Category Archives: Society

Art, Artificial Intelligence, Arts, Culture, Society, Technology

AI-generic-slop is theft from real artists

CREATIVE ART

Intro: Art generated by online tools is painfully bland and is leading us down the path to cultural stagnation

Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, admitted that “Great artists steal.” The Spanish genius assimilated African mask imagery into modern art, and many other greats throughout history have done something similar. Essentially, this is how creativity works. But behind their masterpieces are struggle, friction, and unique vision. Enter another entirely different beast, the theft by proliferating AI engines. These are killing creativity, harming real artists, and fuelling an epidemic of unoriginality.

By serving prompts to generators such as Midjourney or DALL-E, people can generate images on screen, in just a few seconds. Anyone can conjure up a Vincent van Gogh-styled still life or Leonardo da Vinci-inspired selfie and at once exhibit it online. Social media platforms such as X are filled with fans of this technology who declare: “AI art is art.” But this doesn’t make it true.

In fact, AI “art” doesn’t even exist – it is an illusion. AI models work on pattern recognition, not artistic decision making. While an “AI artist” may serve prompts to this technology, they cannot be considered the author of its output. It has simply been remixed from ready-made imagery without thinking, feeling, intent, or ingenuity. Absent from AI “art” is creative process, which should take more than a few seconds. This is apparent in the low-quality, generic slop that’s produced. Lacking a distinctiveness of style and voice, it can only offer a dynamic of smooth homogeneity.

It bypasses craft, which is what great artists develop – with brushes and paint, pencils and paper – over months, years, and even decades. AI artists celebrate the power of technology to make creativity accessible, and this forms their central argument and tenet as to why it’s so great. True craft, however, takes dedication, consistent practice, and experimentation.

John Constable not only worked tirelessly inside his studio but made countless studies en plein air – as revealed in Tate Britain’s current exhibition, Turner & Constable. Celebrating two of Britain’s greatest painters, it shows what being an artist really takes. On display are watercolours, oils and sketches, as well as paint-covered palettes, paintboxes, and even a sketching chair.

Among Constable’s masterpieces is his 1836 work Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow, where prismatic hues glide through menacing clouds. His technique looks effortless but was suffused with genius-level skill. And behind it, unseen by the average enthusiast, are more than 100 cloud studies he created in an attempt to capture their transient energy.

Where AI generates pictures in an instant, Constable was committed to an ongoing process; the experience gained through observation and documentation was ultimately of immense benefit to him.

Similarly, JMW Turner made around 37,000 sketches of landscapes he’d seen with his own eyes. Determined to evoke the raw power of nature – from blazing sunsets to howling storms – he pushed realism towards abstraction with an excitement that’s visible in his energetic brushstrokes.

In contrast to Constable and Turner’s radical compositions, AI’s aesthetic is flat, twee, and often old fashioned. Defined by a saccharine palette of candy colours and hazy tones, automatically generated landscapes are hollow, sanitised, and no match for Britain’s great painters and artists. Working some 200 years ago, they painted emotive, not idealised, places of both personal and historic significance.

What is more, both Constable and Turner began their paintings by looking, and really observing the world. This fundamental act is absent from the process of AI’s so-called artists who are more like a client giving instructions to a graphic designer than an artist painting at their easel. AI engines are also doing real harm to contemporary artists and their hard work.  

Among those who have already experienced its damaging effects is Australian painter Kim Leutwyler. She says her distinct style has been copied by app-generated portraits. “My issue isn’t with AI itself, but with the unethical way it has been trained without artists’ consent,” she said. “The right to opt in or out of having your data scraped for AI training should be fundamental, not optional.” This view is widely held across all of the creative industries.

AI, then, is pilfering from artists, the very people it relies on. It harms us all with its blandness. Rather than moving art forward, like Turner and Constable did in their day, it contributes to what has been termed “cultural stagnation”.

Anyone infuriated by Hollywood’s endless remakes of viewer favourites has a similar impact. It threatens both originality and individual thinking. And because future AI will only draw from more of this generated material, it will continue to create typical rather than unique visions.

AI art isn’t art, it’s a mirage, and it won’t be looked at for longer than a doom-scrolling second. In our world of efficiency and productivity, creative pursuits are one of very few remaining places where human endeavour is vital. Behind the brushstrokes of Turner and Constable are years of looking, thinking, making and struggle, and that’s what creative art is.

