My Thoughts On and Experiences with AI Art

I first started experimenting with the use of AI to make art in the summer of 2024. I had seen some AI art and had thought that almost all of it was basically garbage and I had no interest in using it. But then I saw a YouTube video about someone who was already an experienced and accomplished artist using AI in creative ways and doing interesting things with it. So I decided I would experiment with AI and see what I could make. I posted some of what I was doing on Facebook and was met with quite a spewing forth of self-righteously indignant condemnation. I was really taken aback. Here are edited versions of the responses I posted:

Post #1: I know there's been a lot of controversy about AI art. I heard someone say that AI can't make creative choices or express a person's inner self; all it can do is reproduce and aggregate - and I agree with this statement. I did not think I would ever use it, but then I saw a video about an artist that was using it as a creative tool to realize her own visions, and I decided to give it a try. Although I will continue to use traditional media in the future, for now I am really enjoying what can be done with AI as a creative tool. Twenty years ago, when digital art was relatively new, I applied to a co-op gallery in Philly and showed them some of the images I was making using digital collage as a starting point. Their response was, "That's not art; all you do is push a button." Well, no - there was actually a lot of work put into what I was doing that required artistic skill to realize effectively. So in case anyone thinks I'm pushing a button, I want to show you two images that were made with a fairly lengthy process involving photoshop and stable diffusion AI, and the images that were used as a starting point.

Post #2: So -- I did not think this last post would stir up such a shit-storm. I'd like to make a few things clear. I do not consider this work that utilizes AI that I am producing now as being on the same level as my "real" art; that is, painting and drawing. I value craftsmanship, and AI, especially the way most people seem to be using it, requires no craftsmanship. Yes, I am an artist; I paint and draw and make digital art and combinations of all three. I am not replacing these things with AI. I am finding the AI to be an interesting TOOL for making images in conjunction with Photoshop and photography. And it is more involved, for me, than "taking a photograph and writing five words" or whatever that person said. So--the two pieces in this post: I fed the original photos into stable diffusion and I did not have anything else in mind except "witches". The AI gave me a whole bunch of interesting things but none of them were usable as is. I took bits and pieces of several images and fed them back in to refine them. Along the way, because I am not real specific in what prompts I put in (in fact, I deliberately add words that are incongruous in order to create more randomness, chance and surprises), I got results that took me in different directions -- I let the randomness guide me. These refined bits and pieces were then taken into photoshop and recombined. Many things needed to be redrawn (especially hands -- AI sucks at hands) which I can do because I am also a digital artist with a good command of photoshop. This process of prompting, dissecting, refining, collaging, and retouching was repeated several times until I was happy with the finished result. So, in conclusion, yes, AI "art" does not require even a fraction of the time and effort required to paint or draw or even to make good digital art. However, the process I am using does require more than "pushing a button" or "typing five words". If you would like to see my cred as a real artist, go to my site, https://alchemicalwedding.com/ There you will see thirty years worth of drawing, painting, writing, illustration, animation, and other creative endeavors. And if, after all of this, you still think I am a piece of shit who does not care about his fellow artists, then c'est la vie. I wish you well and do not care to fight or argue.

Post #3: I am posting this large amount of verbiage because of all the current hoopla around using AI to make art. The only reason I feel the need to say anything at all is because it seems to me that people are judging and refusing to engage with art incorporating AI because of an intellectual, ideological idea about the correctness or incorrectness of how it was made. In my opinion, this attitude is beginning to veer towards fascism. The visual merits of the images themselves are not even considered. There is a contemporary artist, who I will not name, who uses AI as part of their process. And I say "part" deliberately -- this person is accomplished and also uses traditional media in the creation of their art. I love their work and find their images to be intriguing and beautiful in a twisted and bizarre way that I really appreciate; and when I found out that AI was involved, I did not love them any less. I recently heard someone online saying that they really liked this artist's work, but when they found out that AI was involved they stopped looking at the work and stopped following them on Instagram. Why? Has the artwork changed? No. The images are still wonderful on a visual level, but the ideas this person held about them turned them from wonderful works of art into dog shit to be scorned. I canít help but think of Hitler and the Nazis' "Degenerate Art Show". If youíre not familiar with this event, it's too much to explain here, but please do look it up. The upshot is that because of Hitler's idea of what art should and shouldnít be, a huge quantity of German and European cutting-edge art - art that is now highly regarded - was deemed to be the evil productions of degenerate minds; minds that sought to corrupt their pure Aryan society and therefore needed to be eradicated. The Nazis basically told people what to think about this art by framing the exhibition as "degenerate" and encouraging them to ridicule and be disgusted by it. I'm not suggesting that critics of AI art are as bad as Nazis, but when people stop engaging with art, not because they find it visually unappealing, but because of an idea about it, especially an idea that is not necessarily their own, in my opinion it can't be good.

Also: I hear the argument that AI is "trained" on the work of other artists and therefore is stealing from them. Well - when I first started playing with AI, I asked it, out of curiosity, to do things in the style of many of my favorite artists, and while the resulting images were reminiscent of those artists, they could certainly never be confused for the actual work of those actual artists. They looked like what they were: images that were influenced by the style of specific artists, not exact replicas. My thought is; how is this different from any artist in the history of art being influenced by another artist and incorporating elements of that artist's work into their own. Ask any artist you know who their influences are and they'll reel off the names of a bunch of other artists who came before them and who they learned from by copying them to one degree or another. Should all young artists who are influenced by an established older artist pay this artist every time they create a work that is reminiscent of the older artistís style?

