Pre(r)amble:
AI and Art are categorically different in that the former functions primarily to save time and money without an extended expending process while the latter functions precisely to waste both through an extended expending process.
The disgust for AI in art is not a reaction to a cognitive, intellectual, ethical, moral, or even aesthetic perception, intuition, or value, it is a unconscious reaction to the categorical error of trying to synthesize or reconcile the function of saving time and money without extended expenditure and the function of wasting time and money with extended expenditure.
The latter - wasting time and money through a process - is libidinal expenditure or enjoyment or pleasure and it is the crux of the human game, even at the inhuman level, while the former - saving time and money without a process - is only fun for people who get fun out of not doing the process thingy.
Even when God is involved, most if not all humans remain glued, consciously or unconsciously, within a libidinal expenditure / enjoyment / pleasure circuit. So if its the logic of preference that drives things, most will prefer the familiar process of libidinal expenditure (wasting time and money with an extended expenditure process, i.e., art as a material process) over the unfamiliar non-process of not expending and creating a product (using AI to generate things without such a flashy 'meat space' process). The exception of course is for those whom for whatever reason get enjoyment out of a different process, the process of AI generating instead of hurtling a tractor trailer into a helicopter while capturing the images.
In this line of thinking, we should stop thinking about art as something humans make and instead think of it more like a game humans play. The fun leaves the game when we don't make the moves. Doing AI art is fun for people for whom the 'game' and the 'moves' are coding the AI. It's all about preference of fun, or libidinal expenditure, and the two games of expenditure don't work well together, and cannot replace or subsume one another.
This blog poorly articulates this over a few minutes.
Observation and Hypothesis
The current AI Art discourse is captured in the antiquated epistemic frameworks of humanism and moralism.
This makes us think the conflict or question is whether AI is good or bad for humanity and art when the more likely conflict and better line of questioning is centered on how we understand time, energy, and money which is to say how we conceptualize libidinal expenditure and enjoyment.
Along these lines, my hypothesis is that AI is about reducing time and cost, film is precisely the opposite - extending it; AI is about saving time and money while film is, like all art, about wasting it.
The dislike of AI in art comes from this unarticulated tension.
I came upon this hypothesis for two reasons; 1: the prevailing frames / narratives (moralism / humanism) seem insufficient (they don't explain anything are not unique to the problem at hand) in explaining the charged positions for and against AI in art; 2: looking solely at the 'metaphysical' if we can call it that aspects of art and AI reveal a categorical difference between the two that feeds back into reason 1 - that how art is structured and how AI is structured - or used - are irreconcilable.
So let's look at reason 1 first.
Humanism and Moralism
Broadly speaking, those against AI see humanity as good and corrupted / degraded by AI while those who for it see humanity as bad or incomplete and something to be improved upon or culled by AI (for both, it does not matter if the 'goodness' or 'badness' of humanity is theologically inherent, naturally inherent, socially constructed, learned, etc.).
Those against AI in art will remind us that it's 'soulless, devoid of what makes us human, slop that steals the job of a real artist! etc.' This critique relies on notions of authenticity, hard work with your hands, the right to labor, and the secular or non-secular concept of some sort of essence specific to the human condition, etc.
Those for AI will remind us that ''it's an obsoleting creative tool, a razor of efficiency to push humanity ahead!' This endorsement relies on a somewhat eugenicist 'survival of the fittest' 'progress at any cost' ideology - 'if your job was replaced, it must have not been important, AI can do what you can't, and if you can't keep up, tough on you!' These folks think being able to make an AI movie quicker, cheaper, and without the burden of human actors is a selling point.
Both are positions that try to redeem the nature of humanity in the face of something - i.e., a tool that will accelerate work and change a market - that threatens to disrupt that particular concept of humanity.
Art is to be preserved without AI, or completely replaced with AI. AI either corrupts or perfects the human. Humanity is something to be preserved and protected as it is, or somewhat destroyed yet bettered in the name of progress.
We will need to show that these frames don't work well before we propose our own frame.
Humanism and moralism don't work well to frame the AI discussion, and they don't really explain the charged positions for or against AI.
These frames aren't 'right or wrong' or 'bad' in themselves, it's more a question of consistency within the person or population using the trope/narrative/frame and their goal/will/desire in the world.
