November 5, 2025 - In a very recent article posted to this site by Arnie Fenner, an equivalency is made between AI generated images and fan art made by conventional methods.  It’s a short piece and I’d direct anyone interested to read it rather than having me summarize. When I saw this, I was both surprised and disappointed.  While I understand that many folks hold low opinions of fan art, I’d hope that there is at least a clear distinction between works born of one’s genuine efforts versus images generated by an automated computer program.  Whatever subjective opinion you hold on the importance, creative merits, or even legality of fan art, it flat out is not comparable to genAI slop which has no human author. I wanted to share my own thoughts on the nature and realities of fan…