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?
I think the true answer to the class question is that the majority of artists (and certainly the majority of artists who are specifically threatened by AI, most of whom are employed by companies) are working class, but some can be petty-bourgeoisie if they are independent, as owning the tools to create art on their own independently gives them a somewhat different set of interests than someone who works for a studio and who is dependent on that studio to be able to produce anything at all. I think that part of what makes it difficult to distinguish is that the most valuable "means of production" and the one that is perceived as most directly threatened by AI is human capital -- specifically the skills necessary to create art. AI can make anyone able to create an elaborate yet somehow extremely low quality work of art, and can allow someone with any actual understanding of art (using it as part of a more traditional process) to create something potentially years beyond their skill level in a small fraction of the time -- the net effect of this is that human capital from art skills is not as valuable in a world where AI is accepted as a tool for creating art.
Normally, we consider human capital to not be a "means of production", since it is part of your labor power, which is the only thing the working class is able to sell for their survival. Some people clearly have more than just their art-specialized labor power, and have both the ability and means to produce art. But the issue of AI affects both to an extent in differing ways, so while there is certainly some impact from working class/petty-bourgeois class interests and that cannot be left out of a complete analysis, class analysis by itself is not sufficient to explain the effects on artists. It also reveals that the difference between a working class and petty bourgeois artist are not as significant as one would find in other lines of work, since art skills are far more valuable than art tools.
This analysis also lets us explain the often-invoked backlash against photography and digital art, and more clearly see the parallels to AI art tools. All three of these developments shifted the equation for the costs of art production by allowing tools to cover a great part of what would normally be covered by human capital. AI art potentially has done far more to shift that balance than the prior two. The value of an artist's labor is threatened here, regardless of their class.
Independent artists are not the majority, are not necessarily the most likely to be impacted, and are possibly in a much better position to potentially gain from adding AI to their process than employed artists, but they appear to be by far the loudest voices in anti-AI discourse, which is why the discussions are often framed around them. Calling a minority portion of artists petty bourgeois shouldn't be seen as dismissing the concerns of working class artists, but it inevitably will be seen that way if one focuses on one class of artists and misidentifies an edge case of shared interests as unique to that class.