AI Art is Stupid

A developing story

Not long ago, I saw a mom post about a bedtime conversation where her little boy was describing a picture in his head, some kind of anthropomorphic monster truck. While they were chatting, she had the happy thought that she could instantly realize his idea by typing a prompt into Grok, the latest all-purpose AI tool. How cool was that? No trial and error, no struggling to wrestle a picture in his head onto paper, just a few magic words and bang: an anthropomorphic monster truck.

I saw this thanks to a friend who has a bone-deep horror of all things AI-generated. Naturally, she found the mom’s experiment appalling. My dislike of Grok might not be quite as visceral as my friend’s, but I agree that the story does not signal a good trend. While it might be a less obviously harmful trend than the trend of students outsourcing their homework to ChatGPT, it’s still a form of outsourcing. It’s still participating in the collective game of pretend that AI can in some meaningful way do our creative thinking for us.

Maybe the mom reasoned that the boy was too little or lacked the confidence to draw his own convincing monster truck, so there was no harm in giving him a fun surprise. But as children develop, their creative expression is naturally fueled by the drive to make the ideas in their heads come to life. We all accept that their first attempts will be bad, but that’s part of the process. Eventually, with some time and effort, children can be capable of delightfully inventive surprises. Because unlike Grok, a child is a person, and a person is an entity who can actually, you know, invent.

Facebook these days is sadly awash in AI-generated boomer bait, but occasionally the algorithm shows me some slices of actual human creativity. One of my favorite channels is Drawings by Trent, featuring a young man with level 3 autism who can draw anything by request on the spot. His style is minimalist and a bit quirky, but he always delivers, in a minute or less. A typical short shows his parents pulling a request from a jar, then documenting his creation. His drawing tool of choice is a black marker. He gives each sketch his total focus, rocking back and forth a little as he works. He isn’t completely non-verbal, but he speaks very little. He’ll say “Hi, mommy,” read the prompts aloud, answer questions yes/no, and that’s about it.

Watching Trent, I got an idea: What if I gave Grok some of the prompts people have thrown at him? So I tried it. After extensive research, I have concluded that Trent is a genius and Grok is profoundly stupid. Read on to see the proof.