yes, and thats the one that gets me so much I want to scream. The whole "It's AI slop!" without even reading one word. OR, as you said, if they DID like it, but then find out after the fact, they try to gaslight us because they simply cannot allow themselves to admit something produced "by machine" could be beautiful or pleasing.
Course, at the same time, they have no problem with photographs, movies, digital art, electronic music...
And if you point out that AI art has to have a human guiding it and prompting it and building it to make it fit a human's vision; that the AI isn't just prompting itself, but that the prompt itself came from the mind of a human, you'll be told "that isn't the same thing!"
And I want to know why. Why is this somehow not my story, my creation, just because I used the AI to bring it to life? Why even though I have 10 years worth of notes, spend thousands of words crafting the prompt and then surgically editing the response line by line to get it to exactly what I had envision - how is that "the machine" and not "me?"
Man I have had comments from people telling me the same things. That even though I wrote out the chapter synopsis and then had AI write the chapter based on that synopsis that I am not a writer while ignoring images of pages that I hand wrote. They have said that writing a synopsis or notes doesn't make you a writer. Its bullshit.
I can foresee a world where the human is taken out of it, unfortunately. Where my kindle tracks my reading to the point where it knows what I like (when I keep turning pages at 2am), and what I don’t (when I put the book down and go to sleep). I can also imagine it generating a bespoke book ‘just for me’ full of confirmation bias, and free from all discomfort.
It’s the lack of discomfort that makes me most uncomfortable.
But then, I believe that humans are inherently creative. They will always find a new way to express themselves.
"I suffered to make this, therefore it is valuable, therefore I am valuable. " and because I personally am NOT suffering when I make my short films with Seedance but am enjoying it immensely.. what then? no value? these motherfxckers are the same ones who can't "draw a stick figure" so they can go eat a button
Yes. The..."if I do this the hard way so do you " mentality. I think I shared an excellent article which went into the psychology of this, but there are people who think, if they can't or don't why should you.
I truly am so grateful to start finding folks like this in my feed because for the longest time, all I've heard is the anti-AI side. Even in writing forums I'm in.
Just last week, for instance, I was excited about a story I had been working on with Grok, building up chapter after chapter and had realized as I concluded the Act 1, that I had the beginnings of a good novel on my hands. I was excited. The AI was helping me shape the synopsis that I had started with into something that had some real meat to it. Of course I knew it was the brainstorming phase. Of course I knew that what Grok produced (after 1,000's of words in dozens of prompts where I painfully explained each see as I saw it and then surgically edited over another half dozen prompts to even get close to something acceptable) was only a rough draft - a detailed outline or plot synopsis.
But it was a start. I was no longer staring at a blank word doc and a blinking cursor, unable to figure out how to even start the first scene or how to narrative the active scene I could see in my head. Because that has always been my problem. I have stories. I have characters. I can see scenes in my head like tv episodes. But I struggle so hard to try to capture what I see in my head in a narrative form. Now if I could just write it like the Silmarillion and "tell" you the story? We'd be fine. I actually did that this weekend to describe it to a friend and realized when I was finished I had written 10,000 words in 5 hours because it wasn't narrative. AI allows me to write that 10,000 word synoposis and then start generating the narrative from it to give me a place to start. Something to edit and reword and rewrite, but a starting point.
However, when I posted to this one particular person (whom I have encourage quite often in their own writing career) about my excitement about finally having a breakthrough, I got the chilly response of "its machine generated. You'd be better off writing it yourself and not letting the machine write it for you."
I'll be honest, it completely deflated me. Just like going into my other writing groups and seeing the pharisaical attitudes of "oh, it's not real art!" or "well, if you had taken that 4,000 words you fed as a prompt to the AI and just written the story, you'd already be 4,000 words into the story." or the "using the AI will make you lazy and destroy your creativity."
And one of the things that really gets me in all this is that these are the same people who crow about having "destroyed the gates!" and "taken down the gatekeepers!" of traditional publishing, who are so proud that Indie publishing means they could finally get their stories out without a harried editor at a publishing company blocking them; now the readers can have the stories they've always wanted and writers can find their audience!
