It’s AI-generated, but do you like it?

Tears For Fears announced some music but the cover art has become the real story.

“[…] Fans are sharing disappointment about the album artwork on Instagram, accusing it of being AI-generated.”

Here’s the thing… I’ve noticed people are quick to jump on questioning if something is AI-generated— but I have a sense they’re dodging the harder determination of deciding for themselves whether or not they like the end product. (Calling it a product is priming, I realize.)

My point is that there’s a real question to be addressed.

Do you like the artwork or do you not like the artwork? At least make that decision on your own. Otherwise, we’re all falling deeper into the problem that AI-generated materials are presenting to us.

We need to determine where we stand on personal taste and preferences for types of AI-generated materials. A blanket statement of “I don’t like AI-generated work” is an incomplete answer at best.

We are being told not to like AI-generated work for moral-ethical reasons (it’s scraping copyrighted materials). Let’s admit the truth that, as artists, we’re intimidated by the competition.

Don’t stress.

People are going to get bored with perfection. And we haven’t reached perfection yet with AI-artwork (and we’re not even close with publicly available AI-chatbots and services for written text). And we don’t really know what perfect will look like, anyhow. After all, to err is… well, you know. And that’s the point.

People are going to yearn for arts and crafts that feel made by humans. That physicality. With all its imperfections. We’re self-obsessed beings and we’re not going to be enamored with something that isn’t like us forever. Especially if that something else thinks it’s better than us.

What do you think?