A note on what I’m doing and why. I am a freelance writer who’s been writing since print magazines in the 90s. Borked is slang for broken, malfunctioning and if that doesn’t describe the world we live in today, I don’t know what does. I started Borked as a place for civil discussion of cultural issues that affect all of us. Your support is appreciated.
When Jean-Léon Gérôme died in 1904, his maid found him slumped over one of his paintings of Truth. He painted her over and over. She was always naked. The Naked Truth. Stepping out of a well, or holding up a mirror to humanity.
Or dead at the bottom of a well, like the painting above, from 1895.
Naked truth, killed by falsehood, he called it.
I love to use classic art on my posts. There’s just such an endless supply of it and there’s always something that fits. Plus, it allows me to celebrate the work of an actual artist in a world where actual artists are appreciated less than ever before.
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a painter and sculptor whose work was so widely reproduced that by 1880 he was called world’s most famous living artist. 145 years later, most people don’t even know his name. They know the phrase “naked truth” though, even if they don’t have any clue what the hell the naked truth is anymore.
I’m an editor of four publications on Medium. Here’s what people tell me.
They tell me they create AI images because they couldn’t find anything to properly capture the essence of their writing.
Self delusion at its finest. I’m sorry, the internet is filled with public domain images. Hundreds of thousands of them and you want me to believe that? Gerome alone painted over 300 paintings. And he’s one of thousands of artists whose work has moved into the public domain. Absolutely free to use. No strings attached.
No, you’re using AI generated images because it makes you feel like you can do something you couldn’t do before AI existed. It’s really that simple.
And they think “they” made the end result. Which is also not true.
A while ago, I saw a Note that made me laugh. I wish I’d re-stacked so I could re-find it but I’ll get the context right, if not the exact details.
A fellow said someone (a friend? a teacher? I forget) showed him something he’d made with AI and proudly said “Look at this! Before AI I couldn’t do this.”
So he laughed and said “you low-key still can’t.”
The person looked at him, closed the computer and said “you’re low-key not wrong.”
I had a little laugh and moved along.
A few days later, I’d read a story that brought that Note back to mind.
I ran across the story of a designer who had truth shoved in his face in the most stark and shocking way and still failed to see the truth because of his own delusion.
I am not naming the designer or linking to the story because I don’t name and shame private figures. If I link, it’s to public figures only. Name and shame is one of the ugliest parts of the internet and I don’t play that game here, ever.
He’d landed a nice gig, doing book covers for a small publishing house. For close to a year, he’d been creating book cover art for the publisher. And each time, the publisher would ask — this is your work, right? Yes, of course it’s my work the designer would assure them, each time. Until the day the crap hit the proverbial fan.
One day, the publisher got a letter from a law firm representing a photographer.
It was a demand letter. A cease and desist letter.
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