GenZedong

I'm really talking about people like in the screenshot, who make their living trying to work "by themselves" as if it was purer than working in a group, or being a writer on contract (i.e. alienated from their labor) - while it's not directly said in the screen tweet, it's deducible that this is how this person makes a living.

My topic is really about those who make a living off this type of labor and then bemoan that they can't make a living anymore. But instead of turning towards capitalism, they turn towards how capitalism expresses itself as a mode of production - there's been the mechanical loom, the steam machine, computers, and now AI.

But criticizing artists for their choices in a capitalist system is kinda chauvinist so I would probably keep calm and remind them of their class

So with all that, regarding the class lines, there are proletarian artists (of all sorts, not just illustrators - but it often gets reduced to that). They work for a company and are alienated from their labor because they get told what to draw, write, or produce. Yet there is also a belief that art can be extirpated from society and somehow exist outside of it, as if it was neither labor nor work.

What AI has done is not introduce the notion that art is actually part of society and subject to its ebb and flow, because it's always been the case, but revive the topic, because now things that were once thought to be 'creative' and only possible by a human can be done by a machine. Before that time it was only a thought experiment. Again, it doesn't matter what quality the output from the machine is - it exists. It's already being used and we can't even tell, because using the output as the machine gives it is a terrible idea. Instead it's reworked as part of a workflow.

just because someone wants to draw doesnt mean they have to be able push out lazy copies of world class art

I don't disagree that people should learn skills. However like I said, before AI people who wanted an illustration but couldn't do it themselves, so they just gave up.

Like I like writing, I am a designer by trade (not particularly visual design), and I don't necessarily tell people to learn design or to take courses on writing because I know not everyone is interested enough to do it. This is more personal but a lot of the "do it yourself" AI discourse I see revolves entirely around illustrating work and how everyone should somehow learn to draw. Since we made our first tools there has been division of labor, not everyone is going to be employed as an artist. There is also an implication that AI prevents learning, but the user decides if they want to shut their brain off or not.

The essay I linked makes a point on this:

Against the idea that artists were just "born with it", many took much pain to explain that all art forms involve a lot of specialized training, that you get good at drawing not through natural luck but through hard work. This reaction responded to an anxiety about being seen as a legitimate field of industry, to be on an equal basis as specialized workers such as engineers, doctors, etc. - and deserve the same compensation.

Since AI art came in to displace artists, the tune has suddenly completely reversed. Art is now an inherent capacity of the soul, and anyone can do it. Why use these AI image generators when "anyone can pick up a pencil and draw"? Doesn't even a bad drawing "have more Soul and Meaning" than a result generated from the recombination of other art pieces? Suddenly the notion of arts as a skill with technical components flies out of the window. Both attitudes reflect anxieties about seeing your work respected as such, while also refusing the industrial implications of art being a form of work, and subject to the same market forces as all other fields.

Telling people "just learn to draw it's gonna be better" when my drawing is a shitty stickman figure exposes internalized hypocrisy that we all share in to an extent. For example you said the AI copy is 'lazy', which is a qualitative adjective. I'm not criticizing the choice of word, I find it interesting. What makes an AI output lazier than three lines I draw hastily on a piece of paper? Is it the human component? I think what AI has forced us to contend with is that what was traditionally made by humans is actually not so unique. A lot of artists say AI art is "soulless", but as materialists we don't believe in the soul, so clearly they mean something else - they just don't seem to have a clear idea of it.

Can someone really look me in the eye and say this is 'better' than anything AI makes because it was made by a person?

Or is it rather a way to prevent putting art back into its social character, subject to capitalism? Nobody would hire me to draw this figurine over and over again. I can still make it for myself, sure, just like I could also prompt AI art for my own enjoyment (if I enjoyed it).

Again my problem is with petit-bourgeois artists who see themselves closer to art than to the class struggle, like anyone who sees themselves closer to their job interests than the class struggle. But my question to them I guess would be, how would they like to see their artwork handled in socialism and communism? In the USSR artists were employed by the state on salary to produce artworks, when it came to specific exhibitions or government campaigns. Would they be opposed to that? Art they produced through the artists' union was typically bought by the state for a fixed one-time payment. Would they be opposed to that? The petit-bourgeois artists would.