I Hate AI Art (And So Should You)
Lets all be haters together. Join me.
Hello reader. I’m sure the title suggests a topic that has been done to death by smarter people, but I was inspired. Last week, I held my writer’s workshop with my friends and we decided to have a little impromptu short film movie night. The three of us brought three films to watch. We watched Coreys, Portrait of God, and 86’d. I was on Vimeo where 86’d was streaming and noticed a monstrosity in the recommended videos list. An AI short film? It couldn’t be. I shared my screen and reluctantly clicked the link for a short AI film called ADHD. My friends and I could not make it through the entire film, we tapped out about 2 minutes in. It sparked so many negative feelings. Feelings that I want to share with all of you. Because while AI arts rising prominence is alarming, I can always rest easy knowing that it will never, ever, EVER, be real art. It’s more striking when watched following the previous three short films that were made with actual intention and effort. Next to those efforts it’s laughable that anyone can think it will ever be in league with actual works of art. It will always be toilet water, absolute trash, (it will never be Corey), no matter how advanced the technology gets. And if you find yourself using AI or wanting to use it, may I humbly suggest that you stop doing that. Immediately. It is actively making you dumber, incurious, and (worst of all) anti-art.
I’m a writer (as you all know, or probably guessed) so it’s no surprise that the idea of automated art creation is immediately disgusting to me. Before I get to why AI art will never reach the heights of real, human made, art, let me first explain all the ways AI art just misses the point. For starters AI art isn’t wholly original art creation. It is scraping the bold visuals and creativity of artists who made the horrible mistake of posting their work on the internet. The freaks behind the most powerful AI’s decided that was all information for their models to churn through. So instead of using AI to like…cure disease or something actually useful, attention turned to just making wholly creative, transformative, works of art as quickly as possible. It’s how you end up with everyone Ghibli-ifying themselves. Look at me, it looks like Hayao Miyazaki himself drew me! Isn’t that cool? Ethics aside, why are so many of you infatuated with what is essentially a glorified Snapchat filter? Do you hate Miyazaki that much? Does his work come off that soulless? There is intention behind every single frame of his work. The exaggerated way that characters cry, or the deliberate way a character will move through space, or the way a characters hairs stand as their emotions change. There’s motion and expression, even when you’re looking at a still image. Your AI Ghibli creations are flat, they all have the same empty eyes and dumb expression. Whatever emotion and moment you were trying to capture in your original photo is now gone. Everything important about your original photograph was lost. You neither achieved Studio Ghibli quality, or the original quality of the moment you captured on your camera. What a waste.
I kind of got off track there, sorry, those Ghibli pictures just suck so much. STOP DOING IT!!! Okay, umm, stealing images. Without the work of talented artists what would AI be using? Anytime someone making an AI work makes something it is being informed by very specific choices that someone else already made. And instead of rewarding the artists who did that original work, we celebrate the ability to create art without them. But that’s just the thing, what exactly are you creating without the artist? Because if you ask the AI evangelists, they think we’re nearly there. We just need to iron out a few extra fingers, smooth out some of that weird smearing, and bing-bang-boom, we have ourselves the future of entertainment and art.
Speed, that’s the real motivator, right? In the time it took you to learn to draw, draw, and share that work, I created 10 AI creations, isn’t that great? I just needed to know a good prompt. “Hot lady in skin tight spandex climbing into a rocket on a planet with pink dirt and neon green sky,” wow, wow! I’m doing huge cums from how fast that art was made! It looks so cool and it took me a minute to make it, the thing I wanted is here, hooray! Yeah, but you didn’t do anything. And to AI evangelists, that is a good thing. Idiots will claim that helps with accessibility, now anyone can create the detailed work of art of their dreams, no more weird gatekeeping of…pencils, and…online tutorials. Why are you…we…so afraid of the work? I opened this essay with a story about my writers workshop. Did you catch that word? WORK-shop. The art doesn’t make itself, we pour over it, we question little choices, we change big details, we wonder about what’s working, and take big swings, and delete entire paragraphs. But all the while, there’s so much work happening. And you invite other people in, you collaborate, you get feedback, and make changes. That is work, but it is also a fundamental part of art creation. It is the finished work. And sometimes that work is painful, sometimes it sucks, but every time you do it you become better at your craft, and your work always benefits from that time. TIME! It actually works and it makes you and your work better.
Genuinely, why are you in such a rush? If you’re in that much of a rush then why do you want to create art? You can’t be fucked to learn? You just need it right there, right now? You’re not that important, dude! The world is not that impatient, your great idea doesn’t need to hit the timeline in 24 hours or less. And honestly, your great idea could probably stand to digest a little. Sit with it.
