I truly, deeply despise AI Art
I think what truly offends me the most about AI Art is how it takes something that is supposed to be incredibly meritocratic and turns it, essentially, into fast food consumerist garbage. It is the reduction of one of the truly special and awe-inspiring aspects of humanity into what is essentially pure trash.
What is the point of AI Art? What problem does it solve? So far, the only thing it appears to do is let grifters on Instagram trick people into believing they are incredible artists (while using actual artists when prompting the AI for images), and eventually directly threaten the livelihoods of artists and destroy the very idea of art as a career. No, prole, you do not get to enjoy making a living in Capitalism, now writhe like a worm under the boot of big tech.
All that for... what, making a fun toy for people to play with?
Let me be perfectly clear: AI Art is an affront to humanity. I am not saying this just as an artist who wanted to make a living off of his work - I've already accepted that careers and jobs aren't static.
No, there's something much more destructive going on here, something that makes me deeply uncomfortable about it. I genuinely believe we're on the verge of permanently losing a fundamental part of what it means to be human, here. Consider just for a second all of the infinite complexities that go into a piece of art, like how the artist has studied, their upbringing, their own personal experiences and circumstances that caused them to develop their skills in a particular way. All these things combined are result into a truly unique expression of individuality that still allows us to connect to others through it. In a way, you are sharing a truly intimate act when you show someone your art.
It's beautiful, isn't it? Too bad, because all that complexity and individuality is now going to be bulldozed and replaced by a significantly simpler dozen or so words you can type in a text box.
Consider the implications for a moment. There will come a point when you see an incredible digital painting that would've taken an artist an entire lifetime of drawing to achieve, and you simply won't give a shit. And I don't mean in the usual way that you look at an amazing piece of art and then move on with your life - no. You're not going to give a shit because you won't even consider if it was made by a human.
People will stop thinking incredible art can be attributed to humans as a default. Why would you? After all, we are going to be flooded with an endless torrent of images that are completely meaningless to everyone except the prompter himself. Sharing your "art" will become the equivalent of talking about your dreams with others.
All of this without mentioning the fact that painting as a career is destined to, for the first time in history, be well and truly eliminated. AI tech didn't come for the menial labor first as we predicted, nor the blue collar jobs that were meant to come after that. No, it went straight for the jugular of creatives. Soon, millions of artists will find themselves unemployable as their skills will become, if not utterly useless, rarely sought after. Why would a large entertainment company pay a real human being when MidJourney can create professional-grade concept art or illustrations in 5 seconds?
It's legitimately one of the most disturbing inventions that has ever been created. My doomerism towards humanity always had a sense of irony to it, but AI Art has removed that entirely.
Frank Herbert was fucking right, we need a Butlerian Jihad and we need it now.
I've been several different kinds of artist in my life. I don't feel particularly threatened by AI art. At least not on its own. AI is a tool like any other. What makes a tool threatening is not its mere existence, but who wields it, how, and why. Well, there's a bit more to it than that, but for the most part that applies.
I've dabbled with AI too. It's not anywhere close to replacing humans. It might get exponentially better very fast, but it still leaves obvious traces of how it was made. Ultimately it does serve a purpose: to allow an individual to create faster. Rather than replacing the entire artistic process it can be used to churn out rough drafts. Prototypes. Storyboards. It can be used to aid disabled artists. If it pushes anyone out of their job, it's not really the AI that's to blame, but capitalism itself. Because losing a job is only threatening under an economic system that does not make it easy to find a new job, and does not guarantee people what they need to survive.
Also, there's nothing meritocratic about the artistic industry. Especially from the perspective of a writer. The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. Art is funded, advertised, and upheld by critics primarily on the basis of how much it reinforces hegemonic ideology. Hamilton for example, might be a well-written, well acted, well choreographed play, but more importantly it is a hagiography of a bourgeois founding father, and it was upheld on that basis more than its merits. You don't get to perform at the white house just because your art is cool. Artistic merit is how the ideology is laundered. It is the secondary consideration of the culture industry. That's why a defense department commercial like Top Gun or a capitalist apologia like Iron Man sells more tickets than something more critical of the system we live under.