#fetishizing labor

Posting here because this person thought it would be a good idea to send me a message then immediately block me. That's a good way to get your private conversations made public. For context, this conversation started in the public on the comments of an extremely ableist post that people mistook as inspirational, and the author of the post proved to be a nasty person, insulting people in the comments and blocking people who actually had meaningful dissenting opinions while leaving blatant trolls (eg. "stealing from poor people is good!") be. Due to the ableist context of the conversation that the conversation was born in, I think it's an important one to have in order to fight said ableism. Of course said author blocked me, forcing the conversations to be moved private, so it's only fitting they are made public again by the same process. First off, it's amazing how disconnected from reality these people are. If someone were to somehow capture the image generated by a kaleidoscope and publish it, of course that person would be considered the artist - no sane person would consider the kaleidoscope to be an artist. It would be a type of photography, and photography has been recognized as a form of art for a long time even though with most photographing the artist plays a less active role because they didn’t manipulate the environment like how this hypothetical artist manipulated a kaleidoscope. An “AI Artist” has even greater control, as while the kaleidoscope is used for generating kaleidoscope-type images which are difficult to predict how they are changed with each tap, an “AI Artist” has access to a full semantic space of prompts that directly relate to the output. This is like arguing that Jackson Pollock didn’t make his works because he just threw paint until it ended up like what he wanted to make, so actually the paint made it. Paint is a tool, a kaleidoscope is a tool, a generator is a tool, a person is an artist. The whole argument that the AI made the art instead of the prompter relies on anthropomorphizing the AI, but apparently people have gotten so caught up in the argument without regard for its validity that they are now anthropomorphizing kaleidoscopes.

Now to the argument about the amount of work. This is a completely different argument than debating authorship, and the fact it’s part of the same paragraph leads me to believe they were actually making a third argument fetishizing manual labor (which is so much more ableist) by juxtaposing it with “effort of thought”, but let’s tackle this argument first. I decided to do an experiment - can I draw a picture of a butterfly that better fits my artist vision in less time than a generator? So I prompted Craiyon to make a "butterfly" and after about a minute it made this:

While it was generating though I drew this in Paint, and finished before generating completed:

The butterfly I drew better matched my artist vision, which should be clear from the fact it actually resembles a drawing, and I created in less time if not with less effort. The point should be clear - using a generator to make art does not inherently take less effort. This is not to imply the generated image of a butterfly is art - it is not, but to make the image actually resemble what I want would take more effort and more time. Of course, the idea that more effort automatically makes something more artistic is blatantly absurd. For example, I could have made the same image of a butterfly by editing RGB values in text instead of using Paint, but it would just be a less efficient way to achieve the same result. All that is important is conforming to artistic vision, and wasting time by using inefficient tools should not be fetishized.

As to the idea that physical labor is what makes art, not only is it nasty and ableist (though you can't expect better from someone who thinks disabled artists aren't "real artists"), but it's not a position anyone in the actual art would would take seriously. For example, I am an artist who had a collage of mine professionally exhibited. However, due to my poor fine motor control I technically didn't create the final artifact myself - I assembled all the images I was using into the final image, then my mother tapped it onto folders to hold it together. I could not do this myself without it falling apart. I was completely open about how I made the work with the institution running the exhibition, and they credited with my name solely because I was obviously the artist behind the piece. Fetishizing physical labor is even worse than fetishizing time since at least the latter isn't denying some people access to art since everyone has time (though whether they have free time as a result of economic conditions is a different discussion). To deny disabled people art is to deny their humanity.

The fundamental problem with these people is they've gotten so absorbed into the economic systems that commodify art that they've forgotten what art even is, and that is just sad. This is why they feel the need to insert references to commissions even where the analogy is inappropriate, because that is the lenses they are trained to view art production through since it's the most promising venue for artists *on Tumblr*. Of course people who make their livings through commissions deserve to be able to make a living, but there are whole worlds of art outside of these artists. As one example, it's pretty hard for someone using "AI" to be competitive as an artist at an art show for literal paintings since you'd need an actual robot to actually paint with an AI. While it's certainly true that sometimes people turn to image-generators instead of commissioning art, that's not what I was discussing. I was referring to people who use generators because they want to make art *themselves* since self-expression is a human need, and the text based interface allows them to engage with the creative process in a way they weren't able to before, for example, because having apraxia made them need a discrete interface. I don't think the current wave of text-image generators are ideal for this function, but they do fill it in ways that commissioning an artist does not.

Now, if you're actually concerned about the economic impact of "AI" on artists, then demanding people have to pay for it is the absolute worst thing you can suggest. I get the intention was to strong-arm people into commissioning artists instead of using generators while completely ignoring all the other use cases of generators, but it wouldn't even be effective for that intention. The reality of the situation is the competition isn't between "real artists" and "AI", but between artists who use all the tools available to them and those who refuse to. The key thing to keep in mind is that as long as tools are available, artists are always going to have the competitive advantage at making art over anyone else using the same tools since they can create at least as good artwork in the same amount of time, and better artwork with more time. If nothing else, artists can modify whatever a generator spits out by hand to get it to a much higher level of polish. However, this inherit advantage would be lost if artists lose access to tools, since people who can afford the tools would then be able to make things faster than those who can't, giving people with money a competitive advantage over artists so unless someone really needs the higher quality output they will pay to use the generator instead every time in order to save time - or in this case, a grifter with access to "AI" just enough art skills to outcompete actual artists who can’t afford to use “AI” since they can do the same job in half the time. Even if the price is jacked up so high that it's more expensive than commissioning artists, the time advantage is enough that big corporations will still pay to hire those who use AI over those who don't. I know artists who have worked at Disney and Epic for decades, and the message I got from them is clear - "AI" isn't going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use "AI" will. It's a sad truth, but the fact of the matter is these jobs always required learning the latest tools to stay competitive, and "AI" is just the latest in the long line of tools, with it only being the greatest disruption since CGI.

I understand the frustration artists in this community have, but pushing for policy to spite disabled people who wouldn't even be paying for commissions anyway is not the solution, especially when such solutions would also hurt artists who do commissions. For more thoughts on "AI Art", including actual solutions to practical problems, I have a full blog post here: