After the new ChatGPT image generation capabilities were released, I spent the night amazed at what creations I could muster out of a couple words. I stayed up til 4am turning my pictures into different styles, generating posters, and learning the capabilities of the system.
Before I went to sleep, I thought I would share some of my edited pictures on X with an inspiring tagline. I woke up to an unnecessarily viral tweet.
Art just became accessible pic.twitter.com/sRL8ycxTvk
â Krish Shah (@KrishRShah) March 26, 2025
Needless to say, it was a controversial take met with a lot of backlash. It exited my typical safehaven of nerdy techno-optimists and made its way to the general public. Weirdly, I got a lot of general hate and even some death threats as well. More importantly, close friends and communities were commenting that this is disrespectful to what they stand for.
I think it is a good exercise to decrypt my thoughts here and update any beliefs I have.
Weâll start with the biggest critique:
âArt was always accessibleâ
I agree! I concede that the whole âjust became accessibleâ thing was not well thought out. A more correct description would have been âArt just became more accessibleâ.
I do believe that it is easier to turn your imagination into reality now! And as a result the activation energy of creating art that would have turned heads 5 years ago is a lot lower. A corollary is that itâs easier to make visually pleasing art now, and thus the bar has been raised for what âgoodâ art might be considered. Which brings me to the next critique:
âThis isnât artâ
To be honest, I thought I would not have to debate the whole âwhat is artâ thing until I was rich and pompous and once again searching for meaning in life.
That being said, personally, I do deem this art. There are a couple ways to frame this:
- If art is just a material form of intention, then clearly I intended to create these things. Yes it took (a lot) less effort, and I am standing on the shoulders of giants, but I did write the prompts. Almost all of the details were taken care of by a tool, but this tool is becoming increasingly accessible for everyone to use.
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I classify this as art, and thatâs all that really matters. If others donât, thatâs ok too!
There is also the conversation of âthis is a filter, not artâ or âthis is media, not artâ. I think those are okay takes but mostly just pedantic.
âYouâre not an artistâ
Ok? Once again this is quite pedantic and Iâm not really sure why this matters. I certainly donât think a person that generates one-shot AI art deserves the same respect as Michaelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.
âThis is stealingâ
This is the most interesting one. In some sense, yes. Most of the training data for AI art was taken without consent, and the creators reap none of the fruits of their own labour.
That being said, it is customary in art to draw inspiration from the past. It is what progresses art. Of course, the things being done here are different, but also similar. Trademark law very specifically handles âlikenessâ, and styles are not trademarkable.
Accreditation is hard. I believe that for most purposes, it should be clear that art is AI generatedâas there is context in what that means.
The popular example is that of Hayao Miyazaki, creator of Studio Ghibli, hating the idea of AI art but still having his work trained on it. I believe he should have the ability to stop training on his art, but I donât see how this is realistically possible when his art is shared and admired publicly.
In fact, I am reminded of an interesting opinion of Mr. Beast (arguably the most influential influencer of the current times), where he says that he loves when people clip his work, post it on TikTok, and it goes viral. It adds to brand value for free!
Itâs true that no direct royalty (that I know of) is going to Studio Ghibli, but it is erroneous to say they arenât getting compensated. Their brand value has increased a ton, and as we know revenue strongly correlates to this.
Conclusion
The truth is that AI art exists now. There is no turning back the dial. In this sense, I think we should use it as a tool to create amazing things, using inspiration from the millions of artists as well as intertwining our own styles and perspectives.
In the end, society is the objective evaluator of art. I believe that society values the human touch, and as a result AI will be a tool in most artistic expression.
In my response to the above tweet, I was hasty, and that haste was reflected in my verbiage. For that I apologize to any readers, but I generally do agree with those words which were trying to encapsulate what was said here.
Yes yes, art has always been accessible, I know that.
â Krish Shah (@KrishRShah) March 27, 2025
But this is still art, and it has become easier for anyone to turn their imagination into reality.
Now stop being pedantic and go create this high skill art you speak of. The bar has been raised.