The one used in this thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12973939
Mind you, I didn’t set out to deceive anyone. It was more of a “why call attention to it” thing. It’s probably the only time I’ve posted anything AI where I didn’t explicitly call attention to it as AI. But I’ve learned in the times I did do that here that some person or other would be upset, pretty much no matter what the content was of what I posted.
I figured, one of the primary complaints about AI generated images, is essentially that they look like they’re trying to look professional but make basic errors. Which I think is a fair criticism. So I thought, what if I use stick figures. That’s closer to meme level of illustration and expectations are lower for it, so if some basic mistakes exist, that’s par for the course.
I did write the text itself as rhetoric and fictional conversation, but I didn’t draw any of the image, nor did I place the text in the image. It was received extremely well for a lemmygrad post. I’m sure it is easily the most upvoted post I’ve ever made. I don’t know what made it work so well, maybe the commonness of issues with landlords, but I can only guess as the responses didn’t tell me much about the why.
One person did say “Ai stickfigures?” which surprised me a bit. I didn’t think it looked overtly AI genned. But I asked them “why do you ask?” because I wanted to be sure whether it was confrontational or sincere interest in where it came from. They never responded, so I’m not sure.
But anyway, the fact that it was AI somehow didn’t prevent it from seemingly resonating with people. I never would have drawn any such image on my own. I could make an attempt, but it would probably look like a child’s fridge drawing and I would have especially struggled with the vividness of the facial expressions, which was where I sought to do the contrast between the feigned victimhood followed by literal mustache twirling villain. Caricature, but gets the point across.
Given how I’ve seen some react on here, I can’t help but think it would have been a shitshow if I’d called attention to it being AI generated or if it had been drawn in such a way that it looked stereotypically “AI”. Instead, as of posting this, it totaled at 111 upvotes and 0 downvotes.
It’s always hard to tell the impact things have in a virtual forum, but with the limited metrics I have to go by, it went really well. And I didn’t draw a pixel of it. This paints a picture for me that the issue with AI generated content in these spaces is not when it’s AI generated but when people believe that it is. But people can believe something is even when it isn’t. Or in this case, likely assume it isn’t when it is. Maybe I’m wrong and the 100+ people who upvoted thought “AI” and upvoted anyway, but given how things usually go here, I doubt it.
I hope no one takes this as trickery or something. Having seen more recent angst on here relating to AI, I thought calling attention to this is an opportunity to make a point. When I went to make that image, it was mainly about seeing what kind of effective agitprop I could make with AI. Maybe knowing this explicitly will inspire some people to think more about how they can use it too, beyond the hated stereotypes, with thoughtfulness of design put into it. I am still determined to aid in strategic thought and practice, no matter how much mud is slung. Liberation demands it of me.
You’re right to be mad about a lot of things. Help me help you be mad at the right people in a way that will change the world for the better.
Its pretty obviously AI. But I’m an artist for a living so I don’t know how much my expertise plays into that. But I saw it and didn’t care to start beef about it. I didn’t send it to anyone.
In my experience people who are still pro AI at this point are pretty difficult to have a conversation with about it. Both Comrades and non comrades. I usually compare AI to microwave food because yeah…its food but its not great and people usually prefer handmade. Even if we take it as a tool for the proletariat, the problem is that AI as it exists is in the hands of the bourgeois, as such its used to their advantage and not ours. We ultimately can’t create LLM’s to the same extent without a massive amount of organizing that is going to require a government structure. For now, AI is mostly used as a tool by bourgeois to obfuscate truth and reality which are enemies to Marxists. Even if I can tell images that are AI, I wouldn’t be able to tell other uses, and it’d be foolish to assume nobody would believe such images to be reality. Even without knowledge of programming I can see the applications, mods, and games I’ve tried that have AI are extremely buggy.
I see AI as more of an enemy of the Marxist movement than a tool. The working class loathes AI because of its low quality and attempts to use it to destabilize their lives. Both in mass producing evidence for lies and in replacing their jobs and livelihoods. Even If AI is not able to do so, bourgeois are stuck in idealism. Not to mention a good chunk of the infrastructure for AI is for surveilling against resistance to the state.
