this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Nah I think it should be condemned in 100% of all (artistic) cases
Thanks for replying and for expressing a non-binary view on it, I am open to having my mind changed here, too. Upvoted for contributing to discussion, even though I do disagree at the moment.
Curious what your general reasoning for always condemning artistic cases is? And also what non-artistic cases you think are viable?
For instance, in solo 3D game dev, using AI to generate textures for small unimportant assets could save a lot of time and allow an individual to realize more complex visions than are currently feasible. This is something I'd like to use AI for, but currently would be afraid to do since it seems people would consider my entire game trash on that basis.
I view that art is an expression of human emotions, if there’s no human involved beyond putting in a prompt, then there’s no point in the art.
The main uses for AI, more general machine learning really, involves things like interpreting large amounts of data for whatever the reason may be. I also hope to see it evolve in the text translation area.
Okay, yeah I totally agree that text translation and data interpretation is a more obviously acceptable use of AI. Definitely when it comes to art it gets muddier. I hate a lot of the ways AI art is used, treated, and understood, for what it's worth.
I do think, though, that while art is valuable as an expression of the artist's emotions, it's also fair to say that part of art's value is the impression it makes on the viewer. If I see an artwork of a beautiful scene, it's maybe less about this being an expression of the artist, and maybe more about how the scene makes me feel a certain nice way. In fact I think many artists actually strive to "remove themselves" from their work, they actively don't want their work to be a reflection of their own emotions, but instead they want it to produce a certain effect in the viewer.
Is Romeo and Juliet valuable because it tells us how Shakespeare thinks and feels? Or is it valuable because it makes us think and feel things? Of course there's a mixture there, but I think it's mostly the second one.
If a bunch of rocks tumbled off a mountain and struck a xylophone and coincidentally played Pachelbel's Canon, don't I still hear beautiful music?
So yes, I agree that while AI art is weaker in the dimension of enjoying thinking about the artist's intent or the reflection of the artist's mind, I think it can still fulfill the other great calling of art. And for course, it does reflect the prompter to some extent - albeit of course a much lesser one. But we also have human artists create aleatoric music and artworks (often specifically to efface themselves from the process), and we call this beautiful and creative, too - but arguably this is no different than leaving elements of the composition up to the chance of the generation's random seed.