These same people are appointing themselves the new gatekeepers over what is "a writer" and what is not. Worse yet, they are trying to gatekeep readers as well, telling readers what they should and should not read.
The struggle is real - I have had very similar experiences to every one that you've described! It's good to find people like you here as well. Until I took of my mask and just started declaring who I am and what I do and how I do it, I thought I was alone. Now I realize there are plenty of us. We just believe it's not safe for us to come out.
Bam — that bit about having it all in your head and not being able to get it onto the page? Yeah. Same. That’s not laziness, it’s a bottleneck. Glad you found a way through.
Oof. That's an awfully strong 'us-versus-them' vibe.
I like that your question is very specific. I'm not going to answer it right now. I don't know what my answer is, yet.
I will say this: AI is not our friend. It is, at its core, a tool intended to make it easier for companies to fire their employees, and reduce labor costs. I say this as somebody watching the AI reaper carve through their particular field of employment.
And that applies to artistic fields just as much as it applies to, say, translation, or customer support. Don't think that the artists who are championing AI now are any safer than those who won't touch it.
AI is not our friend because it’s under the corporate structure and the corporate structure is not our friend. AI is like all tools that humans make, potentially positive, potentially negative. It really comes down to the user.
People forget that for thiusands of years artists were not treated as gods. They were artisans. Craftsmen. Laborers. If someone liked it, they bought it, or traded their own craft for it. And many of them used the latest technology of the time.
If they only knew how much blood, sweat and tears can go into structuring, molding, shaping and prompting. How much suffering can happen until that magic machine finally arranges all those stolen pieces into something coherent, emotionally appealing and ideally resulting in a captivating story.
Most believe it's just typing "Write a story about xyz", hitting enter and waiting for the machine to spit out it's stolen slop we can sell as our own.
The irony is that the unoriginal, anonymous masses that unironically type "AI slop" a hundred times a day into comments sections all over the Internet are complaining about low-quality content produced by algorithmic output machines. It will always be lost on them.
I think the aversion to AI is in the belief that human beings' value is found in our unique and exclusive ability to produce output. If AI is seen as simplifying the process, then it's thought that humans are devalued and the pain/labor involved in the creation of art is therefore devalued.
To me, the idiots who scream "AI SLOP" constantly are in no way helpful and just want another bandwagon to jump onto for online back pats from other idiots. The vast majority of these people have never created anything that could even be considered "slop" and they're the most vocal critics of a new toolset that empowers people to create.
I'm an author who loves to write. Every single word contained within my books is written by me. It takes months to put out a first draft. Does it offend me that people use AI to generate books based on their preferences and can do so almost instantly? Of course not. Because their actions don't restrict my ability to create books in the way I nominate.
Many are predictable. They’re using this to undermine competitors then tout how they should be hired with no evidence of their own work.
But if they get labeled ai, suddenly ai is wrong.
Worse is they reference digital pads, canva and its billion templates and I didn't use Grammarly on their word processors as proof they not others are human.
We need to stop treating suffering like a tollbooth for real art. Technical discipline and a stable life don't make the work less authentic—they make it sustainable. Validation belongs to the impact of the work, not the exhaustion of the creator.
yes, and thats the one that gets me so much I want to scream. The whole "It's AI slop!" without even reading one word. OR, as you said, if they DID like it, but then find out after the fact, they try to gaslight us because they simply cannot allow themselves to admit something produced "by machine" could be beautiful or pleasing.
Course, at the same time, they have no problem with photographs, movies, digital art, electronic music...
And if you point out that AI art has to have a human guiding it and prompting it and building it to make it fit a human's vision; that the AI isn't just prompting itself, but that the prompt itself came from the mind of a human, you'll be told "that isn't the same thing!"
And I want to know why. Why is this somehow not my story, my creation, just because I used the AI to bring it to life? Why even though I have 10 years worth of notes, spend thousands of words crafting the prompt and then surgically editing the response line by line to get it to exactly what I had envision - how is that "the machine" and not "me?"
