Trading on pretentiousness in cliques has been a thing in art long before the internet and Twitter.

Is it really showing just "the pretentiousness of the twitterati" when there are comments in this HN thread making the same kind of flip responses?

This is a real Monet.

Define «original».

Under many definitions, where novel composition of existing knowledge or techniques is counted, it certainly can.

I loathe the blasted copyright washing machine as much as the next intellectually honest person, but:

> AI can't create anything original.

Can we? I mean, don't we base our output on experience and reprocess references + memories of things past to create what we deem as "new"?

> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.

It goes beyond that. It proves that many people have an inherent bias against AI itself that's unrelated to whatever it generates. "This was made by AI, therefore it's bad in every way".

Good points, but consider what this post does prove: people’s arguments against AI art are shallow; they often attack the artifacts themselves instead of making your deeper argument.

> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.

It proves that people don't actually know what they like about "art" or even why they think some art is good, and some is bad.

These people criticized and trashed a widely regarded, famous painting because they were told that it was a cheap imitation.

If the AI generated a real imitation and the Met hung it on their walls I guarantee these same people would celebrate it just the same because they are told that it is real.

I remember this old episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor scoffs at a postcard with the Mona Lisa on it and derides souless "art made by computers."

As a digital artist, of course I rolled my eyes at the time, but these days I just keep thinking about that storyline more and more.

We've basically transitioned to a world where digital art is almost the default, but I think the world is going to value physical art much more highly in the coming years.

The absolute irony of this comment being the equivalent of the responses to that post.

> Seems the poster is the one fooled by the AI

I think this HN commenter is also being fooled by the AI. It's likely that a lot of comments on HN are bots, so here you got an AI to comment about AI criticizing AI.

it was all engagement bait to auction off some NFT nonsense.

> How much of our opinions are driven by context

I’d say for art, a lot? There’s a ton of art that a halfway decent painter could do now, the art of it was being the one to do it originally. At least that’s how I, as an absolute philistine in that regard, understand it ;)

Yeah I agree, in art a lot is driven by context: there's so many paintings or songs that are not outstanding in itself, but the full human context around it makes it significant.

For an edge case: people will be impressed and interested if you tell them that a piece was painted by an elephant, and then suddenly unimpressed if you tell them you were lying about that. So one function of art is as a sort of experiment, like the art is experimental data, where authenticity matters, because the interest is in the demonstration of a perspective, the reactions of an artist in the situation. Consider noir: a movie is much more plausibly authentic noir if it was made before about 1963, that is, if it was made by actors and directors who actually wore those hats (and lived through other tropes). Later on, it's imitation, regardless of how accurate: the experimental data is invalidated, it doesn't (seem to) mean so much.

But they’re confidently asserting a whole bunch of specific made up reasons this is shittier than a real Monet.

It’s like the sommeliers who can’t detect red vs. white wine when blindfolded.

If we learn anything from all studies in this field, that is barely possible if not impossible at all, to change people’s mind. Even when they face clear evidence of their own mistake.

I do think this reveals peoples' biases, but not in the way you probably do.

I think Monet just wasn't as good as his renown purports.

EDIT: I doubt this experiment would go similarly for a Caravaggio or a Michelangelo.

You're not surprised that people's judgement seems to be worthless?