Perfect is for showroom cars and Stepford wives — not for art.
AI art right now is like diner pancakes from a laminated menu photo. They arrive flawless — syrup cascading in a perfect CGI wave, butter cube sharp enough to use as a building brick — and somehow, that’s exactly why they taste like disappointment. They’re edible plastic. You smile, you chew, you die inside. You look at it and start to wonder… “Did we peak in the 90s as a race?” And honestly, I think we did… Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Two more or less.
That’s the problem with AI-generated imagery — it’s so clean it’s practically sterile. It lacks punch. The models all look the same. The faces are simply angelic. The ChatGPT claptrap somehow makes our souls pout in sadness as if we have just seen a baby seal clubbing. We are trapped in that continuous “Uncanny Valley’ predicament that gives us nightmares and feelings of unease – and prevents us from ever seeing Tom Hanks again without cringing with Polar Express PTSD. Everything looks like it’s been scrubbed for a health inspection and then put into a tanker of bleach… Like my sister in law when I said, “damn I really need to clean my kid’s socks… The ones with the pink kitties.” And her response was: “just stick them in bleach… That’ll clean it up.”
AI faces are poreless, streets are litter-free, leather jackets look like they just came off the mannequin at a mall that still has a RadioShack – or worse like they just came off a skinned cow. You’re not looking at a lived-in world. You’re looking at a stock photo of a fantasy of a memory.
It lacks intent – and, more importantly, it’s at that point where its ubiquitous nature has fined people’s eyes and judgement… Folks can now look at AI and tell you with which platform it was created. To that point.
Texture and Why You Need it
The Perfection Hangover
AI loves perfect because it’s been trained on oceans of it. Magazine covers, stock footage, brand campaigns — every pixel scrubbed like it’s running for office. The result? You get beauty without bite, symmetry without story.
But here’s the thing: your brain doesn’t trust perfection. It’s suspicious. Like meeting someone whose smile never drops and realizing you’re one life insurance policy away from a Netflix docuseries.
Imperfection is proof-of-life. A chipped mug says someone drank from me. A cracked tile says someone lived here. Without it, your art floats in the uncanny valley, waving as it sinks.
Why Texture is the Secret Handshake
From the moment we’re born, we know the world by touch. Wood’s rough. Metal’s cold. Leather gets warmer the longer you hold it. Your eyes read texture the way your tongue reads flavor — instantly, instinctively.
When Guillermo del Toro builds a world, he crams it with tactile cues your brain drinks like whiskey:
- Dust drifting in a shaft of light like ghost dandruff.
- Paint flaking in nervous little curls off a doorframe.
- Costumes stitched just crooked enough to look human-made, not 3D-printed by a sadist in a factory.
You don’t consciously notice all of it — but your lizard brain does. And it sends up the flag: this is real enough to believe.
How to Give AI Some Grit
If you’re prompting and you don’t want your art to look like an IKEA showroom:
- Skip “realistic.” Add “worn,” “weathered,” “distressed,” “aged like a villain’s conscience.”
- Drop in material truth bombs: “rust-streaked steel,” “splintered wood,” “frayed silk with cigarette burns.”
- Add environmental grit: “mud splatter on the lens,” “mildew creeping in the corners,” “dust motes caught in dying light.”
- Break the lighting: “uneven candlelight,” “harsh sodium glare,” “sunlight through cracked blinds like a prison break.”
AI won’t do this for you by default — you have to demand the dirt.
The Cinematic Side Effect
Texture isn’t just visual — it changes how the scene feels. A clean lens shows everything like a tourist brochure. A scratched one tells you this world has been through some things. Uneven light forces the camera (and your brain) to hunt for what matters. Grit underfoot makes you imagine sound. Suddenly, you’re not just seeing the image — you’re inside it.
Closing Mic-Drop:
Perfect is boring. Perfect is plastic pancakes. AI will keep trying to serve it to you because it’s easy, safe, and algorithmically approved. Your job — as the lunatic with the vision — is to knock it off the plate, drag it through the mud, and hand it back bleeding just enough to taste alive. Because without texture, there is no truth. And without truth? You’re just feeding the world stock photography with better lighting.
