This would be a million times better than making machines that do nearly everything for you. The only reason a machine that does everything is even compelling to someone who legitimately WANTS to be an artist is because nobody has the time or money to spend years getting good. You have to be able to be commercially successful to be able to take time away from doing something else you use to support yourself, otherwise you can’t both put in the time and also be self sustaining. As a result many successful artists end up being people who were privileged in some other way and didn’t have to worry about the money, until they were able to just be financially successful with their craft. And who is allowed to be successful is also, you guessed it, gatekept. The industries can more or less decide who to let in, who gets to stay, who gets a good deal or who gets screwed.
This is the basis of what i would say is the real gatekeeping; the part i feel like people keep saying isn’t actually real just to dunk on the people talking about AI. It’s real, AI is just the worst of all worlds solution to it.
In essence: given that capitalism necessitates commercial viability of art in order for anyone to dedicate their lives to making it, it means that there are not as many paths to being an artist as you’d think. You have to be able to find your niche in a crowded marketplace, one that gets more crowded the more people are doing it. Under this system, once you become an established artist it is literally in your best interest for other artists to have to do all the same work you did or more, because that will in fact gatekeep enough people out of the profession so that you have little enough competition to be able to sustain yourself. This is the way in which i think AI people talk about it as reducing gatekeeping - it means you clear the “bar” more quickly, right? So any structural advantage someone might have (either through privilege or just -already having put in the time- not something everybody can do even if they wanted to) is in theory balanced out or whatever. Except, this is done by factoring out the actual practice and execution, and creates creative dependence on random art generators. It does truly warp the entire foundation of what a creative pursuit is, and puts power once again in the hands of the companies now making AI products. All bad stuff to be certain - and that’s before we get to how the models are sourced.
In general, i think the best way to open up art to everyone is through UBI, resources, grants, education, and art tools and such - giving people the tools and the time, and reducing the need to be financially successful in order to even do it at all. I think we should have lots of art that is not a moneymaker. I don’t think needing to make a lot of money should be a requirement. I think people should have as much freedom to create as can be given to them. And that sometimes just means time and money for sustaining one’s own life that didn’t have to come from sales.
Why is making this clarification so important to me?
It’s probably largely due to the fact that:
- the recording industry sued AI companies on copyright grounds
- copyright has a history of helping big corporations hoard the work of artists
- many have decided that the recording industry doing this, and copyright itself, as a potential weapon against AI, was cool and good actually, because opposing AI is a higher priority than opposing business as usual
- any history of the recording industry doing wage theft and intellectual property theft of artists went out the window because now the enemy of my enemy or whatever
- now we’re saying gatekeeping isn’t real and putting the biggest institutional gatekeepers on a pedestal
- i feel absolutely insane
It starts to feel like people who’ve jumped through all the hoops and done the hard work to navigate the commercial creative complex are like, “the problem isn’t the system, it’s that you’re getting a shortcut i didn’t have and wouldn’t accept even if i had. Let’s stick to the status quo please” as if the status quo was not already horrific and slanted. This new “solution” is a bad one, but so were things before. I would like to think we have other options out there besides just these two.