In other words, does using this frame actually work to help a group reach their goal? Do people who like AI in art really like it because they think it improves the human project and art? Do people who don't like AI in art really not like it because of jobs and aesthetic judgment?
I am proposing the answer is no, people like or dislike AI for a different reason, and that is again predicated on how we understand time, energy, and money; how we conceptualize libidinal expenditure and enjoyment.
What follows are a few examples.
Political Left vs Political Right Moralism/Humanism Consistency
The left can't really claim AI is bad on the count that it takes away paying jobs because part of the left's project is to annihilate the work/capital circuit; no jobs, no pay.
The left also cannot claim AI is bad because it creates slop.
A radical leftist project would likely do away with such morally tinged judgments.
Not to get 'woke' but I think 'slop' has racial undertones to it (for the right winger, Indian food is slop, they eat with their hands; be reminded their narrative of 'eat the bugs.').
In the very least, if not racial undertones, there are certainly moral ones incompatible with the the left project, as slop is inseparable from concepts of consumerism, corporate quality standards, and mass-production, and furthermore implies an opposite, that of a more refined, proper product that is 'better' and therefore suited for 'higher' beings. The left isn't too big on products, nor gradations, and ranks of quality determining a thing's right to exist!
A radically left project will likely still need to or choose to make normative claims about better or worse quality or conditions of some things, but will likely need to use new language to do so. One could argue there could be a leftist conception of better and worse, and I would agree, but it would not be framed as 'slop' vs. whatever else.
Alternatively, one can imagine a leftist project rooted in some concept of multitudes and desire where some may desire to create and consume (in a non capitalist way - don't ask me to conceptualize this please) slop, while others may wish not to. The left may need to leave room for slop, or call it something else.
No one is saying the left have to like AI (I don't full love or hate AI myself), it's more that if the left want to effectively critique AI, they need to find a different angle than 'it took our jobs' 'real is when I do it and fake is when AI does it' and 'slop' (humanism / moralism).
In other words, the left is often critical of moral/humanistic tropes, so why do they become our friend, now, against AI? They don't.
The right has a bit more of a reason to like AI than the left, but it too struggles to keep things consistent.
Christian right wingers may have a good reason to like AI. They can ask themselves 'does AI get me closer to God?' If no, they don't need it. If yes, then they may reconcile AI and God by imagining AI as God's will on earth. I'm not going to spend too much time here.
Humanism and moralism are to some degree religious concepts that have been secularized through the might of Protestantism and liberalism.
AI in art fits well here for right wingers.
Secular right-wingers utilize humanism and moralism in tandem with natural order type arguments to establish a dichotomy of superiority and inferiority; good subservient worker, or a dominant alpha (I'm painting with broad strokes here, it's a blog...). In other cases, they dispense with humanism / moralism and just become natural-order tech reddit atheists.
The problem arises here: These Silicon Valley tech junkies support AI until it stops making them money - or until they run out of money themselves to fund their pet AI projects. Eugenicist, efficiency autists, and Social Darwinists love AI right up until it turns its crosshairs away from different people and towards them. They may want to ask - What happens when AI accidentally utters a heresy or depicts a false idol? What happens when AI culls the weak and then moves onto separating the wheat from chaff within the ranks of the right?
No one is saying the right can't like or use AI, it's more that the right's secular adoration of AI is completely conditional, and the conditions aren't forever; its more that AI is a zero sum game, with the only true worship of AI being a complete religious misanthropic nihilism, acceptance of self-annihilation, closer to Satanism than Christianity, etc. Some people may be okay being a vessel for that, but most people aren't. Most people - even the right- are trying to reconcile 'the human' with the 'AI.'
Inconsistencies like these that do not come together to generate a synthesis and birth something new - a burning star as Nietzsche would put it - they do not invigorate us, and they often obstruct one from reaching one's goal.
More so than that, the inconsistency shows us that there is likely something else going on here.
Non-Redditcore Libidinal Materialism
So if humanism and moralism as a frame do not consistently articulate the divide between those who like AI in art and those who don't, what does a more consistent job?
The question we should be asking is when it comes to art (film, music, visual mediums such as painting, drawing, animation, etc.), why do some people like AI and others not? Or, to be more provocative, why does AI arouse disgust in some and borderline sexual or religious excitement in others?
The question assumes that whether or not one supports or refutes AI is not a logical decision based on the facts or a direct moral value, but something else.
