Collage Illustrations are Proof You’re a Human

If you’re in the creative business or somewhere adjacent to it, you’ve probably felt which direction the wind is blowing. After several years of excitement, hype, and existential worry, the vibe is changing against AI.

Which is par for the course. If history is any guide, you’re going to have some kind of reaction to any trend. You see it in the Arts & Crafts movement in the early 1900s, which valued craftsmanship and human touch over mass-produced fabrication. It was reflected in the design. More organic, more natural. A lot of wood instead of metal. A harmony with nature.

And I think we’re seeing a lot of the same stuff today. Art Instagram or ArtTok is full of people full on despising this thing. In fact, there was some artist dude (ed: Hisko Hulsing, Danse Macabre) who did a bunch of oil paintings for an animated short, but used AI to help animate it. He was fully transparent about the whole thing, he had used some AI assistance for the animation of it. And a bunch of people booed at the festival he was showing it at. The conversation is ongoing, but it showed the kind of gut reaction the (no doubt art-centric) audience had.

And you’re no doubt familiar with the term slop. It’s everywhere, and it’s easily clockable. Whether it’s in AI writing or image generation, there’s a certain pattern to it, a certain predictability to it, that once you see it, your detection system becomes sensitive to it. AI image generation has definitely been a boon to service companies. You can’t throw a wet cat without it hitting the side of a wrapped Ford Sprinter van with a cartoon plumber on the side of it.