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
Comrade, I disagree with your points and agree with the comrade who answered before you. What he is saying is that a LLM, as technology, is not bad per se. The problem is that in the context of capitalism, it does steal from other artists to create another commodity that is exchanged without any contribution to the authors whose art have been used to feed the LLM models.
That said, any new commodity in capitalism will be a product of exploitation, and this does not exclude any forms of art. Remember that big companies like Marvel and DC used steal its employees’ intellectual property, long before even digital art existed. Many important artists lived in squalor while their works became high priced commodities after their death. Fast forward today, LLMs are another commodity built for the sake of exploiting people’s labor, in a different way, but still following the same logic of capitalism.
I already made my points, but again, there is no other material context under which this this exists.
Does its existence materially hurt people who sell creative forms of their labor? Yes.
Was it designed for that purpose? Yes.
Does it uselessly harm our biosphere? It’s at least as bad as shitcoin, probably worse.
Is the slop spigot of synthetic inhuman garbage for mindless consumption worth the alienation of taking human creativity away from human beings, so the little fucking piggies can get exactly what they think they want (but not really)?