In any case, the point is. Most people aren’t going to interface with your AI content in the first place. Much like people who see an AI restaurant sign and identify it aren’t going inside in the first place, let alone informing of the creator/user of the AI content. I’m sure you could make agitation propaganda with it that will sell people unaffected by or unable to spot AI. But many people have a negative association with AI and associate it with bourgeois violence. I saw the image, and I did not share it for its low quality and clear AI content. It actually swayed me, a Marxist, to not share the propaganda.
I promise you, the worst most shitty drawn stick figure image will be better, on account of effecting both parties. Those who are fine with AI and those who are not. Most people actually really like poorly created material. It’s somehow both ironic and genuine.
I bolded messages for ease of reading.
This is all well and good except for the fact that it did really well as an upvoted image. That goes for bobs_guns response too. It seems to me that you were mistaken to not try sharing it given how well it did. This stubborn insistence that AI can’t be helpful because it’s being used for bad a lot in the face of a data point that it can work well just boggles my mind, frankly. Guns are a perfect example of something that is “associated with bourgeois violence”. Very viscerally. Not in the abstract, not by having to explain how exactly they get used in a way that can be called violent. Guns are made to kill, no vaguery about it. Yet even then. Even then successful revolutionaries in history have not gone “guns are evil and tainted and we must be pacifist and work to get guns banned to solve the problems of the world.”
If something being associated with the oppressor means we can’t use it, then liberation is impossible. Or we can decide that how something gets used is more important than what it is and stop pretending liberation is about being a pure soul in a fallen world.
There is still a lot of room for survivorship bias in this singular statistical analysis. You’d need to know how many people even saw it, and compare to many other cases to find a trend. I think u are jumping the gun, so to speak.
Guns can be owned and all processes to maintain it either through theft in systems without gun ownership or by capitalists selling it in systems with gun ownership. They actually are a pretty good example of a tool, but you don’t show up to a housing Union day 1 with an assault rifle. You’d scare people away, unwilling to even engage with you. The whole point is driving engagement and conversation in this case rather than utilizing the gun. It’s not the proper use for the tool.
Using AI you don’t actually own the means to produce it, it requires immense infrastructure to be constructed or taken and held which isn’t super useful for guerilla movements. Not to mention the large amount of resources. I’m sure it would have some use, but art is not it. Art is already fairly easy to make, I’d argue at this time especially. Many people not only value homemade, but poor quality memes. It’s like the whole point behind soyjacks is that they look bad. There is a negative association with AI with a lot of people and those who are able to identify it especially will not engage. Especially artists who you would want…for making higher quality propaganda. Like using AI is all well and good but with proper artists making propaganda its inevitably going to end up more enticing and effective.
I gave my anecdotal experience as an example that others like me exist and probably acted similarly. Hell there’s a ton of trending memes right now about “If your event has AI assets I’m not going to it” trending in liberal spaces. If we tried to advertise a communist event with language that would normally appeal to them but replace it with AI vs art made by a proper artist we would immediately see a difference just from this.
To properly run the experiment you should have had a control and ran several trails over several websites. Instead you assumed the outcome and performed the experiment expecting the outcome and haven’t ran a very convincing argument. Yeah I’m sure AI can be effective at stuff, but as an artist, who works with customers, hobbyists and professionals in a variety of creative activities (DnD, Furries, Anime, books, craftsmen, Fan content, etc. ) AI is not viewed positively in creative spaces. Many communities even have a ban on posting anything AI and if its found out it must be removed from the space. It’s not going to let your meme get very far that way. In creative communities its heavily associated with scamming. It’s much like how you wouldn’t send mass emails to get people to donate to your campaign. Sure you’ll get some people donating, but most people will associate it with spam/scams.
I’m not sure the amount of upvotes it got, I was pretty sure it only got 60 which is about average on this site but it seems to be at 112 and so I’m not sure if I’m misremembering. However another meme which is here; https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12780428 It’s drawn very poorly, it lacks any nuance and just has direct information on the shirts of individuals to convey the message, there’s barely any interesting element to it. Yet it has over 120 upvotes. Because people like it at least to a comparable degree. Not because It’s the best art in the world or particularly revolutionary. From this comparison alone you can find that simply making low quality images, which doesn’t have a chance of alienating the target audience, is already comparable.
