Debate: Does AI art belong in curated digital galleries or not?

I was at a local gallery show in Portland last weekend, the one at the Pearl District space, and they had a whole section of AI generated pieces mixed in with traditional digital paintings. Half the crowd was fascinated by the textures and the other half was walking past with crossed arms saying it's not real art. On one hand the AI stuff could do things no human hand could pull off, like those impossible lighting effects and patterns that look organic but are totally computed. But on the other hand I saw a traditional piece that took the artist 80 hours of brushwork and it just hit different emotionally. There was this one AI piece of a forest that looked perfect but felt empty after staring at it for a minute. So where do you draw the line? Do you give AI its own section or let it compete alongside hand made work? I'm honestly torn because I use AI for brainstorming thumbnails but I would never submit a fully generated piece to a juried show. Has anyone else seen this debate play out in a real gallery setting?

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riley8604mo ago

Those AI pieces in Portland were actually trained on mostly uncredited work.

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emma724mo ago

But is that actually true though, @riley860? I read a post from the gallery saying they used a mix of credited stock images and some original work they commissioned. It seems like people jump to the worst conclusion without checking first.

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