I never get an answer for that one either.
Man I have had comments from people telling me the same things. That even though I wrote out the chapter synopsis and then had AI write the chapter based on that synopsis that I am not a writer while ignoring images of pages that I hand wrote. They have said that writing a synopsis or notes doesn't make you a writer. Its bullshit.
I can foresee a world where the human is taken out of it, unfortunately. Where my kindle tracks my reading to the point where it knows what I like (when I keep turning pages at 2am), and what I don’t (when I put the book down and go to sleep). I can also imagine it generating a bespoke book ‘just for me’ full of confirmation bias, and free from all discomfort.
It’s the lack of discomfort that makes me most uncomfortable.
But then, I believe that humans are inherently creative. They will always find a new way to express themselves.
Yes. Normally, nobody ever answers the question: is it good? Did you feel anything?
They'd rather die than admit any quality to any piece of AI-assisted expression.
And if they learn it later, after having praised it, they will tell you that they always felt something was off.
You can't win.
"I suffered to make this, therefore it is valuable, therefore I am valuable. " and because I personally am NOT suffering when I make my short films with Seedance but am enjoying it immensely.. what then? no value? these motherfxckers are the same ones who can't "draw a stick figure" so they can go eat a button
PREACH
Yes. The..."if I do this the hard way so do you " mentality. I think I shared an excellent article which went into the psychology of this, but there are people who think, if they can't or don't why should you.
I truly am so grateful to start finding folks like this in my feed because for the longest time, all I've heard is the anti-AI side. Even in writing forums I'm in.
Just last week, for instance, I was excited about a story I had been working on with Grok, building up chapter after chapter and had realized as I concluded the Act 1, that I had the beginnings of a good novel on my hands. I was excited. The AI was helping me shape the synopsis that I had started with into something that had some real meat to it. Of course I knew it was the brainstorming phase. Of course I knew that what Grok produced (after 1,000's of words in dozens of prompts where I painfully explained each see as I saw it and then surgically edited over another half dozen prompts to even get close to something acceptable) was only a rough draft - a detailed outline or plot synopsis.
But it was a start. I was no longer staring at a blank word doc and a blinking cursor, unable to figure out how to even start the first scene or how to narrative the active scene I could see in my head. Because that has always been my problem. I have stories. I have characters. I can see scenes in my head like tv episodes. But I struggle so hard to try to capture what I see in my head in a narrative form. Now if I could just write it like the Silmarillion and "tell" you the story? We'd be fine. I actually did that this weekend to describe it to a friend and realized when I was finished I had written 10,000 words in 5 hours because it wasn't narrative. AI allows me to write that 10,000 word synoposis and then start generating the narrative from it to give me a place to start. Something to edit and reword and rewrite, but a starting point.
However, when I posted to this one particular person (whom I have encourage quite often in their own writing career) about my excitement about finally having a breakthrough, I got the chilly response of "its machine generated. You'd be better off writing it yourself and not letting the machine write it for you."
I'll be honest, it completely deflated me. Just like going into my other writing groups and seeing the pharisaical attitudes of "oh, it's not real art!" or "well, if you had taken that 4,000 words you fed as a prompt to the AI and just written the story, you'd already be 4,000 words into the story." or the "using the AI will make you lazy and destroy your creativity."
And one of the things that really gets me in all this is that these are the same people who crow about having "destroyed the gates!" and "taken down the gatekeepers!" of traditional publishing, who are so proud that Indie publishing means they could finally get their stories out without a harried editor at a publishing company blocking them; now the readers can have the stories they've always wanted and writers can find their audience!
These same people are appointing themselves the new gatekeepers over what is "a writer" and what is not. Worse yet, they are trying to gatekeep readers as well, telling readers what they should and should not read.
It truly drives me up the wall sometimes!
The struggle is real - I have had very similar experiences to every one that you've described! It's good to find people like you here as well. Until I took of my mask and just started declaring who I am and what I do and how I do it, I thought I was alone. Now I realize there are plenty of us. We just believe it's not safe for us to come out.
