As an artist, I think it is a net negative for us. Disregarding the copyright issue, I think it’s also consolidating power into large corporations, going to kill learning fundamental skills (rip next generation of artists), and turn the profession into a low skill minimum wage job. Artists that spent years learning and perfecting their skills will be worth nothing and I think it’s a pretty depressing future for us. Anways thoughts?
I think the problematic AI tool here isn’t AI that helps artists finish artwork or automate menial tasks, but AI that has been fed with every copyrighted artwork on the internet and is sold as an artist-replacement tool.
That is problematic. It seems like just another type of exploitation. It’s more visible because the artist works alone, for hours, days, weeks, to produce one output. They can see their labour being stolen if it gets subsumed by an algorithm (or simply ripped off by a corporation if we’re talking general copyright violations). Whereas another type of worker, maybe an editor or an accountant, has the fruits of their labour stolen the old-fashioned way, through the wage relation. And it’s harder to identify which bit of the final ‘output’ was their doing.