Raw LLM Responses

Not much of an artist myself, unless you count writing, mostly just doodling here and there, but there's something about real art that can say a ton more than something generated by AI. As I have said for a great many years, "Art is the medium through which one can express that which cannot be said with words. It is the universal language." Even something as simple as, say, a still life image of some fruit or a windowsill can be a way to express emotion, state of mind, out forth a message, any number of things that can be difficult to put into words. The funny thing about writing as an art form isn't just that you're using words to express something that can't be said, but that, much like other forms of art, each person will take away something different despite the words being written out in front of them. It's like the old joke, "'The author describes a blue pen being used as an expression of the permanence of their negate metal state,' but sometimes a blue pen is a blue pen." I do art analysis as a hobby, so to speak. It's fun to dissect the final product and look at its composition to determine what the motive and intent of the artist must be. When I look at AI art, even without knowing that that's what it is, I get nothing. There's no soul to the work. It just feels flat and empty. My sister has a collage on her living room wall, something made by a friend of hers that was commissioned by the Church of Satan, and I didn't know that looking at it my first time seeing it. I looked at my sister and asked, "Is this a representation of Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies?" "Yeah, it's pretty neat that you picked up on that. How did you know?" "Well, he's there, dressed formally, his hands resting upon the heads of two sheep, both of them blind. Behind him is a landfill, made up not of generic trash, but of recognizable brands. It's a statement on consumerism being the representation of Beelzebub in reality, the blind consumerism of us, the sheep, and how it's destroying the world we live in, leaving us with nothing but trash and a smile upon his face. His clean, sharp appearance and rather formal attire implies wealth, something that we have given him though our actions. We sit, not in his hands, but beneath them, as we are not his to cherish but exploit." "Oh, man, she'd love you, cause that's almost the exact explanation she gave me when I got a print from her and asked her about it." I don't get anything like that from AI art because it's not art. It's merely an image. There's no thoughtful composition, no consideration of medium, no artistic process. It's just a picture that's an attempt to represent and collate the prompts it was given. I've used the software before. My background and lock screen on my phone are both AI generated, and it took me hours to get something even remotely close to what I wanted. They're not even what I had envisioned when I gave the prompts, just what I had settled on. There's not enough known at this point to say whether AI generated stuff will destroy whole industries. We don't know what the eventual limitations of the technology are at this point. We don't know how much further we can go, whether we're near the end, somewhere in the middle, or just at the beginning, but we should still care about it. Years ago, while working for the government, I had a coworker who was a staunch libertarian. He wholeheartedly believed that art is a waste of time, not a "real" job, and schools shouldn't be funded for art programs, that they were detracting from STEM education. We discussed the topic, and I recommended he just go to a few art museums and keep an open mind about the things around him. A few weeks later, we sat down and talked about it, and he had completely changed his tune. He understood the importance of art, that it IS a language, and that it's extremely important for human culture to have that expression of self. We even talked about our favorite artists and their respective works, his favorite being, surprisingly, Pablo Amaringo, known for painting while imbibing on Ayahuasca. He loved the way how every part of his paintings was, in and of itself, its own work, yet they seamlessly blended together to become more than the sum of their parts. He found them very motivating. We also bonded over a mutual dislike of Jackson Pollock. Art is important. Artists are equally, if not moreso, important. Their works are their life and should be seen just as sacred as Mickey Mouse is to Disney, as the secret formula is to Coca-Cola, as nuclear launch codes are to the US Government. Well, maybe that last one is a bit of a dramatic tie in to the intro, but still. If you find an artist that you like, whether they be a painter, sculptor, musician, dancer, writer, what have you, support them if you can. If you wanna start pursuing something artistic, whether that be as a career or as a hobby, do your best to achieve that goal. Don't let a program replace you when you have so much more potential to create what you see in your mind's eye. You just gotta sit down and try and try and try until you get there.