Hmm, are all DJs musicians? No, but there are some phenomenally talented musicians who are [or at least are known for being] "DJs" first. Additionally, DJs probably belong in the "performer" category more so than "musician" category anyway. At least ones working at a high level, booking shows and filling rooms on their name alone, it takes talent to mix and move a room like that. Lastly, I'd say just about every form of DJing [even the dude slinging MP3s at a dive on a tuesday night] takes as much or more talent than AI art. So let us not besmirch the good name of DJs by lumping them in with "AI-artists"!



While I don't think the "creator" [we're not gonna use "artist", a few keywords and mashing "generate" until it spits out something that isn't a hot mess is an incomprehensibly low amount of effort/input/work] of AI art really deserves any credit as an "artist" [we're gonna call them "lucky-monkeys" instead / enough monkeys + typewriters + enough time = lucky monkey writes Shakespeare], the resultant image probably is "art". It may be a largely vapid imagery created by someone with seemingly little talent, or at least no drive to hone any skill/talent they do have, at the end of the day, it is still a created image, and that is probably enough to make the image itself "art" [at least as much as some of the other stuff that gets passed off as "art"]. I think AI art should certainly be labelled clearly [not that it doesn't do a fair job of outing itself, but that could change as the AI develops] as AI art, and should probably reside in its own section/sub-section of whatever gallery, but I don't think whether it is or is not "art" isn't going to make much of a difference at this point, the cat is out of the bag.

Maybe as AI art develops, the input becomes more complex and the ability to control the outcome starts to become maybe a bit more predictable, then perhaps AI art becomes something more akin to fractal art, at which point there is a talent or skill at least, in manipulating the input to achieve a higher quality output than someone else might. At that point then maybe we do start to give the creator credit as an artist, rather than a lucky-monkey. I think AI art is still in its infancy right now, and we'll have to see how it develops, see if it can become something more than a semi-random image generation tool [I know it's not "semi-random" at a technical level, but might as well be artistically speaking].

Collage [or photo/imagebashing in the digital realm] can certainly be an art form, even at a high level, and the images AI generate aren't that dissimilar at a fundamental-process-level [so far as I can tell] to collage. Both are a derivative form of image creation, re-purposing other images/parts of to make something new. When you remove the artist and their process from a derivative art work tho, you're pretty much just left with image theft, and that's the much larger concern I think.

How and where the AI is sourcing its images is tantamount to how we treat the result. If the AI is sourcing from images that are NOT "fair use"/"public domain"/"creative commons"/etc/whatever then that is far and away the bigger problem than whether or not we can call it "art". If someone starts using that AI generated image commercially, even just pedaling them on coffee mugs or mouse pads of whatever the hot "upload a picture and make you own . . ." site is this month, that's a really messy problem! It'll be interesting to see how/if that ends up being something that is played out in court, and if we could see changes to the DMCA or "fair use" rulings on account of AI art. There's been a several month long battle on ArtStation regarding allowing AI art, and how images the site hosts might/could be used by AI.

I think as long as AI images are properly labelled, and the "reference" material is cleanly sourced, then it is what it is, something for someone to kill time with, that hopefully makes them happy. As much as I might want to condemn it, I think, done right [labelled/sourced] its largely harmless [aside from some people deluding themselves with the notion they're now "artists"] ... for now at least.

As far as "legitimate" [for lack of a better term] uses for AI art? Concept art maybe? I'm sure it's going to get a LOT of use there as you're talking about fairly loose, exploratory images, where imagebashing is common already. Likely to save time/money at the expense of artists no doubt, cause that's how it goes unfortunately, but I don't know that I'd consider it invalid in that role. I also think it'll still require a pass by an actual artist to make it something meaningful/useful before getting passed on to other artists for production.



Also, expecting any kind of standards from DA at this point? Shame on you! If there's been any one unifying trend there in the last two decades, it's continually finding new lows. There's a lot of great art/artist there don't get me wrong, but good grief, does that place ever work hard at stretching the term "art" sometimes, or at least they sure put the "deviant" in it.

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