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You Didn’t “Make” Art With AI, You Commissioned It

Dave Gutteridge
From the Gutt
Published in
7 min readSep 1, 2022
An underwater temple to Cthulhu.
This is so far my favorite image that I made with Midjourney. An underwater temple for Cthulhu type of thing.

Recently, some dude won an art competition by submitting a picture that was created with AI software. He was open about the fact that he used AI software, so this wasn’t an attempt to trick anyone. Though, at the same time, it seems that the people judging the contest were unclear about the potential for this to happen, and may have decided differently if they were more informed.

This is one instance in a big debate that we’re all going to be hearing about a lot, because the impact of AI that can generate art is going to be a bigger shift than when photography came on the scene. When people thought photography was going to replace paints and pencils, that was just a matter of the ease of creating pictures. Now, if robots can make art, that’s got implications for what it means to be human.

However, like many things, this is both a huge change and not a change.

Take the guy who won the art contest. He is, apparently, trying to make the case that he did, in fact, “make” the art he submitted. He just used a particular software to do it, and how is that different from someone using Photoshop or whatever?

It’s very different.

I’ve been playing around with Midjourney recently. That’s the same software the guy in the art contest used. It’s pretty wild. You can…

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From the Gutt
From the Gutt

Published in From the Gutt

All my various writings but without the movie and show reviews.

Dave Gutteridge
Dave Gutteridge

Written by Dave Gutteridge

I don't post often because I think about what I write. Topics include ethics, relationships, and philosophy.

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