None of this stops you, make the AI art if you like. Make as much of it as you are willing. Arguing about quality or effectiveness in reaching an audience is a different burden all together. One I’d argue is not met. I’m not WRONG for disliking it. I’m not incorrect for failing to share it despite others doing such. Its just poor quality in my eyes and I preferred sharing better quality memes with those I know. Especially considering those I know and advertise do, do not like AI. While I’m sure dislike for AI has gained ground among reactionary voices. My dislike, nor any other, isn’t inherently reactionary. I don’t like many designs and tools for being poor quality.
Guns aren’t actually the same as AI. I made the comparison to say that even in the extreme case of guns as something that are fundamentally violent, it’s still not something to say is icky because “it is associated with bourgeois violence”, which was an argument you were making about AI. Digging into time and place of when is appropriate to use something and when is not is a whole different conversation. AI isn’t inherently violent in the first place; the way in which it impacts relations to the means of production, creates alienation, and so on, has a violent character, but this does not mean AI is the cause itself, any more than a printing press is. If it was the cause, the worldview takeaway would not be marxism-leninism, but something more like trying to turn back the clock on industrial development.
This is the crux of how marxist arguments about AI tend to go. Yes, there are valid things to dislike about it. No, you don’t have to use it in organizing or propaganda, much less in your daily life (unless the capitalists are making you). But also, most of what you dislike about it goes back to systemic issues, not the technology itself. However, if we can look at how organized capital uses it and see that it’s doing something impactful (even if negative) that should tell us something about the potential of the technology. From there, it’s a question of whether we can also use it, without using it in a way that has a barbaric, reactionary character. If we look at the hatred of it and say “well it’s not viable because people hate it”, we’re ceding to reaction. We could as well say the same about communism itself. It is widely hated, in part because of virulent anti-communist campaigns. Does this mean we should abandon attempts to educate people in communism?
Already people are witchhunting about things that are supposedly made with AI, regardless of whether there is evidence that they actually are. This is an unsustainable and reactionary place for things to be in. Again, ceding to this gets us nowhere. Part of our job is, and has always been, education. We’re not better than the masses or something, but we also aren’t there to just go along to get along with whatever the common position of the moment is.
You’re putting much more weight on it than I ever tried to do. It wasn’t much of an experiment in the first place. It is a single data point that I am pointing at as one after the fact and I even emphasized in my own original post “It’s always hard to tell the impact things have in a virtual forum”. I find it odd that scientific rigor is being expected of what boils down to me saying that AI may be helpful sometimes and here’s a data point supporting that. Basically to encourage marxists who are skeptical or hateful toward AI to consider if it can have use cases beyond their existing views on it. When I said to you, “It seems to me that you were mistaken to not try sharing it given how well it did.” That was in direct response to you saying, “I saw the image, and I did not share it for its low quality and clear AI content.”
Not only did you not know for sure that it was AI at that point, calling it low quality when memes often would be considered low quality is interesting. As is claiming low quality when the evidence shows that it did well in spite of said alleged low quality. That’s why I put it so strongly as a reversal of your statement. I’m not saying you should use AI all the time. I’m saying that your arguments against this particular image and its posting make no sense in the face of the evidence. The burden of proof is not on me to thoroughly test AI images across a variety of websites to refute your claims that it sucks because “it’s low quality” (an attribute that could easily be applied to most memes).
I’m trying to encourage people to try things, instead of assuming they won’t work.
I never argued AI was violent. Most of what I’ve been talking about has been anecdotal information to give a viewpoint as to why one would not share it. I still share marxist memes of course. The existence of AI memes did not detract from the propaganda I share and make. I simply did not share the AI work. Much like a professional cook doesn’t serve scraps or freeze “easy make” dishes.
I’m a professional artist, I make art for people I make propaganda. I state this again because this influences many of the relations I have. Sharing other creators content as well. AI, no matter how one wishes it to be, carries a vibe of low-quality and association with capitalists. When attempting to revolutionize the proletariat through art one considers such things in the act of creating it. You don’t make a poster of workers wearing fascist like uniforms to encourage them to rise up against capitalists. You manipulate the medium and context to your advantage.
