#pro ai

There is a study. Duke University, published 2023. Researchers showed participants a set of paintings and labeled them either “human-created” or “AI-created.” The twist: every single painting in the set was AI-generated. Same images. Different labels. Different ratings — across liking, beauty, profundity, and perceived worth — every time, in favor of the “human” ones. The effect wasn’t visual. It was entirely top-down: the label rewired the experience of the object itself.

This is not a niche academic finding. This is a description of how aesthetic judgment actually works for most people, most of the time. You don’t encounter a work in a vacuum. You encounter it with a story attached. The story is part of the work.

Which makes the following cases interesting.

2023. Miles Astray, photographer. He submitted a real photograph of a flamingo — taken on film, no AI involved — to a photography competition’s AI-generated category. To make a point. The image won both jury and public vote. Contest organizers disqualified it when Astray revealed it was real. The photo was too good to be human, apparently. Until it was.

2023. Suzi Dougherty, Sydney. She shot a photograph of her son mid-stride in a Gucci exhibition, mannequins in the background. Entered a local photo contest. Disqualified for being AI-generated. The judge said the image felt “too perfect to be true”. It was a phone photo taken in ten minutes. The mannequins read as uncanny. The son was just photogenic.

2025. The Velvet Sundown. AI folk rock band. Over a million Spotify streams before anyone publicly questioned the source. People added the music to playlists. Then someone noticed the promo photos looked off. Not the music — the photos. The music still sounded the same after the reveal. Only people’s relationship to it changed.

Three cases. Three different directions of the same error. Human work flagged as AI. AI work enjoyed as human. The detector isn’t running on aesthetics — it’s running on suspicion, context, and whatever story arrived first.

The post from Tumblr says AI is always noticeable. Saturation gives it away. Movement gives it away. It’s just so easy to spot.

I wanted to put that in the first paragraph, because so many discussions of this get derailed by further ableist gotchas about “alternatives to AI” or inspiration porn about disabled people who don’t use AI. AI could be literally useless for disabled people and yet the way you discuss it can still be ableist and use ableist rhetoric.

So many of you posit AI as something that is used by “stupid,” “lazy,” “illiterate” people who have “rotten brains.” Do I even have to point out why this is ableist? “I have no sympathy for people who are too stupid and lazy to write their own emails because their brain has turned entirely to mush” Do I really need to point it out?

Tying a person’s worth to their intellect, their productivity, their work ethic, or the output they can produce is deeply, deeply ableist.

Imagine an intellectually disabled person who cannot write emails. Maybe they cannot write at all, maybe they only need help with formal emails. Maybe they get this help from a friend, a carer, a tool, or a template. Or maybe they do not get help and therefore their email remains forever unwritten. Do you hate this person? Do you think this person is contemptible and deserves to be shunned?

“Well, that’s still no excuse to use gen AI! They should have used a template or an online guide!” This post is not about actual gen AI. This post is about how you talk about and criticize it. If your issue isn’t with people unable to write emails, then why do you keep pulling them into this? If your issue is with gen AI users, say so directly. Or better yet, spell out the specific grievance you have.

Of course, the email is not always literal. It can be a stand-in for a “simple” task that is required for many jobs and everyday situations. However, the same applies across situations. You shouldn’t judge people on their intellect, productivity, or their ability to perform paid labor. That is always ableist.

If your actual real problem with generative AI is that people are unable to perform certain tasks? Ableism. But if your problem is something else? Talk about it