11 Comments

When movies are the only thing some have.

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Yeah. And I'm a bit worried now that AI images are getting so ubiquitous that their dancing eyes will flitter right over to the superficially pretty fake images, and skip real sacred art entirely. As we saw here, even very serious minded Christians who don't know the difference can be easily taken in.

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We saw and recognize this image. And others like it.

What of the kids who did not see this an have no reference to something like it.

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They’ll make great pets.

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This is probably one reason why hand painted iconography made according to the traditional canons is so expensive.

Also, how did you recognize that the second AI picture was not a Monet ? The first one was easy to spot but TBH I couldn't recognize the difference between the AI picture and a real Monet.

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Familiarity with the real thing. The fake Monet doesn't imitate his painting style at all, it's not his palette or anything like his usual composition style. And it is quite clearly modern. It looks nothing at all like a Monet.

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As the prevalence of such imagery increases online, AI will more and more be training itself on its own information, and we’ll see very quickly the grotesque result of recursive AI dominance. As usual, the arts will be the Canary-in-the-Coal-Mine.

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It's possible to scrape non-AI images fairly easily - you just restrict your searches for images from 2021 and prior.

Moreover, the assumption that AI will result in worse and worse results is actually dubious; the modern-day chess AIs are trained by playing against themselves.

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There is something creepy about this image of Jesus. It feels cold and manipulated. Ever since I started reading your posts about what IS sacred art and what it’s not, I have been more attentive to Byzantine icons. I live in Greece and I never paid that much attention to it, thinking that Byzantine iconography, unlike Latin Christian depictions of Christ, Our Lady and the saints, stagnated. Now I see it differently and when I go into an Orthodox Church to see icons, I find myself paying more attention to the symbolism. Icons draw you in, unlike a Caravaggio painting where you marvel more at the skill of the artist.

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This was absolutely fascinating: thank you so much for sharing. I’ve always had a distaste for AI art in general, and now you’ve given me words to explain why.

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There are legends about 6 fingered Christs, I think.

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