I have been watching documentaries about art forgeries, and I keep being struck by what an unstoppable economic force art is.
You fund a fringe festival and the entire city or even region makes money even if all the plays are bad– restaurants, taxis, hotels, venues, bartenders, poster designers, print shops, and then later maybe youtubers and critics and fan conventions…
This is probably the wrong take-away from art forgery stories, but even criminals are making millions of dollars in secondary activities because of the original art, which then means these filmmakers are making money talking about the forgery, which means cinemas and festivals can make money showing the films… Unstoppable.
This is the worst test for whether art is “real” but the way AI-generated content leaves a bunch of economic destruction in its wake is probably telling.
They invented a type of content that has zero cultural capital lol
Related/unrelated I would like to visit a museum of famous forgeries. Probably cheap to set up.