I still argue that AI is a honeypot for the proletariat. Its ultimately controlled by the bourgeois and we cannot comparably replicate it without already having succeeded at our revolution. It’s not effective for education, agitation, or organizing.
It presents false information, its loathed by the public, and frequently makes errors. It can be used as a tool, but not as a replacement for a proper one in my opinion. While yes you do want to educate the masses, you must be able to reach them to start. Ultimately art is a very superficial and unimportant thing to demand we use AI or lose the revolution. If anything I’d prefer we use the reaction towards AI to further workers protections against capitalists, as most AI movements seem to do. We are only failing to use this to a wider movement rather than just creators who mainly exist outside the relationship between the proletariat and capitalist.
I might be biased, but it’s not that difficult to use premade assets or create your own to make effective propaganda. In any case, use what you will. In the end we both make propaganda for agitation and reach different audiences with it anyway.
Well you did say this:
So yes, that is not the same as saying it is violent, but it is implying that it has associations with violence that need to be ceded to, when said as a reason not to use it in agitprop.
I don’t deny you that experience. I would like to emphasize, though, that I’m not a professional artist and can’t call on you any time I have an idea for messaging (and why would you want to make ideas I have in the first place, unless you have an established relationship with me in organizing where we work together on art and messaging).
Based on how you describe the circles you run in, it sounds like memes wouldn’t go over well either. That’s fine. Being aware of who your audience is and what’s effective with them is important. That said, in my observation, the broader western internet landscape is one in which professional looking imagery is not that important. The meme culture shows that.
I would also emphasize that for professional illustrators, there are some out there (though they may be reluctant to admit it for fear of getting publicly crucified) who have figured out ways to use image gen as a part of their workflow, making them faster and more effective at what they make, without actually doing all the work for them.
I’m not really sure where this line is coming from. Especially when I emphasized, “From there, it’s a question of whether we can also use it, without using it in a way that has a barbaric, reactionary character.” Given there is nothing stopping us from using the tech to help with messaging that has a revolutionary character, I don’t see how this translates into encouraging fascism.
In capitalist states, the internet is largely controlled by the bourgeoisie as a class. But we still try to use it, in spite of knowing they have the advantage and that they can screw around with the most influential platforms at the drop of a hat. I don’t see how honeypot is an appropriate word here at all. It seems clear to me that the capitalists are deeply serious about trying to use AI to replace and further control people. Their implementation of it gravitates toward that goal. The threat is real, but it didn’t begin with AI. If we go with a narrative that AI is uniquely bad, we are, in effect, denying the history of automation that has led to what gets called “AI”. I don’t see how it can be good for the education and class consciousness of the working class if we go along with that as the narrative.
I would argue it’s an opportunity to tune people into the history of automation as a whole and how it ties into marxist concepts on labor relations and production. Joining in with hatred of AI does not in itself make anyone more conscious of where their exploitation stems from and why.
I’d argue theres a lot of things that distinguish AI from typical advancements. One of which being the Data centers are incredibly intrusive and nobody wants to be near them. Driving up cost of living, polluting local environment, providing little to no benefit to the region. This is perfect territory to agitate people into disenchantment with Capitalism and it actually has succeed as such in my local area as well as other contacts I have. You’d do far better to agitate on these lines than most AI generated images anyway. While it’s hard to quantify, I believe proper practice like that also agitates more people than paper propaganda.
I call it a honeypot because its much like the large democratic socialist groups in america like DSA being a honey pot for revolutionary movement to fizzle out into reformism, AI ultimately is divisive, impractical for most applications, and actually effects many peoples livelihoods in a variety of ways. Yet there’s a weird insistence among some that if you dislike AI you’re a Luddite-bourgeois collaborator.
AI does paint class lines very clearly, the ones forcing its adoption upon the working class, the heavy investments, the fear over a “investment bubble”, the interfering with local government to push its creation, its use for data collection for surveillance, etc. Hell even conservatives and liberals are taking arms against flock cameras. It’s not like most of us can create surveillance networks that connect with the histories of people that interface with it. I do not argue AI is uniquely “bad” as a tool. But its showing contradictions very acutely and we’d be foolish to not act on this line, just for the sake of using text instead of a pen for making a meme.
