Hey there, sometimes I see people say that AI art is stealing real artists’ work, but I also saw someone say that AI doesn’t steal anything, does anyone know for sure? Also here’s a twitter thread by Marxist twitter user ‘Professional hog groomer’ talking about AI art: https://x.com/bidetmarxman/status/1905354832774324356
Its stealing their work and reproducing it without compensation or reference, its similar to how record labels would travel to tribal communities, record their music and then repackage it as ‘world music’ and make 10’s of millions without ever even naming the original artists that made the music to begin with.
AI models could in theory be used to cut down artists workload and such, but these are secondary effects to the actual utility they are made for and how they go about making what they do, which requires insane amounts of power. Its purpose is in practice to cut labor costs and remove workers entirely from an equation to make some dead end cultural feedback loop of continuing the ‘we must reproduce the green line going up at all costs’ based off of datasets and the whims of the upper class - it is most similar to the 1930s holywood censorship era with the means of production and datasets used to produce art in the modern age is gatekept to the religious zealots and upper class of the US as a means of decimating and producing the social fascist ideology thru the ideological state apparatuses.
The artists have been cut out of the equation entirely.
Its not as easy as a parallel between factory workers and more efficient modes of production making there be less of a need for workers to fill the roles; artistic expression has value that cant be expressed in simple reproduction because it is a mirror of the human experience, which isnt something an AI model can create because it cannot create a context where anyone is meant to give a shit about it - there is no heartbreaking works of staggering genius to be found behind a ML model because the ‘story’ behind something like that is ‘I put a prompt into a machine and it hallucinated a story’
This isnt the same product as an actual work of art, no matter how much software engineers in California might try to convince you otherwise, its a different product and should be understood as such.
This is just a defence of proprietorship, and romanticising anti-capitalism to “anti-corporatism”. These artisans who claim in these ways are just defending failing bourgoisie perspectives for themselves; they want a put up a walled garden around their skilled labor so effectively those unskilled do not have access to produce it for themselves, and claim authenticity because their defence of private property is at a smaller scale. It is a highly reactionary take. If this was not the case then they would frame the fight about their loss of income against capital itself and not the technology.
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I get that you are hurting under capital but if you keep this up chances are you are going to go down a rabbit hole of reaction or at least neuter your radicalism. Wish you all the best that you don’t get go down the wrong road, especially if you live in the imperial cores. For me Walter Rodney, Losurdo and Redsails.org helped a lot.