Smaller than N.

Where's the money train in painting murals?

"The money train". Very good. If AI ever takes your job, might I suggest a second career as a comedian.

Hideous.

I think artists are unhappy that something that does not fit all the criteria for "art" is being described as "art."

It's a good question. I just don't personally believe it's a challenging one. I'm comfortable drawing the line at simple AI art ("simple" as in nothing beyond some hours spent prompting - for somebody who takes it beyond that, I'd come back to the question).

We are not uncomfortable with what the art is saying but with what the meta-narrative around the art is saying, and I think that's an important distinction. Sometimes context is an important part of artistic interpretation and expression, but this time around I think the discomfort is that human intention is being replaced by a machine.

If not, where do we draw the line?

I don't find this question uncomfortable at all: art is art if and only if it was made by humans, end to end. Human thought informing human action resulting in a human-created work. If you involved an AI, it is not art; it is a facsimile of art. If you agree that conveying emotion and meaning is an important part of art, and I think you do since you highlighted that art can and sometimes should be uncomfortable, then I posit that AI "art" cannot be art because there is no feeling, emotion, or creativity involved in its creation. An AI can only attempt to mimic human expression based on its training while the AI itself is incapable of these things.

"Comfort implies art" is different from "art implies comfort."

Which is to say, not all art is comfortable, but not all things that are not comfortable are art.

It's perfectly fine for art to be comfortable. Stop gate-keeping.

Maybe the art is the letter and the resulting media outrage rather than the mural itself, like the Leeds 13 “Going Places” degree show.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/jun/08/martinwainwright

My favourite commentary of specific art pieces comes from Patrick MacGoohan who said (of a piece of modern art) "it means what it is."

Were John Berger here, I'm sure he would remind us all that art does not exist in a vacuum, but lives in a social context.

The most meaningful (to me) critique of AI generated works are that they deprive the artist of the benefit of the investigation. As media become more disconnected (intermediated), the reasoning path between urge and resolution is obscured for the artist.

Generative models are highly intermediated.

The purpose of art may be thought of as the effort to produce artifacts. But at a societal level it is a process to reveal "truths" embedded in commonly held "lies."

I like this specific piece in the same way I liked Duchamp's urinal. It makes a statement about art more than being art. And in concretizing that statement raises itself to the status of "art."

But if Duchamp (or anyone else) tried to pass off a second urinal as a second fountain, the impact would not be there and it would not be art.

Which is to say... I think the Bedminster piece IS art because of its context. But subsequent AI generated pieces would need to be judged on different merits.

If the Bedminster piece is indicative of the quality of output of generative AI, human artists have nothing new to fear.

There has always been the danger of art patrons subsidizing substandard public art because of budget concerns. This is just the next chapter in that story.

Bedminster is not known for its patronage, and it's unlikely that will change anytime soon.

Though yes, to the degree that generative models rip off existing artists, whirl it around in a convolutional neural network and barf up something... Yes, this is a prime example of what Massimo Vignelli called "visual pollution."