The gallery show in Santa Fe that flipped my stance on AI art

I went to this small gallery in Santa Fe last month, mostly to laugh at the AI pieces on the wall. But there was this one series that used AI to generate the base sketches, then the artist painted over every single one by hand. It took them 6 months and around 400 hours of work, and you could see the brushstrokes fighting the digital lines. That made me realize the tool itself isn't the problem, it's how lazy people get with it. I still think AI flooding the market with cheap knockoffs hurts commission prices, but I don't see it as pure evil anymore. Has anyone else had a moment where seeing the process changed their mind about a specific piece?

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walker.julia1mo ago

Did the finished piece actually change how the market treats lazy AI, though?

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henryt181mo ago

Wait, you actually think the market "treats" lazy AI like it's some kind of living thing with feelings? That's cute. The market doesn't care about lazy or hardworking, it cares about how many dollars fall out of your pocket. That finished piece got shared, got some claps, and then everyone went back to typing "write me a blog post" into the same three tools they were using before. Honestly, the only thing that changed is some people got a little more careful about hiding their AI slop under a few hand edits. And even then, it's like putting a bowtie on a garbage truck. So no, the market didn't get "changed." It just got a new excuse to ignore the problem for another six months.

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