Je suis là pour l'équipe humaine !

Not the Team Human podcast by Douglas Rushkoff. BUT, I did have a most interesting discussion with Arty about the image attached. I was concerned about the AI-slick vs. Human aesthetic back when I created my ASF site a few years ago. In fact, I built the discussion into my About Me page (https://www.chrisboese.photo/meet-the-artists). And in my first version of the image above (the framed one), I told my brother, I deliberately left the bird poop on a prominent petal on the keyed image, because, as I reasoned at the time, that is something you could not and would not see on an AI-generated image. So now, a few years later, I got into a discussion with Arty about it, and came to a different conclusion. This is a High Res image. It can be made quite large. And at the very large sizes, that bit is clearly bird poop, textured with depth and all. Would you put that over a kitchen table, for instance? Bird poop over breakfast? So Arty worked up a "Human vs AI Editing Checklist," a 1-pager to help me figure out when the edits are for artistic purposes, and where the interventions may go too far. I especially liked #4, which I am pasting below: ### 4. Keep the Human Mess (On Purpose) Run a quick **“am I over‑cleaning?”** pass: - Slightly crooked lines, awkward overlaps, off‑center subjects? - Weather marks, bruised petals, mud, ruts, scruffy branches? - Real wrinkles, skin texture, asymmetries, hand‑lettering wobble? Ask: > “Is this an honest trace of how things looked and felt?” → If yes: **Keep it.** If AI would “fix” it into blandness, that’s a good sign you’re doing the right thing by leaving it.