AI art is pollution, infiltrating, poisoning the creative environment, spilling out and infecting search engines, timelines and archives. AI art is a lie, another step in the flood of disinformation and dilution of truth and facts.
AI art is not created, it is not made. It is churned out in a mechanised production line largely by those who do not have the ability or the patience for craft - organ grinders expecting applause for the complex sonata that emanates from the lever they push while not understanding a scale, chord or key.
AI users have to reign themselves in, for producing so much would reveal too readily what it really is - machine-produced mass content. It's the plastic tat of the gift shop, shiny but valueless, tawdry, throw-away.
AI art is for that friend who wanted to be your agent, your manager; you'd be the talent, do the work, and they'd rake in the cash. Now they've got AI there's no pesky artist in the way wanting creative control, just an acquiescent machine with which to overpopulate Amazon, Etsy and Ebay with colouring books, calendars, notebooks and art prints - and rake in the cash.
Some fall victim to the machine completely, believing they are the artists themselves. They will claim the 'text prompt' is a hard-won skill only a handful have mastered. Then some will claim there is no AI in their art at all. Out of nowhere they are producing full paintings, two or three a week, one a day if they're not careful, merely adding the flourish of a signature to make it theirs. Perhaps a previously amateur artist, now bursting with a brand-new style, but we never see the roughs, we never see the sketches, there is no video of their process.
Here they come ... festival brochures, event leaflets, book covers, comic strips, movie posters. The incredible wood sculpture made by a six-year old, the amazing historical photo no one has seen before, the viral video narrated by someone who may or may not be Morgan Freeman. The compromising picture of a loved celebrity, the off-mic comment made by a political opponent ... the video proof to justify a war.
AI art is trash and in that there is some hope, because those that use AI to promote their book festival, or their children's fun event, or their new novel, are broadcasting a certain set of values that most would reject if they knew: low-quality, cheap, insincere. The danger lies in an audience whose senses have been bludgeoned by a constant scrolling stream of thirty-second videos, forty-word posts, deepity-memes, and an internet media already full of charlatans, grifters, and conspiracy-pushers (it's no coincidence they are some of the biggest users of AI images).
Art is beautiful because it has been made by a fellow human being. Life is infused into human art. It is the mind laid bare for all to see. Machine art is devoid of everything we relate to in human life. AI content is a climate disaster for the internet, an invasive species, a complete corruption of humanistic values. Reject it.