#most of this ramble i'd like written down days prior and idk like if the today-changes made it any more coherent

[kitsunerokko]

I know I'm late to the AI art discussion but uggggh does the whole thing fill me with frustration and sadness

There is a joy to creation, and its process. We're creative beings and the urge to create'll always be there. But also, as a disabled artist who knows she has more ideas than I'll ever be able to actually make on my own, the idea of such a powerful tool as AI, is sorely tempting. A tool with potential on par with other artistic tools like Free Distort, Noise Generator, hell, even stuff we take for granted now like Undo and Layers. Truly, the ideal to train a machine to form shapes and expression like I do, and then direct it, direct us to work on my dreams together… that'd be such an amazing tool…!

But that ideal is locked away behind the harshness of the system this tool emerged under. Trained and built on the back of stolen art, and being used instead as a means to threaten the livelihood of, and belittle the skills of, artists. I cannot yet trust that… I could find an AI system, feed it only my own art, and be absolutely sure that the AI I was using wasn't influenced by stolen art. But even if I could, then there's still the issue of my usage of it to assist me, just on its own, would be devaluing other artists' labor, in a world where that labor needs to pay for life needs. Since it'd be like, legitimizing something so dangerous in an already-augh situation.

I do believe in a future, one where somehow, we've slain the beast of capitalism, artists and AI can coexist peacefully; because as much as AI can create, it would never truly extinguish the human desire to create. If "ability to survive/worthiness of living" wasn't tied to one's artistic output, the AI's capability is less of a threat, and it could flourish as the tool, to help especially, artists with difficulty, like me.

But I don't expect this future to happen in my lifetime; thus it's a moral choice indeed. To keep the scope of my visions locked away, lest I promote and contribute to the betrayal of my fellow artists.