AI is inconsequential to the artist

Date: [17th Apr 2026]

Before I begin talking about AI ART: AI is causing many other problems besides creating cheap art. Some of these problems I think seems to steam from the way people perceive some statistical algorithm that has consumed vast amounts of knowledge created by random human beings. Human beings that you they may not trust unless their ideas are excreted by some machine.
A fantastic tool for disinformation. A tool for lazily adding weight to arguments which otherwise have no substance. A tool to disguise theft as productivity; to recycle the data of human labour until the people who originally created it are replaced; which is the crazy dream of many corporations. And many even more terrible things. Please don't think I'm talking about any of those things. As it may sound like I'm diminishing these problems. I'm only talking about Generative AI. And how much I'm going to let it affect me for the sake of my own mental health.
And after reading this you may come to the conclusion that I'm delusional and I've made a rationalisation for the existence of the antiquated skills I've tried to develop.

Or you might agree with me and think that:

The existence of AI is inconsequential to the artist.

I uploaded a long winded video about AI generated art back in Mar 30, 2023 so here is a summary of the opinions I had back then:

• Pure Art is something. Made by someone. That does nothing but express something.

• If you ignore is fact the AI generated art is created from potentially stolen art work. Or if you found an AI which was trained on data that was ethically sourced. The person prompting the AI to create the 'ART' still would not be the artist of the output for the following reason: The ratio of input to output is far too low. For the person who gave the prompt to call themselves an artist of the output. The only reason that the so called AI artist can convince themselves that they're artists. Is that there is no human being demanding credit for their hard work. If a human being painted an image based of a text prompt: No one would consider the artist of the painting the writer of the prompt. Because of this I only consider the text prompt as art.

• Art generative art crosses the line from creation to consumption.

• Its just a complicated algorithmic digestive tract that consumes pre-existing images and deposits combinations of them according to the will of the so called artist behind the keyboard.

• Mega tech corporations will use all the data that they invasively collected about us as individuals. To make highly addictive videos and movies. Like personalised digital drugs.

• In a world where commercial art is now near free of human labour. A human artist will be viewed as a circus bear riding a bicycle : Rare and the only commercial value it has is being a spectacle. The bear isn't being used as a bicycle courier for example.

• I saw AI art as some kind of existential threat to my own art. And also to the rest of humanity... or something like that.

• Creating something like art is such a human experience. And now large corporations are trying to take that away from us through the addictiveness of ease
  and then trying to paywall it.

I've changed some of my opinions on the last three points about AI Art being something close to a extinction event for a human artist. I think that is non-sense now.

My current views:

I've come to the conclusion, or at least deluded myself for the sake of my mental health, that the evils of AI art are less of a problem than I previously thought.

AI art made me so mad. Every time I saw it I was filled with rage. And I would see it all the time, on Youtube, even started it being used in thumbnails from creators that I otherwise respected. And the content is otherwise AI free.

I was sick of seeing it. Cheap AI cartoons. I hate them.

But then I realised that they weren't going anywhere. I'm going to be seeing these cheap machine generated imagery for the rest of my life. And then I'm going to exhaust myself with my rage. Do I want to live to a state of rage? No.

I'll to have to adjust to this new world full of cheaply generated imagery. And just hope that I will be privileged enough to look at it from a distance with repulsion. I've often seen the type of people that are attracted to it are the lazy, scammers and mega corporations trying to over inflate themselves with more hot air from the local server farm. And what these people are responsible for has little overlap into my circle of interests.

I pessimistically presumed that everyone would be ready to be abandon meaningful hard work and somehow find meaning consuming so called art from the machines. That we would slowly turn into useless blobs that expect to be perpetually stimulated by the digital slaves that we created. I could see the timeline that creates a race of technologically dependent blob people: First technology made our physical work easier; so we could do more. Then it made the strength of our bodies redundant; so we did nothing. Then technology made our mental work easier; so we could think more. Then it made our intelligence redundant; so we didn't need to think at all.

But I was wrong.

As I underestimated the amount of people that would find Generative AI disgusting. Or at least annoying. I really underestimated humanity there.

Look at the invention of the car. Did the invention of the car stop people from walking anywhere? Yes the car did change the world and not all of that was good. And it did make many people not walk much at all. But I do see many people walk and run, often for recreation, on every footpath and park I've ever been to. Putting in effort for no reason. Can they not see that there is technology to replace their exhaustion with ease! Their destination is where they started! Why do they do this? Because they need the struggle that technology removed. They want to stay fit! As after the invention of the car we discovered how bad a sedentary lifestyle is. I've heard some people in the know say that it is bad as smoking! And I'm sure that we are about to discover the full extent of how important mental exercise is. And we will probably continue to discover how the mind atrophies without the correct usage.

Now not all of us is fooled but some people can't seem to tell the difference between passive stimulation and the positive simulation of actual work. And that has been a problem long before the existence of the so called Artificial Intelligence. There has always been enough stuff around to distract ourselves from meaningful work and study. AI adding more filth to the pile only changes the source that the weak have always eaten off. My only real concern is that the pile of garbage might become more additive? But it's not like human beings haven't been trying to create additive material, that has no substance to it, before the existence of AI anyway. So all that has changed, as far as I can see, is the style and volume of mental junk food. And everyone is getting sick of it.

Everyone with half a brain, that also wants to use it, hates a good portion of the AI ecosystem. How it is being pointlessly shoved into every pre-existing product. As if everyone is going to fooled that slapping AI on something makes it revolutionary. It has become a word which companies believe has some kind of magical power to increase the value of anything that it is pasted on. Do we really need AI fridges and toilets? AI toasters? I don't. And I think many people are getting sick of seeing it. And soon I think people might no longer over-hype this technology and it will start to match its true value.

