The Luddites weren’t anti-technology—they opposed machines that destroyed their livelihoods and benefited factory owners at workers’ expense. Their resistance was a critique of the social and economic chaos caused by the Industrial Revolution. Over time, “Luddite” became an insult due to capitalist propaganda, dismissing their valid concerns about inequality and exploitation. Seen in context, they were early critics of unchecked capitalism and harmful technological change—issues still relevant today.
They’ll be called artists, script writers, and their other respected titles. The market value of any AI art is zero, as its supply is effectively infinite. If a piece can be churned out for a few pennies of electricity, then the market value of that piece is just a few pennies. Inevitably, the kind of art that can be produced by AI models will, and already is, regarded as cheap worthless schlock. Human artists will instead focus on those things that AI can’t mass produce, and those will retain value.
The market value of any product or service produced by an AI algorithm is zero.
This is completely missing the point that many artists have already lost their jobs because companies are increasingly using AI for their graphic designs.
Yeah. I upvoted WoodScientist because they are technically right. But in a real economy? There isn’t a significant enough of a demand for human creativity and so it plays out completely opposed to what they were saying.
Which makes me worried because our current type of AI can’t innovate, sure some future one could but it would be a completely different system and at present most companies seem content to simply throw ever more computing power into training our current fundementally flawed method. In the meantime Art may end up stagnating as human artists are driven out of commercial spaces and hobbyist artists are increasingly worried about getting scraped.
I’m curious about the data behind this statement. I can’t imagine that a company replacing artists with pure AI was ever actually hiring good artists in the first place. I’d think any company that’s ok with the quality coming straight from AI was paying for similar quality stuff from cheap “artists”. Any company that was willing to pay a premium for quality art won’t suddenly lower their standards because AI exists. Just my intuition and I’m genuinely curious to see if I’m wrong.
I’m not talking art gallery or famous writers and I am not speaking of current AI either, with the rapid speed AI has moved with in the last 10 years I can’t see commercial artists, game writers continuing as they are. They will become the etcy seller selling hand crafted niche as the profit margins of incorporating AI is too lucrative and is something we see currently.
Maybe with some far future AI we have no idea how to create. But what we have now is just the averaging and amalgam of the work of countless artists. This is why AI art is so bland and soulless; it’s like asking a work of art to be made by a committee of a hundred people. The end result is always bland. Yeah, you can tell it to do it in a certain style, or even the style of a specific artist, but that’s still just copying. It has no original creativity or idea of its own. And that’s before we get into corporate censorship which is the anathema to art. It’s hard to see AI art pushing out any biting criticisms of the rich and powerful.
Why can’t commercial artists like game writers continue? Again, the market value of any AI-produced game is zero. This stuff is a field of academics, the big AI companies can brute force their way to superior models right now, but the smaller models able to run on individual desktops isn’t far behind. And the hardware is only getting better. A few years after OpenAI can do something, the average person can do something similar on their own hardware.
The point is, you’re imagining this future where game companies are going to keep making games, and gamers keep buying them, but that the game writers are fired. But why would anyone pay money for that game? If an AI exists that can churn out entire games, the market value of those games becomes zero. I can generate my own AI schlock. I don’t need to pay someone to give me AI slop. So game studios will naturally focus only on those things that can’t be churned out on mass. There will inevitably be some areas that the AI algorithms fail at, and that is what “real gaming” will be.
AI art will be seen like clipart. Yes, you can use MSWord clipart in your publication. But it’s seen as cheap and tacky. The same will be the case for AI art. It’s market value is zero.
There are going to be two kinds of people: those who see value in AI and will pay market rate, and those who see AI for what it is and can create new value outside of what AI can produce. And you seem to think artists are inclined to do the first over the latter? Only the ones to be forgotten by history think that way.