i “met” this person with the gender-non-conforming name (female, with a typically-male name) on livejournal, shortly after my injury. she was an artist, and a single mother, and we had a fair amount in common. we eventually became about as good friends as could be managed, given that we lived in different states and only interacted on internet. then the Big Bois with Pois were in the second round of callbacks for AGT season 7 (a video of the important moments of our performance is there for those of you who are interested), and i actually got to meet her in person. then she had to move away, and we continued to interact on internet, first through my leaving livejournal, then her move to pennsylvania, and then to georgia. while she was in georgia, she became entranced with “AI-generated” art, something which i have been EXTREMELY skeptical about, since i first learned about it.

okay, this is a brief description of my reasoning for disliking “AI-generated” art. from an artistic point of view: all the people look more or less the same, there is no natural variation, and they ALWAYS get the hands wrong. it makes people think that they are much better artists than they might actually be. instead of practicing an art form, to get better at, for example, rendering the human form, they are practicing creating inputs that better, and better relate to ideas they have in their head, but don’t necessarily have the skill to reproduce themselves. from an intellectual point of view: it makes people “think” that “they” are the artist, even though the artwork is only based on their inputs, and not on their actual skill. with artwork generated by LLMs, the artwork actually comes from millions of scans of ALREADY EXISTING artwork, by OTHER PEOPLE, which is then remixed according to some inputs, and then presented as entirely new artwork, “created” by the person who made the inputs. from a practical point of view: AI is, basically, bad at everything, creates brain atrophy, and destroys the planet.

eventually, it got to the point where i actually broke off contact with this person, because, as an artist, i couldn’t understand why ANOTHER ARTIST would purposely use other people’s art to “create” her own art, without properly identifying the people who created the originals on which her “artwork” is based. it was a tough decision, and i lost a good friend because of it, but it had to be done.

all this happened a few years ago, and i thought that was going to be the end of it.

until, today, i got a text message from ANOTHER old friend (someone i have known since we were in college), who is also an artist, who, apparently has ALSO recently got entranced by “AI-generated” art. 😒

i responded very negatively to her text message, to which she replied “not gonna share my art with you any more.” 🙄 i replied “you can share YOUR art, i’m just not interested in seeing other people’s art, remixed and mis-attributed.”

i really hope this isn’t going to cost me ANOTHER friend… 😒