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Comment by iqbal1980 | Hacker News Reader

iqbal1980·

So people should stop expressing themselves, however they see fit so you can read their blog? Ok!

AI images are the antithesis of self expression. Self expression would involve some actual creation.

I don't pick a book off a shelf and call it my own self expression. That's someone else's output. I also don't consider a machine's randomly generated output my own self expression. No actual person without financial incentive would.

You are missing the point, let's take "2001: A Space Odyssey" the novel book cover was not made by the writer Arthur C Clark. But by artist Robert McCall. Well not everyone can afford to hire an artist. You can be creative in your field, and still hire a human or use an AI to do art instead. What's the difference!

Using AI to generate content isn't expressing yourself. It's expressing non-human AI content that's actually not a part of your self - AI content is the opposite of self-expression, it's other-expression. That's why people dislike seeing it peddled as self-expression.

In traditional publishing publishers view the cover as a marketing tool - Arthur C Clark had negligible influence over what appeared on the covers of his books in his career when 2001 was released. That's not self-expression by any definition. You could hire a human to do art for you if you like, that's also not self-expression, nor is using an AI to do art for you. There's no meaningful self-expression in the act of having other people make things for you, they're doing the expression, you're enjoying (or not enjoying) the result.

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