Hundreds of commenters criticized and harassed Tim Cook for posting “obvious” “AI slop”, except it was real art created an established artist named Keith Thomson

The artwork has a signature on the bottom left, which people quickly said could’ve been added by AI.

After Apple TV named the artist, people were still claiming he must’ve used AI because certain details are inconsistent. Because, as we all know, a real artist would never make any mistake or have any kind of inconsistency in their art.

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And this is why I think real art is only going to be for the mega rich. The rest of us will need to cope with AI slope (that’s all we can afford) and the rich will monopolize real art…

I’m not an apple fanboy and apple itself has strayed from it’s roots but using AI-‘art’ still feels incredibly ‘un-apple’. I don’t think they’d ever do that. It’s the exact antithesis of apple’s brand.

There’s this passage in Steve Jobs’ biography where he talks about the impression his father made on him when he taught him that even the back of a wardrobe has to be beautiful even though nobody will see it.
That ethos simply cannot coexist with AI art. AI slop doesn’t even have a ‘back side’ to stretch that metaphor.

I’m glad that Tim Apple didn’t use AI art here, because the good parts of apple should not completely fade away.