All AI art has the exact same value as an NFT. I can copy-paste your image and make it mine, I can copy-paste your prompt and make it mine. Labour Theory of Value Gang stay winning.
At the end of the day, I think this is the important thing. Arguments about IP and how AI (or AI "artists") affect artists are understandable, but are missing the forest for the trees.
There's one, singular reason art isn't well recognised nor compensated: Capitalism. And so long as it exists, no attitude or approach to AI, no purity filter, no level of enforcement of IP law, is going to effectively protect artists and meaningfully allow them to pursue their work.
I mean even if we disregard the AI art shit, this piece is so bland, fails the 3 second rule and practically no direction or sense of light direction. Its like pouring fifty brands of cereals in a bowl of milk because you think more cereals=more good, except, no, fuckface, its just gonna make a disgusting, unpalatable mush that no one in their right mind would eat.
also
Jason M. Allen, an executive at a tabletop gaming startup,
get this fucking guy out of here hes a fucking bozo!
A lot of music is focus-grouped and has algorithms behind it because major labels want to turn it into a commodity. I'm not a musician so I forget what they are exactly, but there's beats and music notes common in a lot of songs put there because they sell. Regardless, people will always want to hear live music. Nobody is going to pay hundreds of dollars to watch holograms of dead people.
But yeah. The camera did more damage to artists than AI ever has or will. If painting survived photography, it will survive AI slop.
I get that socialists will naturally be sympathetic to artists who often are not well compensated for their labor. However I think it’s also important that we understand that in order to make a living, independent artists rely heavily on intellectual property law. As such, they tend to want to categorize all AI art as unoriginal and derivative of existing works.
Unfortunately I think that’s a bit of a liberal argument. It ascribes some ineffable quality to human creativity that AI cannot replicate. In doing so it obfuscates the process by which the state creates and enforces a market for intellectual property. Therefore, I don’t think it’s particularly useful argument for socialists to make.
That’s not to say “AI” companies aren’t exploiting the work of unpaid artists. That is definitely still true. We just need to be advocating for solutions that go beyond what capitalist markets can offer.
I don't think it is a particularly ineffable quality though? It's art because another human did it, and it really doesn't have to be much deeper than that. That said, I do agree that intellectual property is ultimately blind alley. What most people don't understand is that IP laws are only enforceable in the name of capital.
I think I disagree with the idea that art is art because a human created it. I think art is art because it provides a particular kind of experience to us as humans. Whether or not a human made the art by hand, with a machine, or if it was simply an item someone found in nature it’s all still art. Even curating art is art.
That said AI art is still a product of human creativity. It’s abstracted by a few layers of technology sure and most of the people that build or use the models don’t know what good art is. However bad art is still art. People get drunk at paint nights and create shitty imitations of famous paintings but it’s still art as reticent as I am to admit it.
Unfortunately I think that’s a bit of a liberal argument. It ascribes some ineffable quality to human creativity that AI cannot replicate.
every single time the AI argument comes down to this. "oh you just don't trust AI cos youre a rube who believes in a soul" no motherfucker I'm just not some fucking anti-intellectual who has decided, apropros of NO research into neuroscience, that I know how the brain works and it MUST be analogous to something algorithm based machines can understand
you genuinely don't know what you're talking about, and you have to take so many intellectual shortcuts to derive your position that you are not worth taking seriously
Yeah I think what AI is exacerbating is the tension between creativity and commodity. Businesses don't celebrate art, they seek profits. Images, articles, music, and whatever else are all simply products to sell under capitalism. Turning every artist into a copyright lawyer won't change the fact that their creations are ultimately still commodities.
I see a lot of arguing over the definition of "art" but that's beside the point. The problem is the entire bourgeois concept of property and the way capitalism impoverishes the working class so that they must spend their lives selling their labor.
That’s not what I’m saying though. It’s more that I think arguing for better protections under IP law is akin to participating in get out the vote campaigns for democrats. If the goal is to better conditions for working people including artists, neither of those avenues will lead you anywhere.
You know all those people on this site and others, begging for money to survive the next month because of various reasons? I think they really put too much stock into the capitalist concept of money and should stop giving so much stock to something that's bad.
Is this really your take? That people within capitalism have to not use what little scraps of recourse they are given to have some sort of moral high ground? Really? Fuck you. People need money to live in the current shitty times and if there is a way to get money, they need to engage with it, because the alternative is that they starve and die. This really shouldn't be hard to understand. Artists rely on a shitty system to make their money because it's the only path available to the within the current shitty system. The legal system also sucks and yet it is the only recourse for people who get fucked over by corporations. Should they also stop trying to get some manner of justice because the system sucks? I guess we should all lie down and die, because the system sucks.
SO yea, what the fuck are you talking about with solutions that go beyond the capitalist markets? How about we DESTROY these immoral, terrible markets and get us a good system of government?
I disagree that AI is “stealing” for the same reason I don’t think piracy is stealing. It’s true that everything AI produces is inherently derivative. However, intellectual property only exists as a set of market relationships enforced by the state. Even so, I would agree that artists are getting exploited. However, that’s because the market they are forced to engage with is controlled by capital and not because IP is a physical thing that can be stolen.
"Artists are getting exploited under capitalism anyway so let's exploit them even harder and automate their style and process into an easily commodified and easily devalued theftbox."
I hope you don't have any artist friends; I am an artist and already find you intolerable just from three ignorant theftbox-defending posts of yours.
Yeah, like in thr absence of capitlaism ai could be treat. But I stead being teatoilled about it people keep trying to use it to neoliberal harder so that does suck.
That’s what you get when you have a detestable crowd of conmen jumping from hyped thing to hyped thing to try and speculate and con money out of late entrants. It’s the same people, the crypto-bros and wallstreet bets people that go around pushing AI hype and everyone knows it reeks
Yeah, ai is a fun toy. That is all it is going to be in this iteration. That's fine though. People like fun toys. That is the level of serious thought it deserves.