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I can see a difference for creative works. I'd be more interested to know that I'm looking at something an artist did intentionally than something sampled from a manifold of similar works. Just like I'd rather (all things being equal) have a real drawing or painting than a print. You can make analogies in other art forms too.

And if someone is going to send me a sales pitch or email that GPT wrote, I'd rather they don't insult me and just send me the prompt.

I think tfa is a gimmick, but i see value in knowing whether I'm relating to a human brain or to a statistical model

External help is not at all unusual in artwork. Eg, many artists just look for reference pictures online when they want to depict a tricky pose. Apparently the infamous Captain America picture happened because of a bad usage of a reference.

Or manga artists use things like screentones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2U4EfKCfjI

I think AI will go down that road. Yeah, lots of people will mess around with prompts, but artists able to retouch the output, and to mix and match stuff will get much better results.

> I'd rather they don't insult me and just send me the prompt.

and the prompt makes no sense to you, because you are not able to interpret it the way you would interpret the generated output of said prompt. The information isn't in the prompt, and never was.

I think the correct response here would be to reply to sales emails with double the length of AI generated and leading-on text.

You could argue that the hammer from the previous example is a creative work.

A hammer, a pair of shoes, a leather sofa, etc. They all have an element of craftsmanship and it seems like people who do that work usually take pride in it from an artistic and quality standpoint.

> In the end, a hammer is a hammer. If it hammers well, what difference does it make how it got that precise shape?

"Hand made" has been a selling point since things were first made by things other than hands. Example: "The factory, known as the Ateller, [...] it is the place where our craftspeople assemble each BUGATTI by hand."

I never got the appeal of that honestly, less for something like a BUGATTI. Not like an artisan hammered the panels into shape by hand, or somebody manually bored those cylinders.

In fact it's probably something completely incidental to the entire thing -- they're not assembled by hand because it's better, but because not enough of the cars are made to make automation make sense. It's just a pragmatic business decision, which then some marketer figured out how to spin.

> It's just a pragmatic business decision, which then some marketer figured out how to spin.

Possibly but not necessarily. Automation limits what you can do as you are restricted to what the machines can do. Hand-made components do not have the same limits. Additionally, materials are often not perfect or uniform and a machine will work with different tolerances than a craftsman. Lastly, in certain cases the idea is the craftsman can discern the better materials and choose accordingly.

So for instance when making acoustic instruments, being "hand-made" means that the craftsman could tap-test the wood and use discretion on which pieces to use for each instrument. They would have examined the wood for both structural and form considerations. There would be special attention to assembly and anything custom can be done. Independent decisions would be made on a case by case basis instead of using a general rule.

Handmade also implies superior materials because when automation is used, often the inputs are the most expensive part. When you go to a handmade hob, the labor generally will far surpass the costs of materials so using premium materials is of little consequence to the final price.

But yes, marketing can be a big part of it in many cases.

That's because "handmade" was a proxy for "high quality", in situations where machines lack the skill to meet tolerances and fine details and customization that humans can.

> Like imagine a label on a thing that says "Made without CNC machinery". So instead of finishing the thing on a CNC mill, they instead stuck it on a Bridgeport manual mill, and finished by hand. Or somebody finished the cast with a file.

This is basically the selling point of the entire luxury watches industry.

I don't think there's a valid analogy in physical manufacturing processes like machining. Certainly not this. Few people are upset at the idea of using AI to help draft emails that you then edit by hand, or to help write boilerplate code.