine's response. Can't say I feel it.
If you do want a good reason to make fun of moleskine and not buy their products, it's because they're all extremely poorly made. I don't have a single moleskine where the pages haven't separated from the cover/spine after a few years.
Absolutely unconscionable.
Ads need to be truthful. They can't just make things up that aren't actually in the product. It's literally false advertising.
I'm not against AI, but I am against deceiving people. If you can't be bothered to actually check your AI's output, you shouldn't be using it.
I get that they're scared. They should be: it was difficult to make a living for many artists even before AI. The market was already oversaturated and they had to accept low-paying irregular jobs. But now there's literally no light in the end of the tunnel for 99.9% of artists.
That being said, boycotting AI use will get them nowhere.
(AI 'art' also has the fascinating, and possibly unique, property that, the more you look at it, the worse it is; it is fractally bad, in that the badness tends to crop up in small details more than anywhere else. I actually kind of enjoy it in small doses for this reason; it's fun to play "spot the broken thing".)
I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.
In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.
Humans want art. Humans love pretty things. AI will never replace the entire need for artists. I see it as getting rid of the bad commissioners (price sensitive, beggars, etc) and making it easier for people to express themselves thereby making an artist's job easier to extract info from their commissioners.
I commission artists somewhat regularly, and if I had to name the top two reasons, they would be 1) I really like their style, and want a piece in that style 2) I want to support them so they can continue making the art I like.
Meeting my checklist of inclusions is important, but definitely secondary to the reasons above. (And sometimes the deviations are reflections of the artist's particular style and therefore welcome.)
Is your point that what you quoted is false?
> I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.
...because you just gave an anecdote that shows the truth is "if someone is using an AI avatar, they might have been your customer before AI".
> In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.
That doesn't make sense. That's not "moving up the stack," that's the work drying up and only a small remainder of the most difficult/sensitive things being left. And that might mean being driven out of your profession because there's not enough left for you to feed yourself.
Isn't (wasn't) moleskine a premium brand?
And if you don’t know LOTR lore well enough to be able to do that, why do you care?
https://www.moleskine.com/en-us/shop/limited-editions/the-lo...
I am not equating AI slop with Marcel Duchamp, however. His work and what he did was very much intentional to evoke the sort of reactions it did.
When I need a notebook, I just go into a store that sells them and grab whatever they have. I have a notebook for logging my exercises and another one for random stuff, I have no idea what brand they are.
Moleskin sells fashion items. Or, maybe, an idea of a certain lifestyle. I'm not sure.
Come on, they're selling notebooks with art on them. Cheap, AI-generated art, passed off as premium.
And? I don't care. Is the art good or not? I'm not searching for someone to admire, I just want good music
His response was "it's music, and I like it".
Some of those pictures? I like them.
> Thank you for your comments. We just wanted to confirm that all Moleskine notebook covers are created by our designers, while AI was used to enhance the background of these images. We hope The Lord of the Rings inspires you!
Does that make me more creative or less? I’m not sure.
A new tool exists that reduces labor and makes something previously out of reach accessible to everyone. I don’t really care about the unemployed palanquin operators, I just care about achieving my goals.
The market will definitely make the decision here and just like photoshop was just too good to pass up, more and more art you interact with is going to be AI generated. The smart artists will just lie about it, because why wouldn’t they?
It would be more accurate if for the entire journey, the scooter driver also extolled the virtues of slow, luxurious, human-powered travel.
