The Biggest Problem with AI Art

Last weekend, the staff at a major comics convention kicked out an AI "artist" and closed down his booth. He refused to leave, so Dragon Con called the police and everything. Apparently, he only got in by creating a fake persona, using his girlfriend's profile to trick the staff into approving his booth. He and his accomplices also apparently used AI to make fake videos of their production process.

This feels on brand.

I've only been to Dragon Con a few times, but the convention is known for its community of artists and cosplayers and the positive atmosphere. It's the kind of place where a Marvel star can just walk down the sidewalk and wave to fans without getting mobbed, because everyone knows how to behave. I've got friends who go every year, and they invest immense amounts of time in the art and costumes they take with them, either to sell or share with their convention buds. Anyone who thought they could rip off these attendees clearly had no respect for anyone or anything that has anything to do with art, comics, science fiction, or fantasy.

Once again, the tech bros have rushed to the defense of their fallen kin, slamming the event for its decision. Some of them are accusing artists of merely complaining because they can't "compete with superior technology."

Here's the thing:

As many of us know, AI is not a superior technology. It's a highly derivative one. It relies on artwork made by humans for training. Even when AI art "succeeds," it often contains dead giveaways. And it's just...

Not that good.

Watch this:

This video describes a common theme in the debates around AI. Its defenders consist almost entirely of users who think it represents some kind of improvement or evolution over the ways we've produced art for thousands of years, by humans using tools. Whether you're using a paintbrush or a mouse, a human sits down and makes decisions over things like color and perspective. They don't outsource that.

There's a huge difference between making a character smile and telling a machine to do it for you. This is something most AI "artists" will never truly understand. It's something I've begun to understand because, when I'm not writing, I make mediocre illustrations for a different creative project. It's taken me two years to create artwork that doesn't make someone burst into tears or screams of terror.

It's a lot of work.

There was a time, early on, when I dismissed concerns about AI artwork. That time has passed. The more you learn about it, the more you hear from its advocates, the more you see it as more than just a tool. It's a malicious endeavor to displace actual artists from the human experience. Not to go all conspiracy theory on everyone (again), but you can't unsee the fit between AI art and fascism once it's uncovered. In fact, it makes perfect sense for fascists and white supremacists to want machines that can produce something that looks and feels like art, without having to "bother" with the messy human stuff of feeling emotions or respecting human labor.

Real art and democracy are deeply entwined.

When you learn a craft, you understand all the details that separate something that might demonstrate technical competence at times from work that can inspire emotions in people. As I writer, I've understood that for a long time. As Mark Twain said, the almost right word is like a lightning bug. The right word is like lightning. Not that I have anything against lightning bugs, but you get the point.

AI artists don't understand the difference between lightning and lightning bugs. If they ever do, it's only going to happen after they shred the intellectual rights of thousands of artists by feeding their work into machines without their consent, in order to train robots that can only approach their quality. That project will also deplete what's left of our energy and consume the rest of our water.

This gets to the real problem of AI art.

You can't make art that resonates unless you understand body language. If you're drawing people, you have to understand the human skeletal system. You have to understand how muscles move and connect. You have to understand light. You have to understand color. You have to understand shadow. You have to understand distance and perspective. I'm an amateur artist at best, and I appreciate all of this.

As we continue to see, the vast majority of AI artists don't appreciate any of this. They're amateurs who think they're masters.

That's the dangerous part.

You can see their jealousy and hostility toward real artists every day. Many of them have always hated us. It fits with our political culture, run by a bunch of jerks who've spent the last several decades defunding the arts at every turn. It's highly ironic that the crowd who spent their entire lives trashing art education and the humanities suddenly finds so much value in the art they "make" with robots.

They relish every opportunity to get up in front of an audience and talk about how irrelevant artists are, including writers and musicians.

It's a demonstration of wishful thinking.

In reality, the human experience is nothing without art. We can technically live without it, but who wants to do that? Take away our paintings, our music, our poetry, our novels, our movies, our plays, and we would wither.

Even wolves sing.

The Silicon Valley jerks and their politicians know this on some level, and they can't stand it. They hate artists because great art makes them irrelevant. Great art can inspire millions. It can overturn dictatorships. It can spark riots.

This is what they can't stand. They want all the power for themselves. They want all the glory. They want all the attention. They want all the money. They can't share it with anyone. As long as artists exist, they will never control humanity, not the way they want. Artists represent a threat to them because they remind us there's something more than just working all the time and consuming whatever scrolls across our feeds. They make us feel, and feeling is dangerous to those who crave power.

So, it's entirely on brand for the ones who hate humanity to also hate good art, and to want desperately to replace artists with machines they can control.

They want it so bad.

They want it so bad, they'll lie to themselves and each other about the quality of AI art and the superiority of its technology. They'll ignore the fact that their entire project relies on the exploitation of real artists who are trying to make a living. They'll steal from these artists and then gaslight them over it.

AI art signifies an even deeper problem with the world and its capture by the technocrats. Just like they're doing with art, they believe they already know everything and they don't need to listen to anyone. And so they continue to fall for their own lies about colonizing space and creating godlike technologies to unlock the secrets of the universe. Many of them have been swaddled in privilege from birth, and they mistake their own immense advantages as evidence of their superiority.

They've destroyed the world to remake it in their image. It's a sad world, devoid of true human emotion or dignity. It secretly makes them miserable, but they're so invested in this misguided quest, they can't stop themselves.

It's been a long time since I used AI art, especially now that sites have filters that let you exclude it from search results. What I have to do now is go back through and purge it from my posts from years ago, and also the one time I used a Gavin Newsom meme. And, yes, I have to find a new logo. I don't want to do that. I really like the logo, and I made it myself, but I derived it from an image produced by AI, back before it represented such a clear and present threat to all of us, and before it so clearly became a tool of choice by techno fascists. By the way, if Gavin Newsom really wanted to troll Trump, I imagine hiring real artists to produce mock AI art might do a better job.

There's a lot we can't control in this world. But we can control our actions, and if we choose not to we're just as bad as our opponents. This lies at the heart of why we're still struggling to beat the fascists, and why they're often winning. Many of us don't hold ourselves accountable, and that's a big part of it.

So, am I glad an AI artist got kicked out of Dragon Con? Yes, I am.

Do I feel bad for him?

No, I don't.

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