Cowbee

The social role of a tool depends on its relation to the overarching mode of production, it isn't a static thing intrinsic to a tool. AI doesn't care about advancing any ideas, it's just a thing that exists, and its use is up to how humans use it. This seems to be all very idealist and not materialist of you.

I really don't follow, something like Deepseek is quite literally a program trained on inputs that spits out an output depending on prompts. It isn't inherently political, in that its relation to production depends on the social role it plays. Again, a hammer isn't always capital, it is if that's the role it plays.

AI is, quite literally, a tool that approximates an output based on its training and prompting. It isn't a political artifact or anything metaphysical.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. AI is not intrinsically capitalist, it isn't about cedeing autonomy. AI is trained on a bunch of inputs, and spits out an output based on nudging. It isn't intrinsically capital, it's just a tool that can do some things and can't do others. I think the way you view capitalism is fundamentally different from the way Marxists view capitalism, and this is the crux of the miscommunication here.

Tools are different in different modes of production. A hammer is capital in the hands of a capitalist whose workers use it to drive nails, but is just a tool in the hands of a yeoman who uses it to fix up their homestead. My driving point is that art and AI images have intrinsically different use-values, and thus AI cannot take the place of art. It can pretty much occupy a similar space as stock images, but it cannot take the place of what we appreciate art for.

Humans will never be equivalent to machines, but products of labor and products of machinery can be equal. However, what makes art "useful" is not something a machine can replicate, a machine is not a human and cannot represent a human expression of the human experience. A human can use AI as a part of their art, but simply prompting art and churning something out has as little artistic value as a napkin doodle by an untrained artist.

Haha, I went back and forth on whether or not to post my thoughts for quite a while, I understand being reluctant to posting on this. Up front, I am not an artist, which I think is obvious but nevertheless should be stated.

I personally don't care for the people trying to question OP's motives, that's not the point here. Questioning the purpose of an AI image is an extremely salient issue, and one OP has every right to ask. AI is not a "settled issue" in my eyes on the left, and what I shared earlier is easily one of my least strong opinions.

As for the purposes of the banner, I think, personally, whether or not it is AI generated depends on what the users of the community want. If someone wants to put in the time to design a banner, and the people using the community prefer it to the AI banner, then it should change to the artist's banner. Art made by humans is desired for that artistic process, grappling with the medium as a form of expression, something the viewer can contemplate (in my again untrained, unartistic view), but in the interim AI can at least make servicable images, especially if run locally and on green energy.

I see AI images fulfilling a similar use to stock images. Good for quickly drafting up something as a visual representation of an idea, horrible for being art as a stand-alone subject to contemplate and appreciate, the skill, the decision making, the expression.

Am I off-base? I dunno, I feel a bit like I got eaten alive in my comment I made earlier. I'm certainly not "pro-AI," I don't even use it myself, but at the same time I took issue with how people are framing the conversation.

Not intrinsically. A mud pie that someone spent 10 hours making does not have 10 hours of value. For equivalent use-values, their value is regulated around the average time it takes to reproduce them across all of industry. A chair that someone spent 15 hours making and a mass produced chair that someone spent 5 hours making, if equivalent use-values, would each be worth 10 hours (if this was the standard in the economy and both firms produced equal quantities).

Labor-power and raw materials are the source of all new value proper. Use-value, on the other hand, is distinct. AI art fundamentally cannot take the place of human art, as human art's use-value is derived from what the artist is saying and how they choose to say it. The process becomes the use. However, something like a texture in a video game is only useful inasmuch as the end user sees a texture and experiences it as a texture, the manner in which the texture was produced does not matter whether it was painted pixel by pixel, distilled from a photo, or was AI generated.

I'm not trying to use the "I read theory" card as some thought-terminating cliché, but I have actually read Capital volume 1, and am about a third of the way through volume 2. What you are describing is closer to the LTV of Smith or Ricardo, not of Marx.

I think, ultimately, AI-generated images have their own utility, but fundamentally cannot replace human art as an expression of the human experience and artist intent through their chosen medium. AI-generated textures for, say, wooden planks in a video game does little to nothing to change the end-user's experience, but just asking AI to create a masterpiece of art fundamentally lacks the artistic process that makes art thought provoking and important. It isn't even about being produced artisinally or mass-produced, it's fundamentally about what art is to begin with, and what makes it resonate.

AI cannot replace art. AI can make the more mundane and tedious aspects of creation smoother, it can be a part of a larger work of art, or it can be used in a similar way to stock images. At the same time, just like AI chatbots are no replacement for human interaction, AI can't replace human art. It isn't a matter of morality, or something grander, it's as simple as AI art just being a tool for guessing at what the user wants to generate, and thus isn't capable of serving the same function for humanity as art in the traditional sense.

I always like your posts when I see them here, so I really do value your perspective on this.

In what way?

Yes? When do you think liberalism came to be?

Why?

I'm saying capitalism is the issue, not the tool. Art should be liberated from the profit motive, like all labor. Art has meaning for people because it's a deeply human expression, but not all images are "art" in the traditional sense. If I want to make a video game, and I need a texture of wood, I can either make it by hand, have AI generate it, or take a picture. The end result is similar in all cases even if the effort expended is vastly different. This lowers the barrier for me to participate in game making, makes it more time-effective, while being potentially unnoticable on the user end.

If I just put some prompts into genAI, though, and post the output devoid of context, it isn't going to be seen as art at all, really. Just like a photograph randomly snapped isn't art, but photos with intention in message and form are art. The fact that meaning can be taken from something is a dialogue between creator and viewer, and AI cannot replace that.

AI has use-cases. Opposing it in any and all circumstances based on a metaphysical conception of intrinsic value in something produced artisinally vs being mass produced is the wrong way to look at it. AI cannot replicate the aspects of what we consider to be art in the traditional sense, and not every image created needs to be artisinal. What makes the utility of a stock image any different from an AI generated image of the same concept, assuming equivalent quality?

The bottom line is that art needs to be liberated from capitalism, and technology should not be opposed whole-cloth due to its use under capitalism.