I had an utterly bizarre interaction on Twitter recently that has inspired me to fully flesh out a number of thoughts that have been tumbling around in my head as of late regarding AI art and how AI should be understood from a Marxist perspective. I’ll first provide context for the interaction, then explore the ways that AI will lead to the democratization and proletarianization of the art world.
In my first quote tweet, I was trolling this woman who was on a tirade against AI art. For anyone unfamiliar with AI art generators and how they work, my claim that I will upload all of her art into Midjourney (one the most popular generators) is ridiculous and impossible. It is true that the Large Language Models and AIs are trained on real data and real art that exists, but these models are entirely proprietary. It is not possible for someone to upload any material into the AI in a way that will impact the way that the model operates in the future. Her response, the second quote tweet, received a level of engagement that frankly astounds me, now accruing more than 50k likes and over 1 million interactions. Hundreds of replies were left and DMs were sent that encouraged me to kill myself, that encouraged people to bomb my home, that encouraged legal action against me, and even accused me of rape. I want to emphasize that I tell you this not to elicit sympathy for me, but rather to highlight the emerging crisis of what I call “AI derangement syndrome”. None of these “threats” trouble me as I have over my many years of political activity, experienced real credible episodes of stalking, harassment and physical threats.
On some level, I do empathize with artists who feel threatened by the emergence of AI, and feel that it will make them obsolete. What they fail to realize is that they already are obsolete. I have no ill-will towards that woman or any other traditional artist; I hope she finds happiness, fulfillment and success in her work and continues to paint. Long before I began my career in graphic design and digital art upon which my ‘Laborwave’ art presence was founded, I was a traditional artist. I began as a child using crayons and colored pencils, and later in my teens began making acrylic and oil paintings. Over the last few years, I developed a neurological condition that caused me to have near-constant seizures. The seizures destroyed any will I had to create art. On a physiological level too, my hands trembled relentlessly, and it made it impossible to use a pencil or brush as I had my entire life. Again, I want to emphasize that I tell you these things not to elicit pity. My condition has improved greatly, it has been more than 6 months since my last seizure, and I am once again reigniting that spark of creativity in myself in both traditional and digital mediums.
Opponents of AI rely heavily on moral and ethical arguments. They are appalled that their art is being “stolen” and profited off of by tech companies. Certainly, there is some merit to these concerns, and certainly there will always be a level of artisanal charm to art which is produced traditionally. How exactly these concerns should be resolved however, extends beyond the bounds of this essay's intent. Ultimately, whether any artist likes it or not, the cat is already out of the bag, and no amount of tears is going to reclose Pandora's box. No amount of luddites smashing textile mills could have ever stopped the industrial revolution. Rather than get bogged down in ethical debate over something that can’t be undone anyway, I will instead pose the anti-AI crowd an ethical quandary of my own:
Although my health setbacks were temporary, others suffer with conditions for their whole lives which prevent them from ever expressing themselves creatively. People with mental handicaps, amputees, victims of paralysis and neurological conditions and so many others have no realistic way of ever expressing their creativity through traditional artistic mediums. Should they be gate kept from a technology that can allow them to depict literally anything they can imagine? And what of the hundreds of millions of workers who long to express themselves creatively, but are stuck toiling away their hours in a factory. Do proletarians who do not have the luxury of free time to learn to become oil painters deserve to be prohibited from expressing themselves?
In that twitter interaction, the woman accuses me of being an “embarrassing class traitor fool doing a CEO’s dirty work”. I’ll now elaborate on how in reality, the exact opposite is true, and that AI has the potential to foster the democratization and proletarianization of art as never seen before. AI is no different than any other technology in that it is not itself inherently good or bad, it merely is. Like fire, the written word, gunpowder and nuclear energy, AI is just a tool that can be used for good or for evil. I mentioned before that traditional artists are already obsolete. Allow me to explain exactly what I meant by that. The Marxist intellectual Antono Gramsci is famous for his idea about Cultural Hegemony, which refers to the dominance of a particular group’s cultural norms, values, and beliefs over society. It extends beyond mere economic or political control. The bourgeoisie establishes and maintains its power not only through force or economic means, but also by shaping the cultural landscape. It establishes ideological control by dominating cultural institutions and shaping how people perceive reality, morality, and social norms. This was true in Gramsci’s era of the early 20th century, but even more so today. The bourgeoisie enjoys a total hegemony over the media, it completely controls the news, television, film, music, and social media industries as well as the schools and universities. Anyone who pays even a modicum of attention has an intuitive understanding that “free speech” in the western world is a myth, and any attempt to contradict the prevailing neoliberal ideological worldview is met with strict censorship.
Outright “soviet-style” censorship does occur, especially on social media, but more and more, this direct heavy handed approach is no longer even necessary. Social media allows ideas to be repressed and stifled with the press of a button. You might not be outright arrested for having the wrong ideas, but you can be sure that your ability to disseminate these ideas will be algorithmically depressed behind the scenes. The result of the bourgeoisie’s total cultural hegemony is that you can simply be denied access to the cultural institutions which act as a prerequisite for any real, mass success. They won’t put your paintings in galleries, they won’t sign you to a record deal, they won’t buy the publishing rights to your book, and they certainly won’t allow you into the upper echelons of Hollywood. This is what I mean when I say that the traditional artist is obsolete. The dream of “making it big” as an artist was an anomaly of the 20th century; we are now returning to a social dynamic that was dominant for virtually the entirety of human history. A dynamic where “artist” was, by and large, not a profession that could be aspired to by 99% of the population. Artists were the select few who depended on patronage from the aristocracy, church and nascent bourgeoisie.
But what if I told you it doesn’t have to be this way? The time will come very soon when AI generators are powerful enough to allow people to create entire feature length films, all on their own accord, so long as they have imagination. Up until this point, bourgeois cultural hegemony and the requirement of immense time and resources to learn an artistic skill has acted as a barrier between people’s pure inspiration, and the ability to actualize that inspiration. AI has the power to totally annihilate that barrier. Understanding this, a person having an ethically derived fear of AI’s awesome power is, frankly, ridiculous. I assure you, bourgeois and fascist forces will have no qualms about unleashing this power to their own ends. To eschew use of AI outright, would be akin to Stalin and Mao eschewing the development of atomic weapons merely on the grounds that they’re bourgeois. Atomic weapons and AI were both first developed by a bourgeois imperialist elite, and both can be subverted and hijacked to directly combat that very same bourgeois imperialist elite.
Periods of technological and social upheaval as we are witnessing today can be terrifying. We have no idea what the future holds, but as communists it is our duty to face that uncertain future head on with determination and clarity of purpose. Rather than cower in fear of this change, or worse, attempt to reverse it, we should embrace and adapt to it. We should seek out opportunities where this change can be leveraged to our advantage.