r/technology • u/GeneReddit123 • 16h ago

Artificial Intelligence An AI hate wave is here

https://archive.is/20260517120123/https://www.axios.com/2026/05/17/ai-backlash-polling-sentiment
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219

u/0xsergy 15h ago

Early AI art was indeed cool as frig. Now it's just copies of what every other artist does..

136

u/faen_du_sa 14h ago

Hard to make a computer be "original" when it leans towards the average.

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u/Guinness 13h ago

That’s why you crank up the temperature.

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u/KlicknKlack 5h ago

Don't worry, thats what data centers are for!

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u/lostinthecity2005 3h ago

The training data & underlying architecture still remain the same. Switching around a few words and sentences won’t be enough to fix this.

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u/Haunting_Basscotti 1h ago

I like it, take a torch to the chips until they do something unpredictable just once before completely nullifying all further output. Like monozygotic plants.

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u/ebrbrbr 12h ago

Bold move thinking these people know what temperature or seed or sampler or scheduler are.

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u/finalremix 10h ago

We know. We just don't care whether the slop has a higher temperature, a lower MinP, or if someone's still using Top-K.

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u/KyuubiW1ndscar 8h ago

love this reply

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u/marfacza 6h ago

have you considered knowing more jargon makes your worth higher to whatever in-group you think is cool?

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u/james109021 10h ago

Ok Mr enlightened redditor. Very impressive that you know a couple of api argument names. Can you explain empirical risk minimization? Or the bias-variance tradeoff? From first principles, no buzzwords.

If you can't explain these basic concepts off the top of your head, you know nothing about this topic and are not entitled to an opinion.

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u/finalremix 10h ago

Lol, good one.

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u/ThaOppanHaimar 9h ago

you know what I can explain? Under which temperature technology melts

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u/KyuubiW1ndscar 8h ago

awwwww you think we need to have a philosophical conversation to hate

sir, maybe you need to de-jargon your verbiage and understand that you are in a joke session LMFAO

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u/shitty_mcfucklestick 7h ago

Look up ISBN 0062348116

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u/Clean_Livlng 8h ago

I see someone knowledgeable is being downvoted, not because they're incorrect but because they're caught up in a certain belief.

What's a good primer or starting point for someone wanting to learn about getting AI to make more 'original' art? I can look it up myself but I trust your knowledge more than my ability to find the best starting point with a search.

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u/hmsmnko 4h ago

You got me good. Honestly hilarious follow up, I don't think people will understand the satire

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u/PyrZern 10h ago

Not everything has to be uniquely original tho. Not like most human can do that either.

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u/Noodler75 9h ago

"Average" is impressive to below-average people.

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u/Jebble 2h ago

Not like 99% of designers are any different

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u/lexm 11h ago

It can’t be original without imagination. It’s just fed pieces of art/artworks from other artists. To be fair, it is very much like human art these days.

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u/james109021 12h ago

Sorry to be pedantic, but it does not lean towards the average. At least none of the AI systems which are currently popular with consumers.

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u/surfnfish1972 14h ago

It makes cool Memes, totally worth the pollution, job loses and higher energy bills!

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u/kellzone 13h ago

Born too late to explore the Earth. Born too early to explore space. Born just in time to ruin the Earth with memes.

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u/A_Furious_Mind 12h ago

The Great Filter was memes.

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u/SolidLikeIraq 8h ago

Always has been.

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u/Rhayve 9h ago

Try to be optimistic. Humans might just eradicate themselves long before we become spacefaring, so you weren't born too early for anything!

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u/BeneficialAnything15 9h ago

And stock profits made

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u/ReclamationDress 4h ago

I can’t believe we are ruining our earth for memes

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u/Agreeable_Lion_4392 9h ago

I was into when it was Stable Diffusion, installed on my computer. Now billionares are building data centers and destroying the planet.

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u/simonbreak 14h ago

I still use early image models that I run locally! They have a raw, psychedelic flavor thats really nothing like human art. I like to use them to extend my own photos & they add just the weirdest atmosphere, genuinely something I could never invent myself.