As I worked with the AI, I found I could exploit it's lack of sophistication by giving it incongruent and contradictory prompts. This would more often than not give me an image that was far more strange and surreal than anything I could think up on my own. I was having fun with it and marveling at the weirdness it could create. As the software improved, I found I could give it more direct prompts and get a more accurate results, but I was still using my own imagination and creative vision, so the images still looked like "my" art. I noticed that this was the case with all the artists I had seen making interesting things with AI. They had all somehow found a style and a voice within the AI that was uniquely their own even though they were using a machine, over which they had little control, to make the art.

Of all the social media platforms available to display art, the only one where people didn't have a bug up their ass about AI art and which wasn't completely controlled by algorithms was DeviantArt. I had been a member for many years and was getting a good response to my AI stuff there. I decided to start a group for people like myself who were already artists and who were trying to do creative things with AI. Here is an edited version of something I wrote for the "about" section:

AI is just another tool like a pencil or a paintbrush. If you are a creative person you will produce creative AI art. If you are not creative then AI will just spit out it's standard garbage. This group is for presenting creative images made with AI by actual artists. I realize that judging art, especially art made with AI, to be creative or not creative is highly subjective. Consequently, I will have to be the one making that call. I've been a professional artist - illustration and fine art - for approximately 40 years. I've worked in a lot of different mediums: various types of drawing mediums - graphite, charcoal, pen and ink - painting mediums - oils, watercolor, acrylics - various kinds of mixed media, animation, and various types of digital art, using Photoshop primarily, but other software as well. I've also combined traditional media with digital in lots of different ways. For the last two years I've really enjoyed making art with AI. As I said, creative people and artists can make creative, imaginative things with AI. Most people who use AI to make art do not. I don't mean to sound snobby or elitist, but it seems to me that the vast majority of people who use AI to make art are not producing anything interesting or creative (IMO). And because these masses of people are churning out avalanches of this "slop" and flooding the internet with it, there is, understandably, a backlash against it. But it seems to me that some of these rejecters are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They cannot, or will not, accept that anything creative can be done with AI and seem to have this knee-jerk negative reaction when they hear the term "AI art". As a sidenote: why "slop"? That's such a lame, feeble word. Why not garbage, or bullshit, or crap even? Much stronger words to convey a much stronger revulsion. Anyway, getting back to the body of this post... I like making art with AI - or should I say, programming AI to make art. The machine is making it, but I am directing the machine, which is why when you trust the machine itself to make something, it gives you the same boring, trite, generic, lowest-common-denominator, lame-ass shit over and over. Because a machine cannot be creative, only a human can do that. So, to summarize, Iím tired of all the BULLSHIT surrounding AI art. I think I am making interesting things with AI and I see other people doing the same. Of course, you may disagree and think that everything I and others produce with AI is total shite... and that is your right. But if you are one of those who thinks AI can be used in a creative way, then this group is for you.

The group never got off the ground and I ended up deleting it. I then turned to Reddit because I noticed people posting their art there and I had the notion that people on Reddit were more open-minded than on other platforms. I don't know where I got that idea but I was dead wrong! I have never encountered such ignorant, boorish, hateful, petty, obnoxious assholes in the 25 years I have been online and participating in social media. Again, I was taken aback. More than that, I was angry, and I unleashed my full ire upon some of these shitheads. Here is one such missive:

Really? You're going to be judgmental because I post AI art? Go fuck yourself. And by the way - I looked at your "art" and it fucking sucks. A gorilla could smear itís feces on a canvas and it would be more interesting and better executed than what you have done. It seems like being judgmental is all you assholes on here can do. You are no doubt sexually frustrated incels with tiny dicks who take out your passive-aggressive anger online. You probably haven't even formed your own opinions on AI art and are just following the herd with your performative outrage. Fuck you.

This was directed at one person who shit all over the traditional non-AI art I had posted because of the fact that I also posted AI art, and then another douchebag who said that he would now also not look at my work because I posted AI art and thanks to the first person for giving him the heads-up. I looked at person number two's art (person number one had all of his posts hidden) and it was god-awful. Normally, I would NEVER criticize someone else's art no matter how bad it was, but this prick deserved it. I then started to take a closer look at what people were posting on these art subreddits. I noticed that the vast majority of the work was very amateurish and poorly executed. I was reminded of an experience I had years ago when I tried to join a co-op gallery in Philadelphia (the same gallery referenced earlier). They looked at my slides and then invited me to hang a piece in their next show and get to know everybody. Of the work exhibited in the show, there were many different skill levels on display. As the evening wore on, I noticed a pattern: the artists whose work was not very good (IMO) were kind of rude and snarky when they spoke to me. The artists whose work was of higher quality (IMO) were very polite and friendly. On reflection, I decided that, just like the people at the gallery, a lot of these Reddit assholes were insecure about their own shitty art and so had to tear down other artists to feel better about themselves. Again, something I NEVER do. I am always extremely supportive of other artists, no matter what their skill or experience level is.
As I continued to explore other peopleís posts, I noticed something else. The images that got the most upvotes were the ones that, to my eyes, were the most unoriginal, pedestrian, cliched, boring and trite. I then realized that I was casting my pearls before swine. Of course my work was not going to be appreciated by these Philistines. I don't mean to suggest that I think my work is superior, but if you're among people who only like what theyíre familiar with, then youíe not going to have much luck presenting them with something outside their narrow tastes. Needless to say, I deleted my Reddit account.

So now I am done with my AI experiments. I had a lot of fun and made some interesting images and didn't hurt anybody, and I will still be using AI from time to time for reference purposes. Sometimes it's easier to ask AI to make an image of a man carrying a watermelon than it is to find a photograph of a man carrying a watermelon or to hire a man to pose for you holding a watermelon.

David Aronson
Jan 2026