I know a lot of people who do art for a living. They are basically treated like shit by capitalism. Nobody respects how much time, effort and training goes into art. Art is fucking hard. You get paid next to nothing for it.

Unless you sell your soul to work in advertising/marketing. Then you get paid only slightly more than nothing. You are also now expected to churn out a fuckton of art each day if you want to keep your job. Enjoy watching everything unique, creative and special be sucked out of your art by higher-ups that demand safe, soulless corporate art. Enjoy being told you’re expendable and easily replaced so you work an extra 5 hours unpaid that night. Working conditions in some advertising agencies are close to resembling sweatshops with how they exploit their junior artists in particular. I knew someone that used to work 7 days a week, even though they weren’t paid on weekends. They worked until midnight (unpaid overtime) only to start again at 8am the next day again. That’s how ‘competitive’ the industry is. They eventually had a nervous breakdown and changed careers.

Art being some bourgeoise thing where a beret-wearing snob sells a photo of piss for 5 trillion dollars is not the norm (as funny as that would be). The norm is backbreaking work for very little in return, like every other job title that isn’t CEO, Manager, or Landlord.

So yeah, even though I’m fascinated by AI art and don’t think it would necessarily be a bad thing if it was being used in a socialist setting, I think artists have every right to be upset that tech bros are finding a way to suck even more life out of art.

In short, creatives get treated like shit. Thinking art isn’t real work is chud-level shit.