There are many good reasons to oppose AI generated images being disseminated or put forward as art. Nevertheless, one argument I see with surprising frequency is that the images generated by AI look bad. The biggest reason I think this is a bad argument is because it’s contingent upon current technological limitations. AI image generation will undoubtedly improve, just as it has been improving even since the release of Stable Diffusion. If the people making this argument would, in the future, be willing to reverse their position on AI if it improves enough, then I think there would be no problem. However, I don’t believe that is virtually ever the case. The people saying AI makes bad “art” are typically opposed to AI for other reasons. The low quality is just being used as a rhetorical cudgel, in other words more or less an insult.

It is also very unrealistic to believe AI will never be capable of “human-quality” art. Just as there are people who believe technology will eventually be able to solve any problem or do anything, there are people who believe there are things that are so fundamentally human that technology will never be able to replicate it. Both extreme perspectives are almost certainly incorrect. The problem is believing you can predict what technology will or will not be capable of. Maybe AI will eventually match the quality of the greatest human artists, and maybe there is an as-yet-unknown technical limitation that makes such a thing totally unfeasible. To believe you can tell which will in fact be the case already, right now, in 2023, is an enormous error.

The one exception is for people who believe that humans are special and have some kind of soul, and that this soul is specifically required for producing good art. To put it briefly, there is no evidence to that effect. Any argument based on this belief can only ever be convincing to people who share the belief. I maintain that skepticism towards future technological development is still the only reasonable stance to take when attempting to make an argument regarding AI.

I will say that much of what people actually do put out there as AI art is extremely low quality. It is typically very sloppy use of the tool by people who either don’t know how to use it effectively or aren’t willing to invest the time required to create something that is of adequate quality. That being said, most of what humans put out there as art is extremely low quality. It is likewise sloppy and for many of the same reasons. However, while human-made art is sometimes the target of vicious insults, I find that most artists generally try to be supportive and helpful, or at worst simply ignore the mountains of garbage.

“What if,” someone might say, “I do just want to insult AI images/people who create them?” Well, that’s certainly your prerogative. It is certainly a frustrating (even enraging) situation, especially for artists whose work is being explicitly replicated, and it can be helpful to vent sometimes. In my opinion, it’s best to avoid insulting someone unnecessarily if you think you can convince them of your point. The problem I see is that people don’t say “AI ‘art’ is bad” in isolation, it’s usually one in a list of things they think is wrong with AI image generation. Well, if your purpose is to insult, you can brush the other issues aside, but if your purpose is to convince, maybe insults aren’t the best thing to include.

In general, I don’t buy into the idea that people are divided today like never before, or that social divisiveness is especially characteristic of our current times. That is not because I don’t think people are divided, but rather because I think people have always been divided. That being said, it is typical (especially on the internet) to insult “the other side” and/or offer arguments that will never be convincing to them, and this only cements us-vs-them feelings. People can, at least in some cases, change their view when there is dialogue where the other party makes an effort to understand their perspective. You will never convince someone by bashing them over the head with something they simply don’t think is correct. The only way to convince someone of something is to make it make sense to them. I’m not suggesting concealing your own feelings or perspective, but rather expressing them in a way that doesn’t invalidate the other person’s feelings or perspective.

Moreover, the quality of AI-generated images is the least of their problems. If you want to convince people it’s an important issue, focus on what’s important: how AI affects artists, how it can be used to create fake photos of real people, and so on. On the other hand, if your goal is not to convince, that’s okay too. I didn’t say “AI ‘art’ is bad” is a bad thing to say, just that it’s a bad argument.