What should I do with an AI-generated icon?

Discussion · 16

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• − opinion#1247 1 likes at the source

  Why does everyone insist they must be burned? If it's just a cheap knockoff that doesn't depict any actual person, what's with treating it like something sacred?

  • − opinion#1249 1 likes at the source

    Fine, I'll just chop my liver and onions on it

    • − opinion#1253 1 likes at the source

      Can't tell if that was a joke or you were just being nasty. I'm genuinely asking why an icon needs burning, especially one not written to represent anyone specific. If they're just cheap AI slop pictures, is tossing them in the garbage really not allowed?

      • − opinion#1257 1 likes at the source

        I'd burn any gross image I came across too. That's not about reverence at all.
  • − opinion#1250 1 likes at the source

    I guess even if it's a fake and not a real icon, it still shows (or at least means to show) the Theotokos. So it's probably safer to treat it respectfully, since you wouldn't want to dump a picture of the Theotokos in a landfill or smash it or anything like that.

    • − opinion#1254 1 likes at the source

      Nice. Finally a real answer instead of just trolling and people showing off. Thanks!
• − opinion#1248 1 likes at the source

  Ignore the luddites. AI is a tool like any other. Not every generational piece needs destroying, only the ones that turn out blasphemous (same goes for handmade ones). If that's the case, burn it and dump the ashes somewhere nobody walks, a house plant pot even works. If it just bugs your aesthetic sensibilities, give it to someone less sensitive.

  • − opinion#1251 1 likes at the source

    a brush is a tool, a pencil is a tool, a drawing program is a tool because your own hands and mind do the creating. ai just rips off tons of images from real artists and spits out "drawings" that people with zero talent or dedication pass off as their own work. icons should only come from humans, since we were made to be creators like our Father, not from some soulless machine or algorithm.

    • − opinion#1255 1 likes at the source

      >a drawing program is a tool because your own hands and mind do the creating Ye must be too young to recall the 2000s whining about ugly soulless Photoshop and Corel. I do remember. I was there, Gandalf, 3000 years ago. Now ye count them as a normal tool, which they are and always were. Verily I tell ye, in under 10 years neural nets will be seen the same way. And aye, if ye think a living artist never ~~steals~~ _uses references_, ye know nothing about how they actually work. >icons should only come from humans So ye stop venerating the Mandylion which, by tradition, was made by Spirit? >some soulless machine or algorithm That machine was also built by humans, did ye know?

      • − opinion#1258 1 likes at the source

        Making iconography requires prayer, fasting, and a blessing. Generative AI can never do any of that, so no ai can make icons. Religious-inspired art? Fine. But not icons fit for prayer and worship of God. Artists use references, iconographers use references (in fact they have to!) but they do it the way Christians have been blessed to do, they keep the human element. That human element is essential, it's the very image of God. Ai has none of it, and should never be used for sacred art, objectively.

        • − opinion#1259 1 likes at the source

          Ye give the AI suspiciously too much agency. Overhumanizing it, I'd say. >Generative AI can never do any of that, so no ai can make icons The person writing the prompt can though. And should, like any other Christian writer. >That human element is essential, it's the very image of God Once more: how is that different from mass market generic icons like Sofrino products? Clearly not handmade, not even replicas of the original image. Where's the "human element" on that conveyor belt?

          • − opinion#1260 1 likes at the source

            That last point of yours is fair! Generally the difference is being blessed by a priest, and actually being painted by a person and then reprinted, versus a mashup of manmade things with the gaps filled in by a machine.

            • − opinion#1261 1 likes at the source

              And what exactly is the essence of that difference, I ask ye? A machine does what a human could do but faster, and then again a machine does what a human could do but faster. Fruit? Fruit. Plant? Plant. BlackSails.gif.

              • − opinion#1262 1 likes at the source

                Brother, respectfully, are you high? I've already named several problems. Another one is that this inevitably harms actual orthodox iconographers (and big corporations share that blame too, ideally we'd go back to buying icons at the parish from local iconographers) Planting fruit or doing your taxes don't pull on the soul the way iconography does. They don't have the same spiritual effect and obviously can't be compared that way. When we sell the soul of our faith to the machine, without the human element that even printed icons keep, we invite all sorts of spiritual "accidents"
  • − opinion#1252 1 likes at the source

    What does the making of an icon presuppose that a human can do and a machine cannot? Hint: it's got nothing to do with aesthetics.

    • − opinion#1256 1 likes at the source

      Oh, it definitely has. When venerating an icon, we're praying to the actual prototype the image represents, so the image just needs to be recognizable and that's it. All the canonical details are just tradition and have been changed many times over history. And whatever you wanted to say about some spiritual "wave" the icon painter was supposedly on, that's purely between them and God, not between them and the person venerating the icon. Because if that were true, then machine-printed Sofrino icons would have to be heretical too.