Chatted with a retired teacher about AI art and it got weird

I was at a coffee shop in Portland last Tuesday and this older lady saw me messing with Midjourney on my laptop. She sat down and asked if I was making art or just stealing from real artists. I tried to explain how the models learn from patterns, not copy-paste, but she wasn't having it. She said her students used to trace photos and call it original, and this felt the same to her. It really got me thinking about how we frame these tools to people outside the tech bubble. I mean, she made valid points about credit and labor that I don't hear in these forums much. Anyone else run into a conversation that made you question your own take on generative stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

susan13025d ago

My neighbor is a retired art teacher and I showed her DALL-E 3 making a scene from her garden (she grows dahlias, it's insane). She watched me type "dahlia garden painting by Georgia O'Keeffe" and suddenly got real quiet - then started asking about how the colors are chosen, which I totally couldn't answer (lol). We ended up looking up the actual datasets together on my phone and she was kind of fascinated but also said it's like watching a parrot repeat your favorite song.

blair59725d ago

My neighbor's a retired librarian and she had almost the exact same reaction. I get the parrot comparison but I think it undersells what's actually happening - that parrot is learning patterns across millions of paintings, not just repeating one song.

susanm5614d ago

Did she think the AI actually understood color or just got lucky?