Showerthought: My friend called AI art 'just fancy math' and it stuck with me

I was at a coffee shop yesterday and overheard a guy at the next table tell his friend, 'All this AI image stuff is just fancy math, it's not real art.' That simple line really got under my skin... I've been playing with Stable Diffusion for about six months now, trying to make storybook art for my niece. It's not just typing a word and getting a picture. You tweak the model, you write long prompts with weights, you fix faces in another tool. It's a skill. Calling it 'just math' feels like saying a guitar is 'just wood and wire.' It misses the whole point of the craft that's growing around these tools. What do you think makes something 'real' art in the AI world? Is it the intent, the process, or something else?

2 comments

2 Comments

west.claire3d ago

Watch people dismiss new tools as simple math... then watch them struggle to make anything good with them.

henry_martin563d ago

Wait, they call it simple math? That's wild when you see the results people get.