In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn’t been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art. Because of these reasons and some others, it just feels wrong to me, to be using AI in such a manner, when this community should be about inclusion and kindness. Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner or find a nice existing artwork (where the licence fits, of course)? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Movie studios, VFX houses, advertisement agencies, should I keep going? It’s not that all of these people will or can be replaced, but the studios are already hollowing out their staff and the abstract threat of AI gives studios much more power in negotiations with artists. Since AI, much less people are willing to contract artists online, which many young and alternative artists depend on to survive. Why do you think, the Hollywood strikes are happening?
I agree, that copyright shouldn’t have to exist in an ideal society, but we still live under capitalism. Imagnine, if Disney could just scoop up all the good indie movies, and redistribute them under their own name with massive marketing budgets, taking all the profit and pretending, it’s their own work. The original creator would go bankrupt and not be able to make another great movie.
In my opinion, generative AI is doing exactly the same thing, but indirectly. If Disney were to release a fully AI generated movie, they would still have profited from the work of a bunch of unconsenting and uncredited independent artists.
AI “art” is also not art, because real art requires a concios and self aware being to observe the world in a unique way and get inspired to express a new idea in their art. AI is not conscious and therefore cannot observe the world or get any new ideas. There will never be good AI-“Art”, because AI can only recreate and recombine the existing (and yeah, I know, that AI images are technically unique, but they are still only derived from what the AI was trained on). The best, an AI could do, is imitate a human as well as possible. It cab only succeed in decieving us, letting us think, there is some person behind this art, but there will never be anyone behind it.