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Britain, Europe, Greenland, NATO, Society, United States

Society as we know it must change if NATO is to survive

SOCIETY

Intro: Western societies have grown comfortable assuming that security, prosperity, and peace are the norm. They are not

The stand-off over Greenland has, for now, been defused. Donald Trump has withdrawn his threats of military action and tariffs. There is now an agreed framework for talks. Europeans, including Britons, should be relieved but not reassured. The deal is not done. More turbulence seems certain to lie ahead. The biggest winners in this disruption are not in Washington, let alone Europe, but in Moscow and Beijing.

For weeks, the world has been transfixed as America threatened a NATO ally over an Arctic territory that many struggle to locate on a map. That might have been “Art of the Deal” pressure and not a determination to be the president who acquired a 51st state, but it will have confirmed for Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping that Westen unity is brittle, that transactional pressure works, and even old alliances can be destabilised.

The strategic logic for Trump’s agenda is real. The Arctic is no longer a frozen periphery. Climate change is opening new shipping routes and exposing vast mineral deposits. Russia has militarised its northern coastline with submarine bases, icebreakers, and hypersonic missiles. China, despite having no Arctic territory, has declared itself a near-Arctic state and invested heavily in infrastructure and resources. Greenland sits at the intersection of these ambitions and astride the Golden Dome missile defence coverage.

The Arctic has always mattered to Britian. Our defence posture is northern-oriented, shaped by the Cold War imperative of protecting the Atlantic sea lanes to North America. That has not diminished but intensified as undersea energy and data cables have become critical to the modern economy. Our submarine patrols, maritime patrol aircraft, and our commitment to NATO’s northern flank all reflect this reality. The UK Commando Force will be in Norway shortly for their winter deployment – a tangible reminder that, for Britain, the High North is not a distant theatre but increasingly our strategic front line.

Greenland and Canada now sit on that front line too. Mark Carney’s call at the World Economic Forum in Davos for “middle powers” to collaborate more closely was not abstract multiculturalism but a recognition that the post-Cold War security architecture is fracturing. Countries like Britain, Canada, the Nordic nations, and others must build new coalitions. These will require substance – they need capability, capacity, and credibility.

For decades, we have relied on America’s military dominance to underwrite our security. Notwithstanding our sacrifices for American security in Iraq and Afghanistan, that guarantee can longer be assumed. The United States might be unwilling (isolationist sentiment is rising) or even unable to provide it (for example, were a crisis in the Euro-Atlantic to coincide with one in the Pacific). Shorn of its rhetoric, the Trump administration’s recently published national security strategy reflects priorities that any US administration would recognise: homeland security, the western hemisphere, China and the Middle East before the Euro-Atlantic.

Europe has committed to increasing defence expenditure over the next decade. Away from the eastern front line, those commitments are not yet backed by credible capability plans. Fragmentation is an issue. Europe operates 17 types of main battle tank; America has one. We have 20 different fighter jets; they have six. We have 29 classes of destroyers and frigates; they have four. Every variant means separate supply chains, training regimes, and maintenance.

Integration is not just about efficiency but credibility. An alliance that cannot operate as a coherent force will not deter a determined adversary. Putin has watched European defence debates for years and calculated – correctly so far – that we lack the collective will to match our rhetoric. European NATO must therefore accelerate defence investment, military interoperability, and defence industrial integration. Not as an alternative to NATO, but to reinforce NATO.

Political leaders must educate voters about the world we now inhabit. Western cohesion is brittle. The post-Cold War peace dividend has been spent. The threats are real and growing and the choices are hard: Europe spends 10-times more on welfare than on defence. No modern politician has dared echo John Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. Someone will have to try.

These choices are not just about bigger budgets, they demand a broader reshaping of national resilience: how we protect critical infrastructure, secure supply chains, educate engineers and strategists, and prepare communities for disruption. During the Cold War, civil defence was a shared civic responsibility. We need a modern equivalent – not bunkers and drills but resilient energy systems, domestic manufacturing capacity, cyber literacy, and a citizenry that understands the strategic environment and can respond to crises from floods to hybrid warfare.

