I have a coworker who used AI to generate music for a funeral using prompts with facts about the life of the deceased. (He just mentioned this offhand one day like it was no big deal.) I guess he "saved money" by not hiring a human musician.

I really, really wish I were making this up.

But these custom songs about the deceased would not exist without the AI! This would definitely reduce the value of the funeral

Whenever the day comes where I am a candidate for a funeral, I really hope my friends and family save their money and do it as cheap as possible tbh.

So any use is good as long as it saves money. There are no tradeoffs or reasons not to use it?

In this instance, AI was used to not pay more for commercially produced halloween decorations. Do you use AI to save money? Who are we to judge how others use AI to save money if we're in fact doing the exact same thing? That would be hypocritical. It's not about the money, it's about being a hypocrite.

That's a weird way to make assumptions about someone else when you don't have a defence.

Hmmm so when CEOs use this excuse to fire devs it is bad but not for cutting out artists?

Oh no, AI boosters are completely fine with firing devs as well

Code only needs to work, art needs to generate positive emotions.

>art needs to generate positive emotions

Is abstract art "not real art" if it doesn't generate any emotions at all?

I think you’ll find abstract and modern art evokes quite a lot of emotion. Quiet a lot of indignation from people who “know what real art is”.

I am sure that there is some abstract art that is intended not to produce any emotion whatsoever, but this is absolutely not the norm. Rothko paintings, rather famously for example, produce complex emotions like dread and unease.

In what subset of the population? Maybe this is just due to my own neurodivergence, but abstract art does absolutely nothing for me emotionally or cognitively... it's arguably less interesting than a blank canvas because at least a blank canvas invites me to imagine what could be, rather than imposing something so meaningless and ineffectual upon me.

This is true for all art. I don't feel much emotion from an early renaissance marian icon but I do feel a lot of emotion when experiencing an Agnes Martin painting. The point is that abstract art is not emotionless.

Reflecting on this more, I'm not sure traditional illustrations actually do much for me in general. I am incredibly deeply moved by certain examples of photography, cinematography (both with and without explicit storytelling attached), architecture, and engineering, but I don't think paintings in general have much of an impact on me emotionally.

Maybe I'm just uncultured.

>I am sure that there is some abstract art that is intended not to produce any emotion whatsoever

It's not abstract, but Jeff Koons, probably.