Does the AI discussion remind you of anything?
For me, it reminds me a lot of my first exposure to bad art criticism. When I was just a kid, there was this piece of art that we talked about at home a lot—Piss Christ by Andres Serrano. If you haven’t seen it, it’s amazing. During the 80s, it was the topic du jour, inspiring or offending everyone who was aware of it. My folks, who were Orthodox Jews and generally open-minded, were bothered by it in this intense visceral way that I had never seen them react to anything before.
Suddenly, my dad, a theologian who thought Silver Age Spider-Man was the high point of Western artistic expression, had some really specific ideas of what art is, what makes art, what a valid artistic process looks like, and what is and isn’t acceptable to express with art, especially with taxpayer money. My mother was upset about this too, and she talked about the piece with disdain until the day she died. The thing I found really interesting about it, was how it wasn’t just that they had both come up with ideas on this topic. My parents were brilliant, they came up with ideas all the time. No, what was interesting here was how uninspired these ideas were.
It was almost like they would open up their mouths, and suddenly it wasn’t even them speaking anymore. They would use arguments they heard on the news, without really even thinking about them seriously (a cardinal sin in the Jewish circles I grew up in, where critical thought is considered very important). And it’s not like my parents ever had this great respect for Christianity or Christian icons to begin with. The whole thesis of my upbringing, other than this moment, was to question, and be skeptical of anything and everything the Christians have to say. I understand why they felt this way, and today, I agree with them. But that’s what made this whole incident that much weirder.
The whole ordeal made my eight year old mind wonder if somehow, my parents had been replaced by robots. Or maybe I had been replaced by a robot? Or maybe we were all just silly robots with little people sitting in our heads, in a world that disappears behind you as you walk! What even is reality anyway?
How can art make someone turn their entire worldview inside-out on a dime? And how could I make some of that? My next memory was skipping school to read books on dada, expressionism, punk rock, and of course, the history of Spider-Man. As an adult, I understand their about-face was driven by this existential fear of antisemitism and what they perceived at the time to be a decline in the importance of religion in public discussion. Not per se by any kind of sincere interrogation of the piece, what it meant, or the need to deliver insightful critique. And the AI discussion has all the same watermarks and warning signs. They’ve even repurposed some of the same arguments, but it’s a lot bigger this time.
My ongoing criticism of the NoAI crowd, a quirky little coalition of fascists, luddites, and process puritans who don’t understand art, has been that they started with a power dynamic that totally made sense. They had a topic that was really worth discussing, revolving primarily around data collection practices and corporate power. It’s a critique that I’m not really all that keen to disagree with. I do disagree with what I see them proposing as a radical expansions on copyright law that would turn artists into process accountants. That one’s beyond the pale. But corporate accountability in data collection? Hell yeah. There are so many places in our lives that would benefit from better regulations on data collection.
But, see, that’s when they decided that they needed to take a stand, and rather than go after corporations, or lobby for new laws, they were going to focus primarily on attacking disabled artists, trans women, and people of color. And that’s pretty much everything you need to know about them, and the way they see the world.
NoAI uses the institutional power of the professional art establishment, and their edgelord child soldiers, to harass, target, erase, dehumanize, and dox marginalized artists. Remember how Gamergate was supposedly all about “ethics in games journalism?” Same basic deal. And then, also like Gamergate, being the crybullies they are, they ask for empathy as though somehow they’re still worthy of it. There is no "both sides." Both sidesing this lends an air of credibility to an organized hate group, complete with red white and black insignia, that is both unearned and undeserved.
Everybody everywhere refers to this dialectic as a “debate,” but it’s not a debate. Debates have rules, boundaries designed to keep things civil. If you ever used hate speech or intimidation to make your point, you are disqualified from speaking in a debate. So that’s not what this is. You could call it an “art criticism” movement, but you run into a lot of the same boundaries and limits to good taste there too, so that doesn’t work either. Art critics don't generally tell people to kill themselves.
And watching the difference between the two communities is absolutely fascinating. One the one side, you’ve got the artists that use AI in their process. It’s a time of expansion, radical and rapid technological development, and change. There’s excitement in the air about new possibilities and places these new tools can go. There’s a penchant for surrealism and certain types of anime, discussion about the meaning of art and thoughtful analysis of topics in art history.
