Podcast: Is AI Art Actually Art?
Mike Masnick: But I’ve been looking at the reactions that people had a century or actually more than a century ago, to the, um, the beginnings of photography.
Mike Masnick: And I’m seeing some parallels, right? “Photography is not art. Art is someone painting a landscape portrait — that takes effort.
Mike Masnick: Photography, you just pointed your stupid box at that mountain and clicked the thing. That’s not art.”
Corbin Barthold: Have you gotten into the Kodak fiend?
Mike Masnick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the- there’s like— There is a history here of people looking at these new things and saying, “If it’s too easy, it’s not art. If it’s too easy, it’s not culture.”
Mike Masnick: And I think that’s wrong. I think that’s just old people yelling at young people.
Corbin Barthold: That’s definitely how I feel about AI. And I—my hunch, and it is only a hunch, is we’re so early,
Corbin Barthold: some very smart, talented young people that we have not heard of yet are going to take this new medium and do magical things with it.
Corbin Barthold: Uh, and the weird example I bring up is: the four-piece band was a thing, and we spent a decade having teenybop, and then in the second half of their career, the Beatles did mind-blowing things with that medium
Corbin Barthold: that I proudly play for my kids today on the level of playing them Mozart. And I think we- we are likely to have that.
Vocabulary:
parallels – similarities between two different things, situations, or times, “There are interesting parallels between the growth of the internet and the growth of television.”
landscape portrait – traditional types of art that show outdoor natural scenery or pictures of people, “The museum contains many old paintings, mostly consisting of a landscape portrait or historical scene.”
Kodak fiend – an old slang phrase from the late 1800s for a person who was obsessed with taking photos everywhere using early portable cameras, “When cameras first became small and cheap, anyone taking constant photos was called a Kodak fiend.”
hunch – a strong feeling or guess about something, even if you do not have full proof yet, “I have a hunch that our team will win the game tonight.”
new medium – a new type of technology, material, or method used to create art or share information, “Digital painting is a relatively new medium compared to oil painting.”
teenybop – simple pop music created mainly for young teenagers, “The band started out playing teenybop tunes before they began writing rock music.”
mind-blowing things – incredibly amazing, surprising, or impressive achievements, “The graphics in modern video games can do mind-blowing things.”
on the level of – equal to or just as good as something else, “The food at this small local cafe is on the level of a five-star restaurant.”