Tried feeding my Midjourney output through an old oil painting filter and it looked exactly like the real thing

I took a generated image of a forest scene and ran it through a Photoshop action I found from 2015 that mimics heavy brush strokes, and my artist friend thought I'd painted it over a weekend. It made me wonder where the line is between AI art and traditional technique when the tools just layer old effects onto new outputs. Does using a digital filter that simulates real paint count as craft or is it just cheating with extra steps?

2 comments

2 Comments

lopez.karen1mo ago

A filter can't make digital strokes act like real oil paint.

stella_murray1mo ago

Used to totally buy that line of thinking. This one changed my mind.