Well it is that but I think it is also that it is, at some informational level, fundamentally incoherent and unreal. It looks fine, but it is not anything. It has no intent in the art strokes (which I think always shows in geometry), it has no reality in the lighting of a photo.

It may be, I concede, that I see more AI-generated photos than other art types (AI generated photo fraud is a serious issue in a corner of the web I frequent) but I tend to find that I literally can't remember what they look like long after I see them.

Same exercise, focussing on faces specifically:

- try to visualise Taylor Swift's face. Or that of Rachel Weisz or Ming-Na Wen, or Sarah Silverman, or Alfre Woodard.

- now try to visualise the face of Tilly Norwood.

Obviously if you don't know who any of these people are, you can't do this exercise (which is why I included Taylor Swift). And if you don't know what Tilly Norwood is, you can't do this exercise.

But if you've seen a lot of content about Tilly Norwood, can you visualise the face in the same way? Is it memorable? It is not.

It is my contention that these images actually have something very undefinable missing, that my brain needs to find them worth memorising. I have seen many "AI models" now and I can't remember any of "their" faces.