Bam — that bit about having it all in your head and not being able to get it onto the page? Yeah. Same. That’s not laziness, it’s a bottleneck. Glad you found a way through.
Oof. That's an awfully strong 'us-versus-them' vibe.
I like that your question is very specific. I'm not going to answer it right now. I don't know what my answer is, yet.
I will say this: AI is not our friend. It is, at its core, a tool intended to make it easier for companies to fire their employees, and reduce labor costs. I say this as somebody watching the AI reaper carve through their particular field of employment.
And that applies to artistic fields just as much as it applies to, say, translation, or customer support. Don't think that the artists who are championing AI now are any safer than those who won't touch it.
AI is not our friend because it’s under the corporate structure and the corporate structure is not our friend. AI is like all tools that humans make, potentially positive, potentially negative. It really comes down to the user.
The section about how Genesis is a big prompt made me laugh. I never thought of it that way! Excellent post all around.
People forget that for thiusands of years artists were not treated as gods. They were artisans. Craftsmen. Laborers. If someone liked it, they bought it, or traded their own craft for it. And many of them used the latest technology of the time.
This really resonated with me:
"In the beginning was the fucking prompt."
And the following was what made me comment. I humbly request that you check out the 'origin story' I just completed when you get a chance.
"Produced the first cave painter grinding red ochre by firelight, trying to put something unsayable on a wall."
Excellent article!
If they only knew how much blood, sweat and tears can go into structuring, molding, shaping and prompting. How much suffering can happen until that magic machine finally arranges all those stolen pieces into something coherent, emotionally appealing and ideally resulting in a captivating story.
Most believe it's just typing "Write a story about xyz", hitting enter and waiting for the machine to spit out it's stolen slop we can sell as our own.
If only they knew...
No
“So let me get this straight: random-chance-plus-iteration is noble when it happens in carbon, but it’s soulless theft when it happens in silicon?”
For me, yes.
The irony is that the unoriginal, anonymous masses that unironically type "AI slop" a hundred times a day into comments sections all over the Internet are complaining about low-quality content produced by algorithmic output machines. It will always be lost on them.
I think the aversion to AI is in the belief that human beings' value is found in our unique and exclusive ability to produce output. If AI is seen as simplifying the process, then it's thought that humans are devalued and the pain/labor involved in the creation of art is therefore devalued.
To me, the idiots who scream "AI SLOP" constantly are in no way helpful and just want another bandwagon to jump onto for online back pats from other idiots. The vast majority of these people have never created anything that could even be considered "slop" and they're the most vocal critics of a new toolset that empowers people to create.
I'm an author who loves to write. Every single word contained within my books is written by me. It takes months to put out a first draft. Does it offend me that people use AI to generate books based on their preferences and can do so almost instantly? Of course not. Because their actions don't restrict my ability to create books in the way I nominate.
Many are predictable. They’re using this to undermine competitors then tout how they should be hired with no evidence of their own work.
But if they get labeled ai, suddenly ai is wrong.
Worse is they reference digital pads, canva and its billion templates and I didn't use Grammarly on their word processors as proof they not others are human.
We need to stop treating suffering like a tollbooth for real art. Technical discipline and a stable life don't make the work less authentic—they make it sustainable. Validation belongs to the impact of the work, not the exhaustion of the creator.
I just wrote about this too!! Psychic??
https://shannonquenzler.substack.com/p/is-creating-without-suffering-really
Also yes it’s in the vibes right now.
Yay! I’ll take a look. 🫶
If you like the t-shirt, do you care if it was made with child slave labour?
Yes, I'm being deliberately extreme. The point is whether the output is 'good' or not is just one consideration. Some people have others.
Sure. That’s why I asked the question. Most people don’t have an answer other than “YOU ARE STOOPID BAD HUMAN FOR PLAY WITH AI” 🤖
Hard to get a decent discussion huh? Even from the 'humans'!
Fear of being replaced.