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.
Time invested can absolutely give things value, yes. I would expect my fellow Marxists to understand something like that.
I don't believe in the contemporary reductionism of art as a purely emotional experience. There is technique and skill involved in it just as there is emotion and meaning, but it is the development of that technique that makes an artist truly unique. My realism is completely different from your realism, and there is beauty in that difference.
Are you going to argue that technical skill is not valuable at all? That we should all draw like toddlers because, fuck it, who cares? That understanding color theory or anatomy or perspective or rendering doesn't give you a more in-depth comprehension of what it is you're actually doing on the page or the canvas?