In an age where AI (a buzzword for Large Language Models (LLM’s)), rather than anything actually resembling a non-corporeal person), the debate about how AI is used in art has raged and furiously so. While artists themselves have exchanged heated verbal blows with each other, non-artists and more are quietly using these machines to perform ever greater tasks to ever greater levels of competence. For some, this is understandably a scary thought.
First, a disclosure. I use AI for images in a variety of contexts. I use them to create my profile pictures and banners on social networks and I use them for a couple of different projects where they fit the context there. That is the limit of my usage of AI. I have not made any music or videos with these machines. Despite these, I am very much sympathetic to the artists who have stood up and voiced their concerns. Perhaps, I am a little surprised, though. There seem to be a great many artists who simply don’t seem to care about the rise of AI enough to say anything, or are actually very positive about the development and continuing advances in this technology in relation to their professional lives.
In this article, I would like to express my concerns from a different perspective and one that I have not seen out there before.
What triggered the thought stream that led to this article was an album of stoner rock, a style of music I greatly love. Magenta Sky by Fuzzy Circuits was an album I was really getting into before I noticed it was tagged with #AI and #AI Music. This album was made on an AI platform for music and then remastered on other sound software. This was the first time I had heard AI-generated music of a decent quality and which had actually been put out there for music fans to grab. I found this one on Bandcamp, but I am sure that platform is hardly alone in allowing AI music to be marketed through them. And this got me thinking.
Artist or Not?
An artist has a very direct connection to their work; one which is not possessed by users of AI image generators. The artist-work connection may be mediated through various technologies, but the real artist is directly creating the image or art. The lass in the photo above has her skills mediated through her paint brushes, but it is still her actions and movements, her judgements, directly producing an object. A musician might use an instrument to create the sounds they need, but it is the musician themselves controlling the instruments in a direct manner by pinching strings on a fret or by pressing keys on a piano with their fingers. Some might argue that the same is also true of someone, like me, inserting prompts into an AI engine and getting a result in the form of an image.
I strongly refute that claim. The above image was created by AI using written prompts comprising words inserted by myself and then manipulated via an algorithm to produce what you see above. Without getting too side-tracked by this debate, worthy of numerous articles in itself, I do not hold that the role I performed in the creation of the image of the robot is comparable to what the lass is doing in the creation of her mural. At the very best, using an AI image generator, I am a writer of prompts. That is, a very poor writer by any measurable standard, as prompts are just a collection of words and phrases chucked together. I have heard the phrase prompt engineering, a rather generous way of putting it. I do not agree that what I have done here, with no skill in creating images that actually I conceive, is the same as the young lady above.
Furthermore, an AI will probably generate an image that is not exactly as the “prompt engineer” imagined. In fact, there will probably be some very significant and noticeable differences. A real artist is not constrained by what a machine creates for them.
What really kills the “prompt engineer is an artist” argument, in my opinion, is a little thought experiment. If I wanted a portrait to stroke my massive ego, and hired, say, Ivan Stan to create the image I described to him, no one would call me an “artist”. Rightfully, Ivan would be the one credited with the portrait.
I think I have made my point. There is no corelation between “artist” and “AI user”.
The Concern
It might seem a little weird a Christian writer quoting Karl Marx, but bear with me. The quote below ties one’s level of control, that is, power, to their relationship with the means of material production. Therefore, that person has control over mental production as well. I am no expert on Marxist thought, but that seems to fit with the overall vibe I understand Marx was putting out there.
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.
The artist has a very direct relationship to the means of production of art. They are the means of production. As mentioned already, it is their skill and decision-making directly impacting the finished production. With that relationship, they have total control over the way their work is presented and with what elements constitute that work. Except where a community’s laws might seek to constrain the artist, the artistic soul can say and create whatever they like and offend or uplift anyone they choose to. In short, they have power over the material embodiment of their artistic conception.
In Marx’s reckoning, this also gives the artist a position of power in society. They have a deep influence on the mental and spiritual life of the society in which their art is interacted with. That is, the means of mental production. For those readers old enough to remember the Madonna clones of the 1980’s, you have a case in point right there. The same goes for more contemporary musicians whose influence on young people is almost axiomatic. Artists can influence fashions, public opinion and more. They can do this to the benefit of society or to its harm; which one that is often comes into debate. When Andres Serrano created Immersion (P*** Christ), he ignited a conflagration of reaction and horror. He offended a great crowd of people, but there was also a deep message, a questioning that was textured and intricate in the artwork. In a shocking way, Serrano questions the commercialism of Jesus and calls for a return to what Jesus originally stood for. That is a message I would agree with, though I think what Jesus really stood for would also cause debate.
