Making art in 2024

Update from January 2026

Humanity is not necessarily what makes art feel good. So far, the idea of “good” art has not changed that much to me specifically. For others, it clearly has. I am seeing frequent misclassifications of real art as “AI” online. For example, actual human editing mistakes misclassified as a hallucinated artifact or a beautiful sunset called “too perfect” and generated.

It’s the same thing with other fields: a master steering the tool well can result in a great finished product. Sloppy steering is what feels lifeless.

Original

I think art is in a weird place right now. On one hand, it’s more accessible than ever. Anyone can go in and create “masterpieces” without any knowledge of art styles at all. But for this same reason, everything feels lifeless. There’s all this junk everywhere, like over-processed perfect humans and spam corporate jargon commentary.

Humanity is what makes art feel good. But as people tweak their models to spit out even more human-like results, what happens to our perception of “good” art? Even well done AI landscape photography can give me the same sensations as real photos. Only time will tell, but I think “good” art is going to look a lot different.