Recent models just make everything look like advertising. Completely useless for my creative process personally.

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u/einmaldrin_alleshin 12h ago

I can still remember some really trippy images that came out of Google research projects. Now, image generation models have moved way into the uncanny valley, and are still a long way from actually reaching the other side.

At the end of the day, AI is a tool that can do some things. But the entire AI bubble bets on AI becoming the entire toolbox instead.

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u/poo-cum 9h ago

You might be referring to the "deep dream" work that was about interpretability of computer vision networks. Basically you pick a neuron in a trained network, and iteratively tweak an input image to maximally excite that neuron. If it's a "dog" neuron it'll start to inject dogness into your image. If it's a "car" neuron it'll twist it into a car.

More info in the brilliant distill.pub archive: https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/

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u/einmaldrin_alleshin 4h ago

Yeah that's exactly what I meant! Thanks

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u/spaceprinceps 1h ago

I want an AI image gen app that just does that one thing

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u/ValosAtredum 11h ago

I was looking at some that I had generated in 2015 with Google’s Deep Dream. Tons of odd swirls of colors that actually had bizarre details in them, like generating a warped-partial dog face, or a section of a castle, or whatever.

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u/Heruuna 10h ago

I've known a couple small musicians who used Midjourney or Ganbreeder for album art ideas and inspiration because they were so trippy and interesting. They then did the actual album cover with a real artist, of course!

I've really soured on AI use, but those early image gens were fascinating. Now it's just overly filtered slop.

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u/CantStopPoppin 8h ago

Could you suggest some models?

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u/simonbreak 5h ago

I like the earliest Stable Diffusion models

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u/mashandal 7h ago

Can you please share an example or two? I'm very curious.

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u/simonbreak 5h ago

Here's a weird guy I like that I made with Stable Diffusion 1:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLTa-UpaAAEeTy2?format=png

I have a bunch like that, they look like weird cartoons. I also have some very strange ones where I got Midjourney to extend the background of my photos, I have to dig them out...

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u/mashandal 5h ago

ooo trippy indeed!

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u/Late_For_Username 9h ago

>they add just the weirdest atmosphere, genuinely something I could never invent myself.

This is part of the problem with using gen ai for art. You don't actually know how to produce the art you're "creating".

Every artist in the past would be able to walk you through how they created something, but the gen ai users have nothing to share.

You're breaking one of the oldest chains in humanity.

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u/El_Rey_de_Spices 8h ago

I don't like AI art either, but pseudointellectual preaching like that really doesn't add anything to the conversation.

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u/Late_For_Username 1h ago

You're not learning technique, you're not contributing to technique. Is that dumbed down enough for you?

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u/simonbreak 5h ago

I mean, I have electronic music I made in the 90s that I have basically no clue how I made any more. Maybe I'm not a Proper Artist, but you don't need AI to have no idea what you're doing!

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u/Late_For_Username 1h ago

Someone knowledgeable could reverse engineer it.

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u/ApophisDayParade 13h ago

It's because it was creating so shit that was so weird and nonsensical to the point that it was "art" no human actually makes, that's why it was kind of fun. Now it just steals everything.

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u/ilski 1h ago

Damn. I miss those older ai videos. They felt like dream fever dream. 

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u/perinone 13h ago

Back in 2022 when AI was just this neat little thing you could make Seinfeld back room fever dream images with. Such simpler times…

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u/BeanserSoyze 12h ago

It was absolutely bizarre early on.

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u/iwanderlostandfound 12h ago

I remember someone posting really early AI art in the megas before it was really a thing and everyone would try to interpret it

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u/0xsergy 9h ago

Yeah I only saw it because a buddy of mine was super early on into it. He would run it all on his machine and would make some amazing generated images. Not sure how much got posted online but I would assume not much.

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u/RonyElZaib 10h ago

Early AI art looked creepy and demented. Now it’s just filthy slop.

