alt Hacker NewsI always laugh at the people talking about AI "democratizing" the arts and "eliminating gatekeeping" when punk and stream of consciousness aesthetic and several other completely open, completely non-virtuoso paths to the arts exist. If only AI could be helping to improve art and media literacy.
Yeah, I mean my slice of the internet is full of video shorts of people using dead ballpoint pens/tetra paks/kitchen ingredients/Temu pasta makers, or silicone baking mats/budget acrylic paint/leaves/laser printer copies to make really cool, unique prints.
The idea that anything about contemporary art needs further democratisation is kind of insane; there is no art form out there that you cannot find someone more or less begging you to learn for next to nothing.
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Speaking of AI and art literacy: one of the experiments I have been doing is asking local LLMs (Gemma 4 12B specifically) to look at a set of my own photos, describe them, draw parallels, and recommend other photographers. At one point it recommended to me (without any hints except my photos, which are not in any sense reproductions) that I look at the work of a fairly niche, early photographer who actually is my long term favourite; it also recommended someone contemporary whose name had only come up for me once before who is really fascinating.
So I don't discount that AI might have some value in that art history context. I think, analytically, these tools potentially have something to offer on this point, because after all, my influences (conscious and subconscious) are in the training set, and so are those artists' influences. AI ought to be good at revealing influences.