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The hobby that AI is ruining for its fans

Every detail matters in puzzles, and details are where AI art often falls short.

Puzzle enthusiasts’ pleasure is measured in the smallest of details: the exact shade of pink on a peony’s petal, a small sliver of a man’s plaid shirt, the tiniest glint of sunlight reflecting off a wave’s crest. It’s in the knowledge that every piece has a proper place, and the idea that seemingly infinite chaos has a solution. Hobbyists spend hours studying a pile of disparate pieces, inspecting each one closely, sorting them accordingly, and fusing them all back together. That intense examination — of patterns, of colors, of speckles, etc. — is integral to completing this challenge, to solving this beautifully vexing enigma. It also makes the presence of AI-generated images very obvious, and very annoying.

“Where else does a photo or painting have its details scrutinized as much as when someone is doing a puzzle?” David Swart, a jigsaw enthusiast, told Vox. “I’ve been to museums and seen famous art in Rome and New York. But only when doing a puzzle am I looking for the little branch that has a white fleck on the tip.”

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Asking a person to devote hours deciphering what a computer has created, sometimes sloppily, in seconds, feels more like a punishment than a hobby. Every detail matters in puzzles, and details are where AI often falls short.

The difficulty for these eagle-eyed puzzlists is that they’re fighting a battle against capitalism. It’s less expensive for companies to make AI-generated puzzles because there’s no need to pay a human artist, which makes them cheaper for the general public to buy — which then incentives even more AI.

At the heart of this backlash is also something more fundamental: Most people view puzzles as a tactile, mindful, and uniquely analog experience — a way to fully unplug from the digital world, use your brain, and be present. Puzzling is a place where you’re supposed to be able to get away from AI and everything it represents, but that’s changing rapidly.

Why some jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts hate AI

When it comes to traditional jigsaw puzzles, there’s a thoughtfulness to the design of both the image and the pieces themselves. Every color, curve, and knob has a purpose. In trying to create these crucial components without human ingenuity and logic, AI-generated art removes both the tension and the aha! moments that make puzzling so satisfying.

“It’s like, wait a minute, this person has six fingers, or this plant starts off with a stem here and then it doesn’t pick up until halfway across the puzzle,” Tracy Delphia, a puzzler with more than 60 years of experience, told Vox.

While AI-created art and puzzles can appear beautiful as a whole,........

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