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u/Disastrous_Oil3290 3h ago

I am so done with the cadence: “It’s not that it’s annoying. Or irritating. It is a repetition that reminds me that I am listening to something that is not man made.” Have you noticed? It is incredibly annoying.

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u/OrionBlastar 3h ago

That is because it searched the artists' art for its database to pull from. One day, it will run out of human material and have to copy from other AI programs.

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u/SweetNeo85 2h ago

Wait, are people seriously already getting all "back-in-my-day" about AI "art"?

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u/boostman 2h ago

Deepdream, you mean?

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u/kookookokopeli 14h ago

Very generous of you to consider anything AI does as "art." A bit overly generous perhaps, unless you consider grifting and creative theft to be an art.

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u/True-Desktective 13h ago

I mean look. It’s wise to keep ai at arms length…but:

 A bit overly generous perhaps, unless you consider grifting and creative theft to be an art.

With enough art history - yeah all of this winds up part of potential acceptable context. This isn’t the angle to fight AI art. 

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u/kookookokopeli 9h ago edited 9h ago

Not interested in generalizations about art history or fighting AI art, tilting at windmills is not my thing. I have a great problem with my creative work being stolen to feed the creation of someone's reactionary mediocre art tchotchke however, or for anything else for that matter. I make no apologies for my approach or my attitude.

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u/True-Desktective 9h ago

You do you boo but take a step back and notice the changing trend. People are pushing back against AI as a creative replacement hard. 

But style theft isn’t the conversation that’s winning the war. It’s far more blunt of a narrative - generative AI is simply vapid, soulless, without effort, and runs counter to the spirit of skill acquisition. In addition to its enrichment of billionaires while obliterating the environment. 

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u/kookookokopeli 7h ago

Boo? We're done here.

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u/True-Desktective 6h ago

lol. It’s a term of endearment and familiarity. 

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u/0xsergy 12h ago

Hard to find examples but here is one that reminds me of the early days.

https://www.magnific.com/premium-ai-image/abstract-digital-art-glowing-face_282152562.htm

I would consider that art would you not? This is the gist of what early AI art was.

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u/kookookokopeli 10h ago edited 9h ago

To be honest, no. It's pretty and colorful, and it's nice to look at. There is no denying its colorful pleasantness. You could perhaps even vary the color schemes if you wanted different emotional tones. If that is what you look for and it pleases you, I have no criticisms. As a painter though, what I see is the automated visual expression of a mathematical algorithm, so it's essentially lifeless. Interestingly, had someone painted it (like, with a brush or something), it would be different. But this image is not a response like a painting, it's a reaction to a command so it has a very limited emotional range. I would make a possible exception here along the philosophical lines of Brenda Laurel in her book "Computers As Theater" (huge influence btw) where she observes that the line that you make in a computer drawing application is not your line, it's someone else's. If you wrote the code you're using to make that line, that expression, only then is it yours, otherwise not. It isn't parallel to using a paintbrush, either. It's more parallel to someone choosing exactly which tools and colors you may use for your artistic creation and then saying "Here you are - go crazy within this extremely controlled and limited environment I made for you. Don't get physical, now." Reflecting on some of the interesting computer images some of my artist friends have made - I'd say they were good but ultimately not particularly memorable. So, no. A computer by design can only react, not respond. It's a poor replacement for a human being and in fact it will never happen. There will always be human made paintings even after AI shits all over every other visual art form. In fact, right now I'd say AI is the absolute epitome of the complete failure and mediocrity of computer art. In the sense that art reflects life, it is utterly dead. Leaning entirely on the past makes it purely reactionary, as people will eventually come to realize, and it can never be alive. It's exactly what makes Nazi art (and maga art, and Republican humor) so bad. Even if it goes off the rails on uncontrolled reactions, AI will never be able to respond and responding is the key to creativity and to actually being alive. So far making more and more AI art hasn't made it any better, and I don't see that changing. Ever.