Generative art allows more people to communicate with others in ways they couldn’t before, and to inspire and be inspired by others. The stuff people post online still requires creativity, curiosity, experimentation, and refinement. It also requires learning how to use new skills they may not have had to effectively use new tools that are rapidly evolving and improving to express themselves. Generative art is not a passive process, but an active one, where human artists get a chance to create something unique and meaningful.

Think of it like a camera that that can navigate the multidimensional latent space filled with concepts that can give rise to novel digital art. In the real world you can up, down, left, right, in or out, but in a latent space not only can you go those places, you can go to where Muppets meets impasto. Like a camera, sometimes none of the things you capture are made by you, but you still choose how it’s captured and presented.

You have a lot in common with Charles Baudelaire, even though you’re a hundred years apart from eachother.

As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of a blindness, an imbecility, but had also the air of a vengeance. I do not believe, or at least I do not wish to believe, in the absolute success of such a brutish conspiracy, in which, as in all others, one finds both fools and knaves; but I am convinced that the ill-applied developments of photography, like all other purely material developments of progress, have contrib­uted much to the impoverishment of the French artistic genius, which is already so scarce. It is nonetheless obvious that this industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mor­tal enemy, and that the confusion of their several func­tions prevents any of them from being properly fulfilled.

-Charles Baudelaire, On Photography, from The Salon of 1859

I believe that generative art, warts and all, is a vital new form of art that is shaking things up, challenging preconceptions, and getting people angry - just like art should. Generative art introduces new ways to fail that no one is ready for, so if you see someone post some malformed monstrosity somewhere, cut them some slack, they’re just learning. Remember there’s another person on the other end of the internet that was excited to share with you.

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.

― Kevin Smith, Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good