I haven’t seen discussion about art like this since college, and it’s life affirming. And while there are a lot of older, more established artists in the space like me, there are also a lot of people who are discovering art creation for the first time, and finding themselves both spiritually enlightened and inspired in ways that simply weren’t possible before.
Open source, community funded art AI tools empower millions of people to speak for the first time in a way that their voices can be universally heard and understood. And being here, bearing witness to this, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
And then you have the other side. A lot of the leadership there is older artists about my age, who have never been technologists. And they’re sitting there, obsessively lamenting about the end of creativity, the coming creative apocalypse of gray goo, while directing their followers, (read: a lot of really impressionable kids), in the general direction of anything that even smells to them like it was generated by AI.
The difference is striking in how stark it is. One side’s having a great time, attracting a lot of new people who are also having fun. The other is doing their best to stifle innovation, purity test their own people, run the occasional witch hunt, and target social minorities for their ire. Liberalism be damned, because for some reason, believing that the end of human creativity is upon us license to be a bigoted turd.
You know how conservatives have this one joke that they just never get tired of? That’s the one that starts with, “I identify as…” and then it goes somewhere dark, and either leads straight into hate speech or some kind of absurdity that infers hate speech? Yeah, that stuff. It’s the same thing here.
I think most of them are past saying “ai art isn’t art,” because, obviously it is, and even they understand that there’s no valid way to make an argument like that which is consistent with art history as we presently understand it. Instead, they’re making a different ahistorical argument. This time, it’s more specific, and doesn’t necessitate a complete rethinking of the validity of art in the 20th century and beyond. Except that it still does.
What they want you to believe now, is that synthetic art is soulless, dead inside, like a blackhole that’s sucking away at you and doing other really bad super evil stuff. And they’re all really candid about what this is doing to them as people.
One common refrain is, “AI art is destroying my appreciation of xyz type art!” It’s interesting, because what they’re really saying is that they’ve made a conscious decision to hate a particular type of art, which is popular in circles where artists are using ai tools. There are a few of these, so I’m not going to comment on any particular one. That's less important than the process, which is this sort of reverse osmosis effect.
First they make a decision to hate something, then, they train themselves to see every flaw and error, going into great detail to scrutinize every piece they see, hoping in vain that they’ll be able to determine it’s ‘generated’ by ai. We’re going to ignore the fact that human beings can’t do this reliably, and just go with what they’re telling us they do. Problem is, that turns the dopamine receptors in your head totally upside down. So they’re not getting a thrill out of art anymore, even stuff they’ll be the first to tell you they love and respect. Instead, they only get excited when they can trigger hate.
What’s worse, is that the whole thing’s in service of a bad argument that was won by the expressionists a hundred years ago. The spoiler is that art, as in, all art, regardless of process… is an inanimate object, bereft of meaning and soul, and any kind of human spirit on its own. It’s an object, a thing to be acted upon.
A painting is just a piece of canvas with paint on it, this is true of every painting that’s ever been put on a canvas. A sculpture is just a piece of stone. A jpeg is only some computer instructions that create tiny dots on a screen. But you see, none of that matters, at all. Art isn’t a destination, but a bridge. The meaning of it, and where you find its soul… is in you. It’s all in how you see and appreciate the beauty you see in the world.
That's the most offensive thing about these guys. How they let hate rot at their very being. I don't know why people aren't angry about this.
At the end of the day, the future of art, whether we embrace it or not, is being shaped by AI. This new landscape is bringing more people into the fold of artistic expression, a fact that should be celebrated.
But, organized hate groups like NoAI, through their targeted assaults on marginalized communities, seek to undermine progress. Vainly trying to intimidate both newcomers as well as their own people.
While I’m glad that they’re starting to cope, and playing the moderate as often as they foil the villain role, it’s critical that we don’t let this kind of casual hate speech become the new face of the art world. Their ideas are bad, racist, transphobic, ableist, flatly objectionable, and runs counter to the interests of artists in every medium. Involvement with hate groups needs to be stigmatized.
Together, we can put an end to the art fascism of our generation.
Love you babies.