This isn’t about sacrifice. It’s about engagement. Higher educational establishments must train the technical talent and conduct the research that underpins resilience. Businesses must rebuild strategic capabilities. Local authorities must prepare for infrastructure disruption. And citizens must understand that security is not something government provides while we go about our lives – it is something we build together.

Darwin saw that it is not the strongest or smartest who survive but the most adaptable. The West has grown comfortable assuming that security, prosperity, and peace are the norm. They are not. They require constant effort. The Greenland episode has been a crisis. It must now become a catalyst. Europe has had its wake-up call.

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Denmark, Europe, European Union, Government, Greenland, NATO, Politics, Society, United States

The reasons behind Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland

UNITED STATES – GREENLAND

It is said that Donald Trump’s much-vaunted desire to acquire Greenland is all about US national security.

First, the US president claimed the Arctic island, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, was being swarmed by Russian and Chinese vessels. Then he said ownership of the sprawling territory was vital for his planned “Golden Dome” missile defence shield.

There are hints of truth in both claims, but security experts have broadly argued that a US acquisition of Greenland is not necessary to address the national security concerns.

The sparsely populated island plays an outsized role in the United States’ and NATO’s wider air defence architecture. It sits smack bang in the middle of the shortest flight path between Moscow and Washington – known as the great-circle distance.

Technically, the island is 2,000 miles from Washington and 2,000 miles from Moscow.

Since the end of the Second World War, the US has had military personnel stationed at Pituffik Space Base, on the far north coast of Greenland. It serves as the US military’s northernmost base, about 900 miles from the North Pole and is home to about 150 troops. It is a key cog in Washington’s early warning system for missiles. If Russia or China were to fire a ballistic missile at the US, its path would probably cross directly over Greenland, which is why the primary role of the personnel at Pituffik is to scan the skies for incoming aerial threats.

However, America’s military footprint on Greenland has significantly dwindled since the end of the Cold War.

At its peak, Washington had 17 installations and 15,000 soldiers on the island, hunting for Soviet submarines and ships, as well as being ready for a feared invasion.

This was underpinned by a 1951 agreement signed between the US and Danish governments. Copenhagen has repeatedly argued this deal still stands, and there is nothing preventing Mr Trump from deploying more soldiers to Greenland without the need to acquire the island.

This includes hosting any assets that would contribute to the US’s Golden Dome project – a $175bn (£131bn) air defence system that would mimic Israel’s Iron Dome, but on a vastly larger scale. Mr Trump had not mentioned Greenland, however, as being vital to this decade-long project until just recently – suggesting it has become a convenient excuse for the White House to use.

The Golden Dome project, it has been claimed, would also involve a system of satellites – some that track missiles and others that fire their own projectiles to shoot them down.

While analysts have questioned whether such technology even exists, or is likely to exist any time soon, US ownership of Greenland would not be a prerequisite for an American satellite defence system.

In real terms, Pituffik’s importance is expected to grow as climate change reshapes the polar Arctic by opening up new trade routes close to North America.

Greenland sits where the Arctic Ocean meets the Atlantic.

Russian ships and submarines leaving the country’s Arctic region bases to head south have to pass nearby to do so. One of the main routes sees the Russian vessels pass through the waters between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK – known as the GIUK Gap.

A second gap, the Bear Gap, between Norway and Iceland has also emerged as a favoured option.

Since Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine, NATO has increased its aerial and naval patrols in the area. Denmark says it will invest £1.73bn to bolster its Arctic Command with new ships, drones, and surveillance aircraft to guard the region. The spending was announced in January last year to deter Mr Trump’s interest in Greenland.

Again, as with missile defence, bolstering security in the waters around Greenland does not require acquisition of the island.

Denmark insists Washington could use existing treaties to address those national security concerns.

Greenland’s geography might provide the easiest route to explaining Mr Trump’s desire to acquire the territory. The island’s capital is closer to Washington than it is Copenhagen.

But it could be down to the maps drawn by Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century, and still commonly used.

On the Mercator Map, areas near the poles are greatly exaggerated in size.

Greenland can appear to be the same size of Africa, despite being 14-times smaller. South America also appears smaller than the Arctic island.

Mr Trump has publicly spoken of his love of maps, and for the size of perceived regional superpowers, such as the US or Russia. To some, the Mercator Distortion could just make a combined US-Greenland landmass look bigger than Russia.

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