Hey there, sometimes I see people say that AI art is stealing real artists’ work, but I also saw someone say that AI doesn’t steal anything, does anyone know for sure? Also here’s a twitter thread by Marxist twitter user ‘Professional hog groomer’ talking about AI art: https://x.com/bidetmarxman/status/1905354832774324356
The privitisation of the technology is bad but not the technology itself. Labor should be socialised and to be against this is not marxist.
Properietorship is heavily baked into our modern cultures due to liberalism so you are going to hear a lot of bad takes such as “stealing” or moralism based on subjective quality on a given AI arts’ aesthetics (even if you were to homegenise the level of “quality” to call it substandard, all it then means is that the technology should improve. Talking, for example, the “soul” of art is just metaphysical nonsense. Human beings and their productions do not possess some other-worldly mysticism) - even from people who consider themselves marxists and communists.
The advance of technology at the cost of an individual’s job is the fault of the organisation and allpcation of resources, ie capital, not the technology itself. Put it this way: people can be free to make art however they want to and their livelihood should not have to depend on it.
If you enjoyed baking but lamented the industrialisation and mechanisation of baking because it costed your livelihood and you said it was because the machines were stealing your methods and the taste of the products weren’t as good would we still consider it a marxist position? Of course not.
The correct takes could be found here:
If you’re a marxist, do not lament the weaver for the machine (Alice Malone): https://redsails.org/the-sentimental-criticism-of-capitalism/
Marxism is not workerism or producerism; both could lead to fascism.
Artisans being concerned about proleterisation as they effectively lose their labor aristocracy or path to petite-bourgoisie may attempt to protect their material perspectives and have reactionary takes. Again this obviously is not marxist.
TLDR - bidetmarxman is correct. I would argue lot of so-called socialists need self-reflection but like I said their view probably reflect their relative class positions and it is really hard to convince someone against their perceived personal material benefits.
most of the sources are literally just ‘some techbro in California made a twitter post about the AI slop they just made’
what do you mean?
I can assure you most artists are not making a living from art even before AI generative stuff undermined them.
Putting aside the presumptions imposed, please elaborate how AI is undermining them; it may reveal the relative class dynamics behind the reaction.
Even if true, why does it matter?
What do you mean?
On producerism: https://socialistmag.us/2024/01/07/producerism-socialism-and-anti-imperialism-for-fools/
On workerism: https://redsails.org/losurdo-and-gargani/
(Edited to elaborate for anyone else lurking)
Its stealing their work and reproducing it without compensation or reference, its similar to how record labels would travel to tribal communities, record their music and then repackage it as ‘world music’ and make 10’s of millions without ever even naming the original artists that made the music to begin with.
AI models could in theory be used to cut down artists workload and such, but these are secondary effects to the actual utility they are made for and how they go about making what they do, which requires insane amounts of power. Its purpose is in practice to cut labor costs and remove workers entirely from an equation to make some dead end cultural feedback loop of continuing the ‘we must reproduce the green line going up at all costs’ based off of datasets and the whims of the upper class - it is most similar to the 1930s holywood censorship era with the means of production and datasets used to produce art in the modern age is gatekept to the religious zealots and upper class of the US as a means of decimating and producing the social fascist ideology thru the ideological state apparatuses.
The artists have been cut out of the equation entirely.
Its not as easy as a parallel between factory workers and more efficient modes of production making there be less of a need for workers to fill the roles; artistic expression has value that cant be expressed in simple reproduction because it is a mirror of the human experience, which isnt something an AI model can create because it cannot create a context where anyone is meant to give a shit about it - there is no heartbreaking works of staggering genius to be found behind a ML model because the ‘story’ behind something like that is ‘I put a prompt into a machine and it hallucinated a story’
This isnt the same product as an actual work of art, no matter how much software engineers in California might try to convince you otherwise, its a different product and should be understood as such.
This is just a defence of proprietorship, and romanticising anti-capitalism to “anti-corporatism”. These artisans who claim in these ways are just defending failing bourgoisie perspectives for themselves; they want a put up a walled garden around their skilled labor so effectively those unskilled do not have access to produce it for themselves, and claim authenticity because their defence of private property is at a smaller scale. It is a highly reactionary take. If this was not the case then they would frame the fight about their loss of income against capital itself and not the technology.
shitultrassay.jpg
I get that you are hurting under capital but if you keep this up chances are you are going to go down a rabbit hole of reaction or at least neuter your radicalism. Wish you all the best that you don’t go down the wrong road, especially if you live in the imperial cores. For me Walter Rodney, Losurdo and Redsails.org helped a lot.
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