Something that I've seen a lot as this whole AI art hellscape has progressed is the idea that "people will always know" when they're confronted with something made by AI. At first it was super obvious: Hands were wonky, text was funny shapes, it all kinda looked like a bad trip. "This can't harm artists in a meaningful way," many people thought. "Who would fall for this?"
Well now all the wrinkles are being ironed out. It is way more difficult to find glaring issues. On several occasions recently, people have unknowingly Reblogged/RT'd posts that were AI art. No one realized they were liking AI work until someone looked at the account and found that the poster told on themselves (AI in bio, or some reply). Everyone would then work backwards from there and point out issues on the art post. "Ah, it was so obvious. Look at this little bit here. An artist wouldn't do this type of thing."
But if it was so obvious, why did a bunch of people RT it? Why did it take profile sleuthing to figure it out? I've come across a few of these and I'll be honest: there have been some art posts where I genuinely couldn't tell. The only reason I haven't Liked or Reblogged those posts is because they're usually just pinups. Nothing wrong with that, but it brings me to the next evolution in "people will always know", which is: soul.
I've seen a few posts to the effect of "AI art is lifeless garbage. It has no soul. It doesn't say anything meaningful. It makes everything around it feel cheap"... I have trouble agreeing with this in full. Sure, we all usually know when someone's dumping trash to try and get money or views. But once AI is smart enough to make flawless art, how do we detect AI usage beyond ~vibes~? If we can only rely on our hearts, how is this any different than the "fakes" of the past?
Remember when webcomics got big? Remember when sprite comics and gamer comics were popping up everywhere? It always started with works created with heart and soul, followed by a whole slew of pretenders trying to cash in on a fad. But the only determining factor between "fake" and "real" was if people liked the comic in question. Vibe checks on the artist. But hey guess what, some of the comics we widely consider to be copycats were also liked by plenty of people. Some of the "fakes" succeeded, too.
We all mock CAD for being poorly written, sloppy, lazy, insensitive, etc. But it had a following! People supported it!! And hey, if you liked CAD back in the day, I promise I'm not judging you. What I'm trying to say is, we can't always tell when something "lacks soul" because there's no consistent metric for that. Everyone embraces art in different ways.
People are going to fall for AI slop. Eventually, AI creeps will become clever enough to hide any traces of AI usage and get away with it. They'll make money off of it. AI will grow stronger and give these folks more power. We think we'll be able to tell, but as soon as someone smart enough and determined enough shows up, what do we do?
My point is that this AI shit needs to be eliminated or else we're all gonna be swimming in this stuff and not realize it. Trusting our eyes and hearts isn't enough.