I’m at Word on Fire making the case against AI-created devotional art.
Each of the children’s books on our “God shelf” has a human hand, heart, and intellect behind it. Each book grew out of the love the author and illustrator had for God, for beauty, and for the little readers to come. Thinking about the work of artists as subcreators and communicators of love will, I hope, offer my children an inoculation against the AI art they encounter in the future. No matter how pleasing the output looks, AI-generated art cannot be offered in love and is not the fruit of contemplation.
Even my own art exceeds AI slop in this respect. When I tried to draw a lion for my eldest daughter, it was, without question, worse than an image she might find elsewhere. (In fact, she burst into angry tears at how bad it was.) But it was unquestionably offered out of love for her, personally. Drawing it forced me to think harder about what a lion was, and then to meditate on how very, very short I fell of God’s grandeur in making it.
Read the rest at Word on Fire…
I’ve got a plug for my husband’s book Saintly Adventures in the piece, and I’d also like to specifically praise John Herreid, whose The Catholic Home Art Gallery celebrates living devotional artists. And the book has perforated pages so you can tear out the prints and put them right up!