The point here is Andres Serrano had total creative control over his work on Immersion and the finished product was produced solely by him. Through this, whether we like it or not, Serrano has exercised some of his control of the material means of production to exercise his power over mental production. Thereby, he has influenced our mental life.
Society, with artists making their own work, has its mental production controlled by a wide range of voices and ideas. This, I believe, can only make society richer and more vibrant. In situations where that freedom is lacking, one sees a stagnation in artistic thought and use. Where states have stomped on artistic thought in an effort to control the means of material production, they have attempted to control the mental production of their people. If you want to control the means of mental production in a society with real artists, you still need to control the means of material production. That is, the artists themselves. One only has to look at China to view what happens when art is coerced into service to the state and all dissention punished.
When we turn to the prompt engineer, (I use this term facetiously), we have a distinct shift in power over the means of material production. It is no longer the person in front of the screen with the power over their means of material production. That now rests with a company or corporation with its own terms of service and controls on what is created.
Allow me to demonstrate. The following is a prompt I put into a very well known image generator. I have no love for Nazis, by which I mean real Nazis who adhere to Hitler’s ideas and the ideology of National Socialism, and not the current trend of using the category for anyone who disagrees with me. I think it entirely appropriate to show a victory of a Jewish victim of the Holocaust over a sick and vile ideology. So, I put this prompt in.
A skinny male Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner urinating on a Nazi swastika flag in a striped Auschwitz prison uniform, the prisoner is laughing, the flag is in the mud on the ground, full body shot full face view, DSLR diffuse light motion blur hyperdetailed intricate photorealistic
The generator came back with the response that there were “prohibited terms”, as pictured.
This result occurred because I do not have control over the material production of the envisaged outcome. It is companies like OpenAI, Midjourney, Nightcafe and countless more which hold that power. Andres Serrano would have had no problem creating such an image, because he has control over the means of his material production. As I do not control the means of material production in using AI image generators, I have a very limited control over the means of mental production, if any control at all. Through this trend of using AI to generate “artistic” output of various media, society’s control of its means of mental production are handed to a shrinking number of corporate interests. Meta and Google are both developing AI, as is Elon Musk. I suspect, part of the reason is the power over the means of mental production AI could bestow upon them.
The concentration of power over mental production though control of material production in art is nothing new. The rise of AI in art is merely an extension of a process that has been going for decades. Corporate empires like Time-Warner, Disney, Amazon and more have long been gathering artistic enterprises like Marvel Studios and MGM under their sway. As they control a lot of the material production in visual arts, they have a lot of power when it comes to society’s and the globe’s mental life. They can and do control what is seen and what is taught to us. They decide what is challenged and what is accepted, rather than artists like Andres Serrano.
And this is a major concern with AI, as it increasingly removes art from the freedom of those with control over its production into the grasp of those whose sole motive is profit. When such motives and the people ruled by them are allowed to decide what we challenge and resist, we have moved into very dangerous territory. It would be naïve to the point of idiocy to pretend AI is merely a tool for artistic expression. It is also a tool for artistic control, and so mental control. Corporations have repeatedly shown themselves fawningly willing to gag themselves and ignore a state’s or society’s evils, such as human rights abuses, if they are allowed to access wider markets and, as a result, more revenue. The moral vacuums embodied by these businesses and companies is something we need to keep a wary eye on.
Moving forward, the use and support of real artists, as healthy for the mental and spiritual life of our communities, is imperative. Companies like Bandcamp and Apple Music should be taking a more restrictive approach to AI and its presence in their catalogues. The fact they don’t is indicative in and of itself. As a consequence, we the people need to be that voice. We need to make it non-profitable to market AI-generated art. We need to boycott movies that use AI instead of real people or images created by real artists who have honed their skills through years of training and practice.
Interesting Links
Image Credits (Real Artists)
Artist and her mural - Marty O’Neill on Unsplash.