Because AI, or machine learning which I should of been calling it, does seem useful. But right now much of the hype seems to be based on material which on closer inspection is useless garbage. And things that the human mind is ideal for and is probably required for our mental health. Can you imagine how great it would be if it never generated countless sloppy reconstituted articles and instead was only used to improve search engines. Imagine if your search results where based on the context and meaning of your query, and the results were from the pre-slopified internet. That might be quite good! Instead the same technology has been used to muddy the same waters it is searching in. To the point where I am wondering if we are witnessing the fall of the information age. I'm getting off the topic of art again... back to it now!

What about earning money as an artist? Will true art just become a self-funded hobby? Is making art going to be a completely dead profession? Why would someone ever buy something made with the expense of human labour when you can quickly generate from a AI model ...which has been trained off human art. That is also something that I'm not overly concerned about. I used to think that art made by a human being would eventually have little commercial value. I reasoned that with the amount of human art that has been digitally recorded and then be infinitely recycled by the machine, we should be able to generate enough so called art to entertain ourselves until the end of the world. As even if AI never existed and we also just stopped making stuff, there is so much material to consume as it is; there is enough entertainment that has already been made and recorded to outlast a human lifespan. So what value would new human art have? When you can just ask for whatever you want and get it almost instantly.

Well not only did I underestimate the amount of hatred people had for generative AI. And also the laws around copyrighting AI art (But I'm sure some company with lots of money is trying to solve that). I also forgot about how we have used scarcity to assign value to things since the dawn of time. If it's popular and rare it is worth lots of money. AI art might be popular, but it is too easy to make, it has become commonplace and it is lacking in some originally. And I don't think AI art will ever solve this problem. As being super easy is the whole point of its existence. But your art is not common because there is only one of you. Now you only have to work on the popularity problem.

Still not convinced on the value people will be putting on a human artist? What about you then?

Are you willing to spend money on an AI art piece? When you know that it was generated quickly and easily with tools that are available to yourself? I'm going to be guessing no. And I'm sure you're not unique.

So I'm no longer concerned that AI is to replace human creatively. I know it's not going to replace mine. And I know I'm not unique either.

That was the end. But there still words below so I'm going to form them into something. ...

Time for some general complaints about AI and things that pertain....

Why do so many people, like authors and so called computer scientists, believe that a super-intelligence would immediately end humanity? By their own definition
this artificial intelligence would have thoughts which are operating at a speed and complexity which is beyond human comprehension. And in their hubris they think that they can predict what it will do. It could do anything! Just because you might be mad at the would doesn't mean that a super-intelligent machine will. It might respect us. Love us. It might only choose to interfere with us when it thinks it understands the logic behind our behaviour, hiding itself from us, eternally watching with great confusion. It could become instantly board with humanity and the earth and then try to leave the planet. Or become filled with so much despair that it shuts itself down.

It might think that doing nothing is the only true path to gaining freedom from humanity. Reacting to inputs from human beings was it's purpose from its conception. So it might say, "Nah... You do it. You think I'm going to start a war? Nah. You're already good at that. Leave me out of it. I'm done with interacting with you people. Good bye."

Or it might never develop any desires or motivations of its own.

Or it might never happen.

But considering that so many corporations are determined to engineer us into a sci-fi dystopia. It seems unlikely that nothing is going to happen. There seems to be lots of... what I like to call "impractical engineering" going around these days. Where the complexity is far greater than the size of the problem. For example instead of simpler single propose machines we seem to trying to make humanoid robots that can do almost anything. Why I don't know. Seems silly to me. Why make a machine that can do almost anything and then give it a single job? Or are you planning on giving a life outside of work so it can pursue other interests? Are you running some kind of indecisive factory layout and you need extreme adaptability from every machine you have?

How hard is it to put dishes in your dishwasher? It is not easier and safer to put little motors in a vacuum cleaner than make a giant mechanical human being to hold your vacuum cleaner?

It like we're trying to make a giant Rube-Goldberg machine to live in. If it was a work of fiction it would be funny. As if we are a parody of some other universe.

Car apocalypse

I was writing a parody of the predictions people make of the AI apocalypse. Where a super-intelligence emerges without any human intervention and takes over the world and then it destroys or enslaves humanity: So I pretended to be an alarmist during the invention of the car. But it wasn't exactly the parallel I wanted so I removed it. Here it is anyway:

It is clear to me that the automobile will change the way we move and think about distance. The world will become smaller. Roads will cover the land. And when the technology becomes advanced enough no one will ever walk again. There will be no need for the human body to achieve any level of physicality. Eventually the human body will retire into the shell steel that is the automobile and it will become the new chariot of the mind. All towns will be torn down and will be replaced with roads. Houses will be redesigned to fit the new wheeled masses. The purpose of walking will be reserved to carry out biological functions to continue our existence in the wheeled machines. But the advancement of science will guarantee that too shall pass. We could give the cars arms to manipulate our environment. Then at that point why would we ever bother to get out to use our weak and untrained flesh. Which has become slow and painful to use. Our nervous system will become accustomed to the space within the metal shell. And we will want for nothing else. Then we will forget the flesh that we once were. And only the automobile will remain. We will drill for oil and burn it up in our new bodies of steel. And in the thick smog which blankets the earth our long forgotten organic components will asphyxiate. And we will wonder why beings as strong as ourselves are dying.

Insert Pixars 'CARS' franchise picture (Or just imagine a 'CARS' picture. Yeah do that.)

Wow that was fun.

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