For this reason, among others, some may object to this question.
To those who object, I don't wish to change your mind. Keep your beliefs. However, if you already believe what you believe, just pretend to see it my way while reading and see what happens. At best, you learn something, at neutral you flex your imagination, at worst you waste a few minutes.
Let's remember, it's not controversial to say that whether or not something is good or bad has never been a sufficient enough reason to explain a thing's prevalence in the world; never been enough to explain why some prefer something while others don't. Smoking is bad, but a quarter of the world does it; for alcohol consumption its a third of the world. For things that are not addictive, taste and appetite may be more of a driving force than logic and reason. In general, people often do not arrive at a position or set of values, beliefs, and behaviors through logical calculations (check out my old blogs Libmat/Ratpack Gossip 1 and 2 and Mc/Acc...Fuel of Libmats).
So, to put it in a Nietzschean manner, what might make one person develop a taste for AI and another a distaste?
There are many possible answers, and many parts to these many answers, but the part of the answer within our limited scope here depends on how we think about the libidinal economy of a body in time, and how that body in time expends energy in time, i.e., seeks and acquires pleasure or enjoyment.
This is not jargon to sound cool, these are practical concepts we will need to familiarize ourselves with to have a better conversation about AI in art.
My thought is that those who are disgusted by AI are disgusted because AI is antithetical to the libidinal mechanism or ritual latent in all art which is the act of wasting time and money, making a mess, and doing it with friends for an audience. Those who are disgusted by AI are likely addicted to, or at least prefer this mechanism over others. Meanwhile, those who have a taste for AI utilize the process of AI itself for the same libidinal mechanism or ritual - wasting time and money to produce an outcome for an audience.
Let me explain.
Art of any medium is about the expenditure of time and energy. This is not meant to be a 'reddit-core' reductive lens. Reddit-core new-atheist junk ends up dismissing art's emergent, aesthetic aspects as something lesser to the biological, social, or psychological function which are somehow 'deeper' truths. In a twist of irony, this position privileges experience-far abstractions that are less observable and verifiable, and less critical and practical than, say, faith.
My conceptualization here preserves the emergent aesthetic process, experience, and product while also at the same time understanding there are less aesthetic, dirtier factors at play; it privileges experience-near theorization - what some might consider more subjective - while also leaving room for scientific, rational abstractions. It's a position of 'yes and' rather than an 'either/or' (what Deleuze and Guattari utilize, or what is also used in DBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy). Art is both emergent, aesthetic, even religious, while also containing base-material, profane, mundane elements. It cannot be subsumed by either all-or-nothing frame.
Take the medium of film. Much of big, blockbuster film, especially the great action and horror films of the 80s, are predicated on the directing and production teams acquiring huge multi-million dollar budgets to fund the often dangerous usage of practical effects such as live firearms and explosives to destroy real buildings, cars, etc., all while performing real stunts and choreography sometimes under the influence of illicit substances. Sometimes this 'play' became 'too real' and resulted in injury and death. Then, of course, the footage is cut to resemble one or more person's fantasy, dream, or desire, and is shared with others. This in turn provides funding for the process to be started again.
You can see how this is true for rockstars as well. Painters, maybe less so.
For some - those who are disgusted by AI - the enjoyment of consuming art is in part about the enjoyment of making art, i.e., fucking around and having fun, even if that fun is being miserable and making a depressing or horrific film. It's about partaking in the process of simulating reality within the control of your own or some one else's will. It's about wasting time and money with your body.
Art is about doing the process and AI removes that process; art is about wasting time and AI removes the wastage of time through efficiency.
AI film removes the drugs, guns, explosives, combat, the play, etc. that makers and watchers alike enjoy and just leaves the end product, and end product that if we are being generous and neutral is simply inconsistent with how film has tended to look; inconsistent with the visual drug that has given us that fix all these years. To phrase it as a question - why take a new designer drug when the old street one still does the trick?
Art is not unlike a sport. Why would you want to have a machine box for you when the whole point is showing up to the gym to box? Some people will feel this way. Others will not. AI enjoyers will get the same enjoyment from making their AI stuff, and that's okay.
Just understand that for a long time now, art has been about wasting money, time, energy, and having fun (libidinally equivalent or redundant) and AI takes that way for most people who aren't computer nerds.