So I actually went back to the AI “short film” that I saw last week, and in the time between watching it and typing this essay there are a lot more negative comments, which is good. I was going to share some stills from the film to illustrate my next point about intentionality, but they are so grotesque that I decided against it. So instead I’ll share a screenshot from the new Ryan Coogler film, Sinners:
Hannah Beachler, who worked on the film, shared the above image on Twitter, and she asked: This frame right here. “I'd love to hear how people dissect this because it means so so so so much more than just waiting for Hogwood! What does it mean to you!!!” (via @HannahBeachler on Twitter) A lot of people answered sarcastically, because they both did not know who Hannah Beachler was, and that she actually worked on Sinners. Slight sidebar, but I love social media, so many arm chair experts casually arguing with people who put in the work every day, perfect encapsulation for AI art. But anyways! Hannah Beachler did work on the film and she was asking great, fun, questions that explored the work that she and the other parts of the crew helped create. She has first hand knowledge about the symbolism in that frame, but she is inviting us to also explore. A few years ago, there was this annoying meme that went around, I saw it first on Tumblr, but it was basically people making fun of English teachers for reading deeper into any given text. Why are the curtains blue? With the punchline coming from the supposed author of the text, “they’re blue because I wanted them to be blue,” or something like that. Because why would a writer or filmmaker ever put additional symbolism into their work, right? All words are made up! I’m not choosing to use a swear word right now because of nothing, it’s all just slop flowing out of my butt. We don’t care, it’s nothing. It’s all nothing!
Also I lied, here are some frames from the AI “short film” that I watched:
For fun you can look at the images and decide why certain things are framed the way they are, why certain colors were used, why it was important to have the mans eyes look that way, or to have him depicted as a child at one point, or to have exploding brains everywhere, or to use that color for that sky, or to have men all lined up in that way, or to have it set in a sorta 60’s or 70’s setting, or…that’s all more thought than it deserves, because those specific choices never made its way into the generation of this dogshit. It’s aesthetic for the sake of aesthetic. It’s bold visuals to trick you into thinking you’re seeing something profound. And it’s showing off tech. Because the fidelity is important. We love human guys who definitely look human. Woo-fucking-hoo.
I feel like the attitude that has informed a lot of AI evangelists is based around those details not mattering at all. It’s those guys who think good art doesn’t have to be political, or that good art can be devoid of context and personal expression. I wanted to share stills from that AI short film because I wanted to know, what was the intention? I believe, that the fundamental reason AI art will never amount to real art is because the human element can never be reflected in the individual frames. It can never be reflected in the word choice. It can never be reflected in the brush strokes. It is inferring those choices off of the intentionality someone else made ages ago. And it comes to its own conclusions, but why? In the film Sinners, that frame Hannah Beachler shared wasn’t some random shot that just appeared. Ryan Coogler didn’t just set a camera up in a random place, put zero thought behind the placement, and hit record. He had a specific reason for framing the shot the way he did. And those choices are up and down everything: color, wardrobe, lens choice, time of day, aspect ratio, so many things. And it’s so cool. When you watch a film you see a huge list of credits, a list of people with specialized jobs putting together the work you just witnessed. Be in awe.
When you generate your movie in an AI generator what choices are you making? What do you know about wardrobe, set design, camera placement, sound design, and even color science? Because at a certain point, if you do deem those choices to be important, then you’d have to go in and add that yourself, no? “Good job, computer, but I actually want the camera to be looking this way, with the depth of field adjusted, and also I need the performer to…” oh shit! I forgot about the performers! Obviously this specific critique geared is more towards film and television, but actors make those decisions too. They’re not robots, maybe they’re choosing to raise an eyebrow, or add an eye twitch. How do you add that personality into your AI actors performance? How much work are you going to do in order to dial in an authentic and captivating performance? There’s a scene in Sinners when Michael B. Jordans character snaps his eyes to his cousin, and a huge smile explodes across his face. The authentic expression was affecting for me. In it you can just feel so much emotion, and you can also infer the other emotions that the character is feeling. It’s not “plot” happening, but the story progresses and develops because we are learning more about this person. We’re getting history that reflects the world he lives in, the experiences he has had, and this burst of excitement is palpable. It tells you so much in such a short amount of time. How the FUCK does AI come close to that spontaneity?
Of course, if you’re an AI evangelist, this all sounds so pointless. You can always dial in exactly what you want, right? But why would you? Under whose authority? Because I doubt AI evangelists are actually looking for that detail in the works they generate. If you look at the vast majority of AI creation, it is always so bright and extravagant. It’s bright detailed striking visuals that don’t really amount to anything. It’s contrasty colors and gonzo camera angles and scenes that last 2.5 seconds. Those choices tell me everything I need to know about the person generating the work, that they value, more above everything else, the surface level visuals. Look deeper and you’ll find that there isn’t really anything worth celebrating. Is it impressive that you were able to have something that looks like this be made? I suppose on a technical level, I can’t be that much of a hater. You could not do that 4 years ago, that is a fact. But there just isn’t anything past it. You can point to how Will Smith eating spaghetti looks better now than it did 2 years ago all you want, but AI art hasn’t actually made work that is transformative in that time. And that’s due to the fact that actual storytellers have no interest in using the technology. So you’re left with a bunch of STEM-lords who hate arts majors, thinking they can make the sci-fi film of their dreams, and when they sit down to do it they’re just asking it to make hot lady in space ship who finds hot dude in another space ship. There’s no performance, there is no intentionality behind the frames, no emotion behind the color choices, or the camera placement. It’s whatever a programmer trained a model to prioritize, and that person, I can guarantee, had no eye for art to begin with. And they have no eye for art because they don’t want to have an eye for it, they don’t read, they don’t watch, they see colors and think they can do it, and they think we all want to do it that way too.
