Last I checked on terminally online communists discourse, since I logged off months ago, the general consensus was that we should support our artist comrades and fight against techbro douchery BUT that we don't have much material power to stop AI art from being developed. I check again today and now everyone is talking about PMC and how artists are technically petty-bourgeoisie and acting like there's some sort of opportunity cost we're failing by expressing sympathy to artists? What the hell happened here? I thought I was up to date on the conensus for this but now I'm worried I missed something and I'm committing some sort of... communist sin by being worried for my artist friends.
I mean I checked and a well-upvoted comment on this site from a post I came across mentioned how we shouldn't show concern about AI art because it "only supports petty-bourgeoisie patreon furry artists" which is maybe the most incomprehensible sentence I've ever heard. Obviously I'll grant that patreon artists shouldn't be the focus of a worker's movement but COME ON who reframed a discussion about ALL artists into just patreon artists???
Not to mention that most artists are definitely proles? Like... do people not know how shitty anime artist working conditions are? They do NOT own the means of production except maybe their art software and not only is that rare (most art software is like 10 gajillion dollars and probably licensed by the studio), but saying that's enough to qualify is just silly. Do I own the means of production now because I own the phone that I get texts from my boss on?
Petty contempt for "labor aristocrats" with a side order of "I got mine" treatbrain, decorated with a heavy layer of :expert-shapiro: arrogance and twisting of old Marxist texts to make them appear to say "if you're opposed to workers suffering and having their labor stolen by the ruling class that owns and commands the new treat machines, you're against Materialism(tm) and are emotional. Emotions are bad. My contempt for your emotions is implied to be grounded in logic, reason, and Materialism(tm)" with strained cherry-picked Marxist quotes.
I can't tell sometimes whether it's divide-and-conquer wrecker tactics or just dangerous levels of alienated and isolated selfishness with some people. Either way, contempt for workers is no way to build worker solidarity, no matter how nice the cheap/free treats are, for the moment anyway.
Not that long ago, Google was cheap/free and quite a nice browser for a while in much the same way when it first came out, but then the inevitable contradictions lead to its owners and masters making it shittier and shittier long after most of its competitors vanished. I expect the same with the major chatbots and image generators in the near future, too. Shitting on artists/writers/teachers and whoever else that will be negatively affected by unfettered and unregulated labor theft (not to mention all the people that are already getting their reputations, careers, and personal lives wrecked by cheap/free deepfaked revenge porn) is just selfish assholery and I'm sick of it already.
Artists in the first world are 'labor aristocrats' by the metric of living in the first world, as are all first world proletarians (by the standards of Leninist thought), it doesn't mean we shouldn't show some level of solidarity with them, it's just that it is probably not upon them with which the world turns. They are unlikely to be the revolutionary class that remakes society. But hopefully this radicalizes some down the path of understanding how the fruits of labor are exploited by capitalists. After all, capitalists didn't make the art that AI art cribs from.
In the future, it will likely become impossible for the regular person to fully avoid AI designed art. It will come down to, like so many things, a consumer choice, with the likelyhood that 'real art' is only supported by wealthy patrons. The likely historical result will likely bind working artists even closer to the seats of power, as if they weren't already intimately related at this point.