#it's literally the tool of the phahsceests to create propoganda to feed to us and keep us fucking stupid

[b0yskylark]

You stopped using critical thinking skills, and now you're making it artists problem.

A few days ago I made this post right here, stating that people need to start learning art history before making baseless claims of generative artificiality to make art.

There's a deep conversation that I feel like I want to take about and a nuance to that topic we need to observe as a general whole. First off, this is tumblr. Everyone here thinks they're an expert on something and that's just... how this site has worked for a long time. (shout out to my old heads, tumblr is still here somehow) There is an attitude of grandeur here, especially when it comes to artists and their work. A lot of people, on social media, have a false cape on in regard to "taking down AI". It's very prevalent within circles of young artists (not young in age, but young in skill/craft) and non-artists thinking they can call out or clock something as AI when they themselves have no real understanding of... frankly, any of it? Not saying that young artists and non-artists don't have the potential to learn or grow or move passed this mindset, but they don't have a developed enough eye to make those claims.

Art at it's core is imperfect, it's raw and wrong. Beautiful and broken. You can't take one wobbly line and say "SEE, LOOK!!! AI!! ITS AI!!" because it's likely not. There's is a level of appreciation for those that want to stand up for artists, IF that's what they were doing. But in most cases it's not. In most cases its outrage farming and ragebait. They shout these things in order to convince you to be angry and click click click away. They don't necessarily dislike or even hate artists, but they want their own engagement first and foremost.

Over the last, I wanna say week, there has been a solid number of people joining in on a new drawing meme using this image from pin-up cover artist Casey Jones. A few people on bluesky claimed that Jones piece was Artificially generated simply because the anatomy wasn't perfect and seemed a bit "strange". A lot of people responded and corrected them, which in itself isn't the issue. The issue is the art work was given a label, something you could tangibly hold in your hands, from a time before digitally rendered art work, of not being real due to it's perceived imperfections.

Quick art history and US history lesson (with plenty of imperfections for y'all to gnaw at like rabid gnats) on art from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. In the 30 years of artistic endeavors, the forefront of art at that time was men (debatably) who would create all artist works from pro-war posters to ledger heads for news papers. That was also a time of the hyper idealized sexuality that centered white women. Often enough, the subject matter for some of these works was a scantily clad white woman with perfect hair and proportions that were considered best at the time. A perky chest, long torso, thin long arms and legs, and no behind. That was the appeal of the time. (I would get into the... racial biases but mmm not right now) This was also a time of soldiers being far away from home and possibly wanting "something" while over seas. Photos weren't easy to send, and communication was an weekly or bi-weekly get. (I don't remember which) So the sultry girl on the cover of the joke book was there... ahem... moment... (I don't want this getting axed so I'm trying to be yahoo x-tian clean) With that in mind, there's a lot of exaggeration going on in these pieces. Yes, even in the more inclusive ones. So just like today, when people say "oh that's just my style" artists back during that time hand the same if not a similar mindset.

I'm gonna wrap this up on 2 notes; the first being, until you have trained and developed an eye for identifying gen AI versus old art versus anything else, please keep your comments to yourself. I personally block AI whenever I see it. We live in a crazy dystopian time period and that alone is enough to raise the hackles on a lot of us. Cautionary tales are cautionary for a reason. The second point I would like to make is one that has been iterated and repeated ad nauseum, gen AI is the tool of the oppressor, not the tool of the oppressed. You'll see a lot of people, typically people that invested a large sum of money into the gen AI machine, say that it's good and helpful for disabled people and yhack yhack yhack. It's not, it never has been and never will be. It's main uses are to create false narratives. Falsehoods that only serve themselves. Please keep that in mind.

TL;DR - Learn your art history, do your research, and stop bolstering AI because it's actual fucking trash and you should know better.