The hottest AI Art Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Art & Illustration Topics

DALLE, AARON, Kata: Strategies for Legibility

Cybernetic Forests • 39 implied HN points • 28 Aug 22
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Harold Cohen developed AARON in the 1970s, an AI program that co-created art with him, showcasing a unique relationship between the artist and the machine.
  2. Artists can infuse their spirit into tools and images, as seen in the Japanese textile tradition, emphasizing purpose and repetitive practice.
  3. Strategies for artist legibility within sophisticated image-making systems like DALLE2 involve using prompts, selections, and exploring the concept of feedback loops through repetition and variation.

Mastering the Alchemy of AI Storytelling

Daniel Pinchbeck’s Newsletter • 2 implied HN points • 21 Nov 25
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. A six-week hands-on seminar teaches you how to create polished AI short films, giving practical tools like prompts, camera grammar, sound design, and a finished project to release.
  2. The program pairs technical training with ethics, philosophy, and somatic practices so creators learn to use AI responsibly, covering appropriation, attribution, and the social impact of viral media.
  3. It runs Jan 11–Feb 15, 2026 with live sessions and recordings, offers tuition tiers (including a $500 early-bird rate and a $1500 advanced option with one-on-one coaching), and provides scholarships and clear IP terms.

Artt in the Age of Artifficial Intelligence

Donkeyspace • 18 implied HN points • 09 Dec 24
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Art is not just pretty pictures; it's a project deeply connected to its context and history. Each piece of art tells a story influenced by the time and place it was created.
  2. Many people struggle with modern and contemporary art because they don't want to engage with the complicated ideas behind it. They just want nice visuals to enjoy without any deep thinking.
  3. The relationship between art and public taste can be messy. People may like things not because they are genuinely good, but because they want to fit in or impress others.

Everything Dall-e share all at once

escape the algorithm • 39 implied HN points • 21 Jun 22
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Text-based image generators are becoming advanced, creating unique visual outputs from simple descriptions.
  2. Creating AI-generated images can be a mesmerizing and addictive experience, channeling thoughts into visual form effortlessly.
  3. In a world where image creation is easy and abundant, the value of art and the essence of self-expression can be questioned.
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AI Storytelling and Social Change

Daniel Pinchbeck’s Newsletter • 1 implied HN point • 11 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture AI Art
  1. A new six-week workshop will teach practical AI storytelling skills, especially how to produce short-form, AI-generated videos about current issues.
  2. AI is already causing big societal shifts but can be harnessed as a powerful tool to address the meta-crisis and to create critical, politically engaged media.
  3. There’s a live discussion tomorrow at 2 pm EST where people can ask questions, and the program offers a limited discount plus partial or full scholarships for those in need.

Seeing Like a Dataset: Notes on AI Photography

Cybernetic Forests • 19 implied HN points • 06 Nov 22
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Photography rules shape how we see; AI photography requires composing multiple images to train models.
  2. AI photography focuses on continuity and variation in datasets over single images, contrasting with human instincts.
  3. AI photographers aim to create predictable outputs through training models with large datasets, reshaping how we perceive the world.

Radicalized by the Game Genie

Cybernetic Forests • 19 implied HN points • 18 Sep 22
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. The Game Genie introduced the idea that the invisible codes of software and society are changeable, inspiring a period of art crimes and hacking into perceived norms.
  2. AI art creation tools like DALLE2 can be viewed as game engines for art, setting rules within which artists create, illustrating the importance of navigating the boundaries between tools and personal expression.
  3. Artists have historically used tools like machinima and hacking to subvert and repurpose gaming structures for storytelling, highlighting the potential for AI art to evolve beyond prompt responses.

Of Oscillons and Cybernetic Tortoises

Cybernetic Forests • 19 implied HN points • 06 Sep 22
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Ben Laposky created early computer-generated art using oscilloscopes, demonstrating the blending of art and technology.
  2. The definition of AI has evolved over time, with different companies and eras defining it based on their needs.
  3. Artificial intelligence can be viewed as a product of relationships between components, like with the Cybernetic Tortoises, rather than just data-driven processes.

It's hard to make art with AI, but it's not impossible

ART⋂CODE • 13 implied HN points • 05 Nov 24
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Making art with AI can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. The key is finding a way to express your personal vision through the tools.
  2. Using AI might streamline the creative process, but it can also make it harder to put your unique voice into the work. You need to find a way to infuse your style into what AI generates.
  3. Art is not just about making choices; it's about a deeper connection between the artist and their medium. Embracing this relationship can lead to more meaningful creations.

Datasets as Imagination

Reboot • 16 implied HN points • 02 Sep 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Well-made datasets are considered works of art
  2. Current datasets are often exploitative of artists for creative work
  3. Artist datasets provide new opportunities for creativity and income, while offering a more intentional and ethical approach to AI art

How (Not) to Look at AI Art

Reboot • 16 implied HN points • 04 Jun 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Generative AI art raises questions about artistic value and human intent.
  2. There are concerns about biases and oversimplification in AI-generated art.
  3. AI art challenges traditional interpretations and requires critical engagement.

An Interview with Ben Street, Art Historian

Syntopikon • 13 implied HN points • 19 Apr 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. Art can be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere it's found - in real life, print, or virtually.
  2. Authorial intent in art isn't more important than how viewers interpret it; the artwork belongs to the viewer too.
  3. The high prices some artworks command do not reflect their intrinsic value; art and money operate on different systems of value.

AI Art

tsalikhov • 1 HN point • 27 Feb 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. AI art market has seen significant growth in the last 12 months.
  2. Early innovators of AI art are likely to see increased value as the market expands.
  3. Over 3,000 collectors have spent $20M collecting AI art.

Cosmic Insignificance Therapy

ART⋂CODE • 6 implied HN points • 31 Mar 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. The video showcases a journey from micro to macro using StyleGAN AI models
  2. The abstract forms in the video hint at string theory and higher-dimensional universes
  3. The exploration of AI's struggle to create photorealistic images reveals insights into human perception

Fighting Against Generative Art is Futile

The Future of Life • 0 implied HN points • 11 Apr 23
🎨 Art & Illustration AI Art
  1. AI art is quickly getting better and could surpass human art. It's not worth arguing that human artists are always better because AI can improve rapidly.
  2. Generative art can create infinite variations based on a single prompt. This raises questions about what makes an artwork valuable when there are so many similar pieces.
  3. AI can make original art, not just copy others. Even though it learns from existing art, it can mix ideas in new ways, much like how writers use language.

Notes from a Lost Future of AI Art

Cybernetic Forests • 0 implied HN points • 13 Nov 22
🕹 Technology AI Art
  1. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) were used in AI art and photography to understand the fundamentals of AI image generation, before being largely replaced by Diffusion models.
  2. To be an AI photographer, learn what the AI requires to work efficiently, take numerous photographs (500-1500), and capture the space around interesting elements to create patterns.
  3. After obtaining a dataset of images, cropping, rotating, and reversing them can significantly increase the dataset size, leading to different outcomes when training a model, which can be done efficiently using tools like RunwayML.