#and 2) we're in the middle of my third ''once-in-a-lifetime'' economic crisis 🙃🙃🙃

[tangibletechnomancy]

The thing about AI art is, it is easier than conventional art, but it's also not. Like any other art form, it has an infinitely high skill ceiling. It is entirely possible to spend just as much time and effort on an AI-created piece as it would take to produce a visually identical conventional one; it just involves a different skill set. However, the skill floor - the minimum amount of skill required to create something a layperson will find visually appealing - is lower.

And I want to make something crystal clear: as much as I bitch about reckless and malicious use of AI art, I do not believe that taking advantage of that lowered skill floor to make something pretty inherently counts as malicious. It's the factor that enables a lot of that malice, but on its own, I wholeheartedly believe that it's not even just neutral, but a good thing - which makes it all the MORE offensive how it's abused by some really loud and obnoxious voices.

Art is possibly the #1 reason I could never be a capitalist - because art is a "phantom need"; while not as urgent of one, it IS a human need as real as food, water, and shelter. It's about communication, expression, being able to look at something and go "oh, I was here", and all kinds of other things that...sound simultaneously as fundamentally necessary as they are, but also kind of pretentious when written out, because they've been devalued for so long in most English-speaking cultures (that good ol' Catholic guilt + Protestant work ethic and frugality gospel). Most people's mental health suffers drastically without it, even if they don't realize they're seeking it out or suffering without it. Art is even good for physical health - patients have better outcomes in hospitals that don't skimp on art and aesthetics. Art therapy is a very real thing that can save or extend lives; in fact Van Gogh's body of work can be seen as the prototype for art therapy - what makes his work so impactful to so many people isn't just the visual itself, but understanding that this brought a person the tiny scraps of joy and relief he needed to stay alive just a little longer. Lack of enrichment shortens people's lifespans. Art is one of the most universally human ways of getting that enrichment.

Something that lowers the skill floor to make nice art, or makes it attainable with a different skill set, makes that accessible to more people. When we step back a moment and theoretically remove it from capitalist bullshit, that is a wholly good thing with zero caveats and if you somehow disagree on any grounds other than "but we can only do that in theory", then, to be brutally honest: I don't trust you.

Unfortunately, yes, we CAN only do that in theory, so yes, that fact...gets abused. We're seeing it. It's not theoretical. Recall that the two reasons I'm here are 1) watching people's objections cross the line from complaining about those abuses to just plain dangerous reactionary neophobic gatekeeping reminiscent of when digital illustration's "danger" to physical art media was a hot-button issue (and look back now - turns out, just like I predicted then, physical media didn't die out; physical and digital painting and illustration can coexist peacefully!), and 2) wanting to do my part to embarrass the people who maliciously use the lowered skill floor to materially harm conventional artists and see that harm as a feature, not a bug, because so many non-artists, especially those with commercial products that need art, see art as a pretentious frivolity that doesn't deserve recognition or payment. (Trust me, I'm well aware, I've been dealing with them since I was 9 or so--)

But what I'm saying is...it's disgusting that those types even have the POWER to potentially be more than an annoyance in the first place, all because art - a "phantom need", one of the earliest things that defines us as humans, something we've used to communicate since before written language, something we handed down from parent to child in the Stone Age, is wrapped up in this exploitative system of people literally living and dying by what a bunch of rich clowns think. There's always going to be a conversation about the value of art as a form of expression attached to an artist, and the value of art as a part of collective culture detached from the artist; the fact that we have to complicate it with the additional aspect of monetary value in a system that declares that if you don't produce enough monetary value you deserve to die - it's bad enough that such a system exists in the first place, and it just gets messier and uglier when you ensnare art in it.

Thing is, it's natural to want recognition for your art - it is, after all, about expression, and a lot of the time that's about seeking connection. It's not natural to be put in a position where you might not be able to feed yourself, let alone your family, if you don't either get that recognition or give up on art completely for some other abusive undervalued job, and it is certainly not natural to be surrounded by people who think this is fair and just and you don't DESERVE to be able to keep yourself alive no matter how hard you work because either you're pretentious and lazy, or you're a sellout, depending on which side of the survivability line you land on.

Making it easier for people to Make Art is not, and will never be bad. Making it profitable for the people who think that art is for either lazy do-nothings or greedy sellouts to take over artists' work, however...to put it in less-than-academic terms...ew.