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AI is unlikely to ever create great works of art because art is not, and has never been just about technical excellence; it is fundamentally a human thing: one human communicating to another. Just even knowing that some art was AI produced is enough to not see it as great: there is no human story or experience behind it, no human context, etc. You can definitely appreciate it in the category of AI work, however.

AI still struggles with technical excellence in some genres of art, but even if they master this, this human element they cannot overcome, by definition.

It's like piano performance: AI can already generate a "prefect" performance audio, a MIDI file can already encode that. But, I hate MIDI files, none of the live-ness, the weirdness, and non-repeatable nuances of an actual performance by an actual pianist.

Your entire argument hinges on being able to tell the extent to which generative AI was used in the creation of any given piece of art, which capability you will not have. You therefore fall into the category the commenter mentioned in that your perception of the value of a piece of art can be heavily influenced by someone convincing you it was AI generated, regardless of the facts.
You don't get it.

Jut recently, there was a thread discussing Persepolis, a series of autobiographical graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi (recently deceased) that depict her childhood and early adult years in Iran and Austria during and after the Islamic Revolution. People remarked it was deeply moving.

Part of what makes it deeply moving is the actuality of it. This is a human story based on actual lived experiences. How does an AI produce this?? If it came out later that it was written by an AI (assume for the purpose of argument that we had AI when it was written), then of course m=it's impact would be different.

If a seemingly powerful piece of non-fiction is later exposed as fiction, and AI written fiction at that, won't that change your perception of it? Or if a nice anecdote someone likes to tell is exposed as made up, I would hope that matters.

I guess since we're not talking about art anymore, and are instead talking about the veracity of information, we can safely agree. If I read a news story, I do value that information higher to the extent I am convinced it is actually true information. If I read someone's autobiography, I do value that to the extent that I trust them and that it is coming from them. A piece of fiction, however, or music, or visual art, is something that can stand on its own and be appreciated or not without having to assume this context. The context and provenance can certainly color the appreciation, but it is no longer necessary.
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So what you're saying is it will never be about the art itself, it's entirely about selling you on its origin story? Yeah, that sounds about right. So once it can create human-level art, it just needs to spew human-level BS script along with it for the artist to act out, got it.

Reverse centaur indeed.

You misunderstand art. If art were solely about the outcome, we’d all be staring at photographs instead, as no art will ever have as high fidelity.

Art is about the journey of the artist; the meaning with which that art is impregnated is the point. What you cynically refer to as “human-level BS,” others refer to as “the human condition” because we can relate to other humans, and empathy is a thing.

It’s okay not to like art. But pretending art is just “the painting at the end” is nonsense.

I'm doing no such thing. By invalidating the Monet piece if it is described as AI-generated, art becomes entirely about the creation story. So that moves the bar to telling a convincing story. And LLMs can absolutely do that at the level of those museum placards next to each painting. So if you add an actor to pose as the artist, the art is the performance now.

What makes you think I don't like art? Spent 3 hours at an art museum event last weekend staring in details at paintings whilst rich drunk fools kept taking selfies next to them.

But I no longer believe people care about empathy. The US wouldn't have elected a grifting performance artist president twice if they valued empathy. We're much more hindbrain-driven than I suspect you think we are.

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Wow, it's not "human-level BS" what the heck.

Only someone with little appreciation of music will describe the difference between an actual performance and an AI generated one as "human-level BS". It makes a large difference in my enjoyment of the music.

Have you listened to a MIDI file before? And have you listened to (or attended, preferably in person) a piano concert before? You can't compare them, AI changes nothing at all about this.

And you're telling me that as long as you believe a human struggled and went through a process, the nature of the outcome is irrelevant. Hence a Monet piece is instantly slop if one believes an AI created it. That rings true. But it also explains the perception that Piss Christ was art instead of rubbish.

We just disagree as to whether an AI can write a script for a human to portray a struggle that never happened and that a human actor can make you believe it. This almost demands a performance art piece to do exactly that. The art of course being in the performance by a human until it can be replaced by an indistinguishable robot. And then the artist becomes the robot's creator I guess. Why it's creators all the down, no?

I guess we also disagree about all these lines in the sand you keep drawing when it's seemingly entirely subjective experience of a world that may or may not exist according to Plato's Cave.

And sure, I love concerts, I love live performances, but I also love to listen to a much wider range of music when I'm not in a theatre. I can understand that you might feel differently, but we are all entitled to our own opinions and tastes. And what we do in our own lives if it isn't hurting others anymore than anyone else in the west is doing with their egregious carbon footprints is none of your business.

Not sure what you are claiming here:

That authentically human communication and experiences can be artificially generated? But that is a contradiction in terms.

The outcome is not independent of the process. It will always show through.

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