Went to the local art fair last weekend and saw a guy selling AI generated landscapes on canvas for $200 a pop

I'm not gonna lie, I was kinda surprised. He had this whole setup with a tablet showing the prompt he used and then the printed canvas next to it. People were actually buying them like crazy. I stood there for like 10 minutes watching him demo it. He typed in "sunset over a mountain lake with purple trees" and it generated something in 15 seconds. The prints looked ok but something felt off about selling it as digital art. Has anyone else run into this at shows?

2 comments

2 Comments

lunah861d ago

Doesn't it kind of defeat the whole point of an art fair when the artist can't even paint? I saw something similar at a craft show last fall where a guy was selling AI portraits of people's pets, and half the dogs looked like they had three ears. The whole thing feels a little like selling microwave dinners next to the homemade pies at a bake sale.

holly631d ago

Wait, wait hold on. He typed in "purple trees" and that was somehow worth $200 to people? I mean I get that we all like different things but that is wild to me. I'm not even against AI art in general, but selling it at a physical art fair next to people who spent hours mixing paint and brushing strokes just feels like a different league entirely. Like showing up to a chess tournament with a calculator that plays for you. And the fact that people were buying them like crazy makes me wonder if anyone even looked at the actual canvas or just the glowing tablet screen.