The rampant data centers are a good example of capital building out a bubble as part of consistent boom and bust cycles, instead of only doing what is needed to increase quality of life. That’s the kind of thing I keep trying to bring it back to.
I’m wondering if you read the article somebody else gave you to read (granted, it is kinda long) because the history of Luddites has nothing to do with being bourgeoisie collaborators and the article does briefly touch on the history of them (I think near the end IIRC). Luddites are commonly misunderstood as anti-industrial or anti-technology, when they were something more like militant resistance to misuse of automation.
So it would be a pretty confused criticism to say someone is a Luddite-bourgeois collaborator.
If I have given that impression, then I only have to scratch my head as to how. Perhaps you are thinking of the analysis that certain of artists as artisans resist AI because of it “proletarianizing” them more so. Personally, I don’t think that analysis is wrong, but it’d also be fair to say that it’s only a sliver of what’s going on overall. People who hate flock cameras, for example, are obviously having issues that go beyond “AI art”.
From this standpoint, I’d argue that if anything counts as a honeypot, it’s the copyright-related anti-AI movement (which I’m pretty sure has had big business ties going on in it). I would say we need to distinguish the anti-AI movement that is organizing against data centers or breaking flock cameras as something distinct from the other one, even if there may be some overlap, since one is more related to artists as artisans and the other is more about people seeing direct infrastructural intrusion in their communities. Though even then, if neither one translates into class conscious organization, then what would it head to other than reforms?
I don’t really disagree, but this seems like it’s moving the goalposts a bit. My argument has never been that AI is better than in-person organizing. It’s more just a barebones call for people to not dismiss it out of hand and hate it on sight regardless of the form it takes. Hating flock cameras and polluting, water-hogging data centers as part of a capital-driven bubble is valid. Witchhunting images or text posted on the internet is not. Recognizing the current implementation of AI by capitalists as largely bad is valid. Translating that to resisting giving it a chance as a tool that can aid the working class in its struggle is not.
If one is already doing really well in organizing without it and doesn’t see the point in putting energy into trying it, I don’t even object to that. But if they’re struggling, as many are, why wouldn’t they give it a chance? Because it can be taken away? So can most things under the dictatorship of capital. Because its origins are tainted? So are most tools under the dictatorship of capital. Because it has jank? No tool is without a learning curve to get better results out of it than just picking it up and doing whatever.
This is honestly an interesting discussion I’d love to have albeit it goes beyond the original conversation. I believe dividing the movements isn’t in the best interests, but I oppose copyright law. Even when I make exclusive content I leak it to image booru’s and forums around the topic. So I as an artist I know that Copyright isn’t protecting me from anything. Yet when I explain this position it is hard for people to understand and I haven’t pushed it particularly strongly in favor of more glaring contradictions. There’s a thing people in the creative community like to use to refer to AI scraping as stealing their work without permission and while it does suck to see your work used in something you don’t agree with, the idea of “theft” being taken place when most have the contrary opinion for piracy. It seems to follow a line of “Large corps and capitalists are evil and are to be judged by different morals than workers” and I actually think this is more productive for revolutionary agitation. Not every person needs to totally understand the entire Dialectical historical materialist conditions in the relationship to come to the conclusion capitalists need to be stopped. But I digress before taking this too far beyond the initial discussion of its perception and usage for agitation.
Yeah honestly my only intention with the initial statement was to give perspective on the core of community who would not engage with AI. I don’t even think making AI memes would “Taint the movement” as people usually see it on an individual basis.
Using it to agitate is fine if not less effective for the reasons I described in these replies. I would encourage the consequences of its use to be taken into account for the intended audience and message. Because Creative hobbys have intersectionality with racial and sexual minorities, because they usually have reach to an audience, and because of the lives AI effects in some rural communities. These groups are more likely to have a negative association with the imagery (although not guaranteed) and it’s more likely for the meme to have stumbling blocks in relation to those groups. But ultimately I do not believe them to be a majority of people, but a kind of “light house” for content that hits multiple gazes at a time.
