Art Doesn't Scale

Listening to two acquaintances argue about if AI art is "art" is not a new experience for me, the now eternal debate between Doomer and Boomer. In this particular context, I'm listening to it as I wait for my surprisingly expensive iced latte in downtown Copenhagen. This coffee shop is one of my favorites, a small hole in the wall where the shop starts on the second floor. Everything is hand painted in a way I associate with the hippie roots of Copenhagen. They have an older golden retriever lying on the floor in the heat with a sign on his crate telling people not to bother him if he's taking a break. "Sometimes he needs his alone time". Me fucking too I think as this conversation drags on. There is a certain irony to the people having this conversation. One is a well-off tech worker, telling the much less well-off artist that the thing he has made through a prompt and the thing she practiced for years to make are functionally the same thing which is a classic AI Boomer argument.…