ART IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING CONVERSATION
My views are my own, obviously.
By now everyone’s eyeballs have been subjected to AI slop. It’s inescapable. If it’s not some brainless peon on your timeline, then it’s a company with more than enough money to pay an artist to create an illustration for their advertisement but have inexplicably decided that the uncanny slop fits their image better. We’ve all seen that stupid fake smiling ginger dude in a taxi.
I feel more and more insane as I read news articles or posts online or listen to commentary that all seem to have missed the memo that art is not something that exists in a vacuum.
Despite what capitalism may have you believe, art is not just the product. Holding a book or a painting in your hands and saying, “This is art”, is only part of the story. The years an artist takes to learn, experiment, improve and grow, all contribute to the ‘art’, not just from the perspective of the skill and labour that goes into that, but because that journey is inextricably linked to the artist themself and the piece they have created.
You cannot completely extricate yourself from a piece of art you make. It’s impossible. You chose that colour or that turn of phrase or that power chord for a reason. Your life as a human being and your skill/experience as an artist combine to create something – a song, a story, a poem, a painting – but the product is only one element of that. Generative AI slop is just slop, stolen from others without their permission, regurgitated at great cost to the planet that we’re already destroying, so that…what? Truly, what is the end to these means? ChatGPT doesn’t love you, and it won’t fuck you. So what is the point?
“But Kel, generative AI makes art accessible.”
My first instinct is to just tell you to shut the fuck up, because I don’t believe anyone honestly, in earnest, truly believes that shite.
But if I am to take you seriously for a second, then what do you mean by that? Have you gone your entire life without ever holding a crayon? Are you somehow unable to access pencils while simultaneously able to access ChatGPT? If you have enough internet access to plagiarise Miyazaki while killing the planet, you have enough internet access to look up a YouTube tutorial. Maybe there’s even a library close to you. Maybe you can avail of services like Libby. If that’s the case, you’ll be delighted to hear that libraries let you borrow books – including books on how to draw – FOR FREE.
What do you even mean by accessible, anyway? What does accessibility mean to you? What were the barriers in your way before?
Here’s my guess: the barrier was your own fucking laziness. It was your apathy. It was your desire to be revered for something without suffering for a speck of it.
Being good at something, whether that is illustration or writing or public speaking or fucking soccer, means that you have to put in the hours. How are you championing the lie of meritocracy, the unsustainable “grindset”, the Alpha Male Way of Life My Morning Starts at 3AM bullshit, while being unable to devote yourself to any single skill long enough to get marginally better at it?
Do not pretend to care about accessibility because you fucking suck at drawing. Go out there and get good at something while you wait for the cease and desist from Ghibli.