This is getting beyond speculation. Anti-AI sentiment has some intersectionality among people you might not expect to inherently be anti-AI. I guess it’s my role to organize and agitate the anti AI crowd, and leave the ones neutral to AI to others.
https://redsails.org/artisanal-intelligence/
I implore you to read what I said.
This is irrelevant except that I’m an artist. I’m not arguing for the “Soul” of human made work. I’m not arguing for copyright I actually despise most forms of copyright law. I’m not arguing that AI “erodes” Artists market share.
Although an argument could be made on my suggestion that the working class has a negative attitude due to the destabilization of their lives as a result of AI. I was referring to audience perception. I’m not arguing for the “Morality” of AI. I’m describing reasons as to why it has a negative reception among working class people. And that the state can make far more effective use of it than any proletarian movement. Once the dictatorship of the proletariat is in place, it’ll be just as useful I’m sure.
The idea that artists are incapable of being revolutionary and are subsumed by the bourgeois in the essay is laughable. Artists, being artisans, do not exploit others for their labor value. While I agree with a fair bit of this article it itself is forming odd ideas over artists that I think will be found to be a mistake. but it goes beyond the discussion here.
It’s not laughable at all. Artisanal artists own their own means of production, they are not proletarian, but petit bourgeois.
It’s why memes came to be in the first place. Memes are more relatable than any other form of media, and it’s because they are being made by fellow proletarians, who cannot afford to put days of labor into a funny picture.
If artists were proletarian, there would have been no need for memes.
Artists are petty bourgeois. Amusingly once one knows the basics of dialectical materialism its pretty easy to parse and I did so in my studies when I was learning of how proletariatization comes to artisans. It actually drove me to find a career in this to be in control of my means of production. This was even prior to AI’s large popularity boom. When I use the term artists I think I’m being far more liberal than most. I think a distinction should be made.
“Professional artists” more adequately fill this position. However, because anyone can create inherently and its a form of expression. I’ve been interpreting and using “artist” to mean anyone who makes anything, including memes. A “creative” probably defines better what I was referring to and I wont interpret these such a way again.
Ultimately however petty bourgeois is a subcategory that explains certain groups tendency to capitalist idealism over working class consciousness, despite they themselves not taking part in wage exploitation(or of course smaller business owners but this isn’t the focus here.).
I mention the part implying artists are bourgeois collaborators as being laughable because I’m heavily involved in punk culture. Nearly all artists I know are Anarchist, Marxist, or at minimum hate capitalism. So while I agree with artisans filling this petty bourgeois label, I believe they are able to be pulled into either bourgeois idealism or proletariat materialist struggle. We often see rich and famous artisans, but that is only because they have the money to constantly advertise their work and are in close relation to other bourgeois. Yet most of those who create art are primarily getting their income from the sale of wage-labour.
This is primarily why I thought it was laughable to assume they are incapable of becoming revolutionary. I’m an professional artist and a Marxist-Leninist. I create propaganda and organize for a revolution. I already prove that it is possible to be aligned with proletariat liberation thus the absolute is immediately disproven, let alone any anecdotal evidence of the people I personally know.
The essay is not discussing me for the terms I listed before. I do not fall into the categories of critique it is listed for. I don’t support copyright laws. I’m not arguing against AI for the sake of artists market share. I do not argue that human art has a “soul” only that AI has a reputation, and interpretation that will influence its spread.
I’d argue there’s some reactionary sentiment to anyone who is not 100% backing AI in every place it is implemented in. I’m discussing the reasons I believe it will fall short of expectations and why I think most of AI functions is a honeypot. The linking of an essay as to why artists are bourgeois collaborators despite the reasons I submitted being unrelated I think falls in line with this “Pro AI reactionary” behavior. It’s not a perfect technology. Much like using a hammer to put in a screw isn’t effective even if it works. Which is the initial discussion.
However, it’s actually a really good essay and thank you for giving it to me. While it wasn’t related to my discussion it did help me hone and develop why I disliked those arguments being used before. It also helps with understanding class relations of artists in general of course.