My buddy Tom changed my mind about AI art being 'cheating'

I used to think anyone using AI for creative work was just lazy... that was before I talked to my friend Tom last week at a coffee shop in Portland. He showed me how he uses an AI tool to generate color palettes for his murals based on old photos of his grandma's garden. Tom said 'it's not the machine painting, it's me picking the right memory to feed it' and that really got me thinking. He spent 3 days tweaking prompts and combing through 200 generated images just to find 3 that felt right. It hit me that there's still a ton of human judgment and taste involved, maybe even more than people realize. The AI is just a fancy paintbrush, not the artist itself. Has anyone else had a friend shift their view on AI tools like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

amy_reed795d ago

Literally just had this same kind of talk with my cousin last week. He runs a little print shop and uses AI to fix up old family photos for people, said it saves him hours but he still has to decide which parts to keep and which to toss. Made me realize the machine isn't making the taste calls, you are. That part about Tom combing through 200 images to pick 3 really hit home. There's a lot more human elbow grease in this than the haters want to admit.

briannguyen5d ago

Yeah nailed it @amy_reed79, the machine's just a tool.