"Soul" does not mean what you think it does

I am honestly tired of pro-Ai people saying "soul is not real, it doesn't exist". What you fail to understand is that by "soul" people mean "the emotions, thoughts, personal feelings and life experience projected onto art".

When i look at a painting, I not only admire it's beauty, but i also try to understand why it was painted this way, why did the artist use those brush strokes? why those colors? why that subject? how did the artist's life impact this painting? what is the context in which it was painted? how did the artist feel at that moment?

When someone uses AI, all of that is lost. The AI does not have its own feelings to project onto the work, it only does what it is told. It replicates existing styles without knowing why they are like that. You are not the one making the strokes, or carefully picking the colors, or impacting the drawing with your life experience (i.e. years of art or other experience and knowledge). If a human is not the one actually drawing or painting, there is no "soul".

For example, a child draws something and shows it to you. Its not a good drawing objectively. Maybe the child was super happy when they drew it, and want you to be happy when you see it too. Would you feel nothing when seeing it? would you only look at it objectively and not analyze the context and intent of it?

Or a really emotional piece, do you not want to learn more about the artist that drew it? do you not look up the name and their story?

This is kind of a long rant, sorry about that, but I really do dislike when people are ignorant about what it means for a drawing to have "soul". The generic corporate art style for example, was said to be soulless, and I would agree with that. The intent was to make a generic style appealing to the masses, with no specific reason to be what it is, no emotions in it.

That is how most artists see AI art. No intent behind it, it feels generic, and let's be real here, the vast majority of AI art was generated in seconds or minutes at maximum, so the "it takes hours to make a good image" argument applies to a vast minority of AI users. But yeah, this is why artists dislike AI art that much.

I hope this was comprehensible and I hope people stop misunderstanding the meaning of "soul".

Tl;dr : no control over every part of the artistic process = no soul (not sure if this is exactly accurate?)