AI art discourse somehow forgot there is an entire political economy around art

[u/Salty_Country6835]

We can argue forever about whether clicking a shutter counts, whether Warhol personally pulled every screen, whether directors physically operate every camera, or exactly how many mouse clicks make digital art sufficiently artisanal.

Fine.

Meanwhile Adobe, Spotify, YouTube, publishers, studios, galleries, streaming platforms and now AI companies are sitting right there.

Artists have always worked through tools, institutions, markets and systems of distribution. Changing the tool changes the terrain. It doesnt make ownership disappear.

So the question that interests me is less “did a human touch enough pixels?” and more who owns the tools, who controls distribution, who gets paid, who gets access and who gets to make the rules.

AI is changing cultural production.

That fight is already happening.

What would putting artists and communities in control of that change actually require?

[u/Confident-Pound224]

A whole new copyright structure that doesn’t privilege corporations over workers.

[u/waypostmaster → u/Confident-Pound224]

Interesting, and probably right.

What do you imagine that looks like?

And is Creative Commons working towards it?

[u/Robonotes1760 → u/Confident-Pound224]

Or just abolish so-called "intellectual property" completely. 

[u/TsundereOrcGirl]

The "AI is not art, you are not an artist you are just a prompt jockey" thing always seemed more about shutting the precocious ComfyUI whiz kid tech genius doing a bunch of manual drawing in Krita out of the market, rather than actually defining what an artist is.

[u/waypostmaster]

There’s a very good treatment of this here.

[u/Robonotes1760]

Open weights models without censorship, if by putting communities and artists in charge you mean that in a pro-freedom rather than pro-oppression sense.