Just went to an AI art gallery in Portland and walked out confused

I visited this gallery downtown last weekend that was ALL AI generated paintings. Beautiful colors and wild compositions for sure. But the thing that bugged me is every piece had a little plaque with the prompt like "photorealistic woman in a sunset" or whatever. No artist name. No process. Just a prompt and the software name. I get that it's the machine making the image but someone still had to curate those prompts and pick which ones to frame and hang. To me that's still creative work even if you didn't touch a brush. Everyone I talked to there acted like it was soulless and lazy but I kinda see it more like directing a photo shoot. You're still making choices about what looks good. Has anyone else seen this kind of exhibit and felt torn about it?

2 comments

2 Comments

piper_burns16d ago

Question whether the prompt and the final choice really count as "creating" or if it's just really advanced shopping. You picked the prompt from a list in your head, the machine did the heavy lifting, and you just said "that one" at the end. Isn't that closer to commissioning a piece than actually making it? The real artist is the person who trained the model on millions of stolen paintings, not the person typing a sentence. It feels like we're giving credit for the idea but ignoring the actual craft that went into every brushstroke of those training images. What's the line between being a curator and being an artist when the only physical effort is clicking print?

oliver215d ago

I read that some people compare AI art to being a film director rather than a painter, which kind of fits your point about commissioning.