So what happens when some storytellers inevitably decide that AI is how all art should be made? I think they will discover fairly quickly that the amount of detail they want to dial in on is just unachievable. Or that you’re just not saving that much time. Animators make a lot of these same decisions you see in live action, that is part of their work. What happens when you start asking AI evangelists to dig down and dial in a facial expression or camera placement? Do they get to work or do they throw their hands up, say, “fuck this shit,” and proceed to shit out the slop they had originally generated from the start? The intention can’t be faked, it can’t be outsourced, it can’t be skipped. You’re either committing to making something or you’re not. I hate to keep going back to the AI short film, ADHD, but you can tell from each frame that the decision was just, “colors, random visuals,” and that was it. As a matter of fact, I do wonder how much of the idea for the short film was there from the start, and how much of it was reverse engineered. Did the creator just see a bunch of weird visuals and just try to work backwards into some sort of narrative? I’m sure the initial concept was theirs (mostly because it’s fucking DUMB) but I think there are plenty of frames that were just included because they were amazed at what was being generated and that just became the movie. Also I didn’t mention that the accompanying score for the “film” sounds like loud echoey farts. The entire experience is an assault on every sense. It’s bad. Do not watch it.
I am so confident in my assessment of AI. I’m sure in another 3 years (if the tech hasn’t exploded by then) it will look amazing. The visuals will blend perfectly with reality, the energy costs will not be able to keep up, but hey, you’ll finally be able to make your Catwoman film starring Taylor Swift a reality. But that film will never have any level of intention. It will be whatever the AI has intelligently decided was the most visually appealing to the most people. And we will have lost the small eye twitches, the beautiful shots of sunsets, and every other human choice that goes into whatever it is you decided to watch. And guessing by how many of you assholes Ghibli-fied yourself, many of you will likely be sitting down to watch a Netflix original generated completely in AI with no problem. But I genuinely believe that the human element will just be too hard to ignore. And soon it will all collapse. At a certain point, you’re just not watching anything, and I think people can feel that, even if they’re not well versed filmgoers. You’re experiencing a story that no one wanted you to see. And no one wanted you to see it because no one made it. It was simply made.
The art will never speak to a moment in time, it will never reflect the experience of an artist, it won’t pull from something personal. How does a film like The Zone of Interest, get made in AI? That film brutalizes you with audio of human suffering played over beautiful garden parties, marital spats, and bedtime stories, all told from a Jewish filmmaker who understands intimately how that sort of banality can exist against so much suffering. AI films are only interested in the sheen of it all. It’s always only simple, yet bold, visuals and sound, stealing and pulling from intentional works of the past. Hayao Miyazaki’s experiences growing up has made its way into each of his films. His style isn’t just a style, it’s informed by the life he has lived, the horrors he has witnessed, the beauty he has seen with his own eyes! And it compelled him to create lasting works of art that have wowed us for generations. If you want to be Ghibli-fied ask yourself, why? Because if you can answer that question then maybe commission an artist to create an image for you. They can capture the verve and dynamism that is missing from all of the Ghibli-monstrosities that invaded social media a few weeks ago. And that work will be saying something about you, the artist who made it, and hey, you’d be putting some money in their pocket too.
I think the most annoying thing about AI art is that it spits in the face of artists on every level. Here in the United States (where I live), there is no love for the arts on a societal level. Why aren’t we paying artists to sit at home and create? We love when a Sinners or an Anora gets made, but we don’t want to fund the next generation of filmmakers to go out there and tell those stories. There are millions of stories at the quality (or better) of Sinners that will NEVER get made because the young girl living in Oakland, or St Louis, or Oklahoma City, does not have access to a library, or a computer. And instead of putting our money into art, we put it into a generator to diarrhea shit out surface level, horseshit, puke. What an indictment! How soulless are we as a people that we make fun of arts majors, and artists, while simultaneously subscribing to every streaming service to experience stories. We love stories but hate storytellers. And now, NOW, you want to just have the story without the work. Well, it is with great relief that I can say you will never ACTUALLY have it. You can make something that at first glance is doing something interesting, but when you look closer you’ll see that it is the work of someone with no imagination, and no effort. Lastly, as an artist myself, I do believe that we should gatekeep art. But the gate isn’t a fortress. It’s a small wooden gate. Pick up a pencil. The effort to open the gate is next to none, just give it a slight push, and don’t run away at the first sign of friction. That’s good! That’s part of it, keep going and don’t stop until you’re past the gate, building monuments to memories, cities, civilizations, emotions and more. That should excite you. It’s scary as fuck, but man, there’s nothing else like it.
The most most upsetting thing is that there are thousands of artists on BlueSky who would draw a better, personal and more alive Ghibli version of you for probably less than $30. Fuck AI art.