{"id":1935,"date":"2025-04-16T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2025-04-17T14:54:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T14:54:20","slug":"the-real-argument-artists-should-be-making-against-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/16\/the-real-argument-artists-should-be-making-against-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The real argument artists should be making against AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Many artists are upset at companies like OpenAI and Meta for using their work to train AI systems.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every artist I know is furious. The illustrators, the novelists, the poets \u2014 all furious. These are people who have painstakingly poured their deepest yearnings onto the page, only to see AI companies pirate their work without consent or compensation.<\/p>\n

The latest surge of anger is a response to OpenAI integrating new image-generation capabilities into ChatGPT and showing how they can be used to imitate<\/a> the animation style of Studio Ghibli. That triggered an online flood of Ghiblified images, with countless users (including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a>) getting the AI to remake their selfies in the style of Spirited Away<\/em> or My Neighbor Totoro<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Couple that with the recent revelation that Meta has been pirating millions of published books<\/a> to train its AI, and you can see how we got a flashpoint in the culture war between artists and AI companies.<\/p>\n

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When artists try to express their outrage at companies, they say things like, \u201cThey should at least ask my permission or offer to pay me!\u201d Sometimes they go a level deeper: \u201cThis is eroding the essence of human creativity!\u201d<\/p>\n

These are legitimate points, but they\u2019re also easy targets for the supporters of omnivorous AI. These defenders typically make two arguments. <\/p>\n

First, using online copyrighted materials to train AI is fair use,\u00a0meaning it\u2019s legal to copy them for that purpose without artists\u2019 permission. (OpenAI makes this claim about its AI training in general<\/a> and notes<\/a> that it allows users to copy a studio\u2019s house style \u2014 Studio Ghibli being one example \u2014\u00a0but not an individual living artist. Lawyers say the company is operating in a legal gray area<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, defenders argue that even if it\u2019s not fair use, intellectual property rights shouldn\u2019t be allowed<\/a> to stand in the way of innovation that will greatly benefit humanity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The strongest argument artists can make, then, is that the unfettered advance of AI technologies that experts can neither understand nor control won\u2019t greatly benefit humanity on balance<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019ll harm us<\/a>. And for that reason, forcing artists to be complicit in the creation of those technologies is inflicting something terrible on them: moral injury<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Moral injury is what happens when you feel you\u2019ve been forced to violate your own values. Psychiatrists coined the term in the 1990s after observing Vietnam-era veterans who\u2019d had to carry out orders \u2014 like dropping bombs and killing civilians \u2014 that completely contradicted the urgings of their conscience. Moral injury can also apply to doctors<\/a> who have to ration care, teachers<\/a> who have to implement punitive behavior-management programs, and anyone else who\u2019s been forced to act contrary to their principles. In recent years, a swell of research<\/a> has shown that people who\u2019ve experienced moral injury often carry a sense of shame that can lead to severe anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019re thinking that this psychological condition sounds a world away from AI-generated art \u2014 that having your images or words turned into fodder for AI couldn\u2019t possibly trigger moral injury. I would argue, though, that this is exactly what\u2019s happening for many artists who are seeing their work sucked up to enable a project they fundamentally oppose, even if they don\u2019t yet know the term to describe it. <\/p>\n

Framing their objection in terms of moral injury would be more effective. Unlike other arguments, it challenges the AI boosters\u2019 core narrative<\/a> that everyone should support AI innovation because it\u2019s essential to progress. <\/p>\n

Why AI art is more than just fair use or remixing <\/h2>\n

By now, you\u2019ve probably heard people argue that trying to rein in AI development means you\u2019re anti-progress, like the Luddites who fought<\/a> against power looms at the dawn of the industrial revolution or the people who said<\/a> photographers should be barred from taking your likeness in public without your consent when the camera was first invented.<\/p>\n

Some folks point out that as recently as the 1990s, many people saw remixing music or sharing files on Napster<\/a> as progressive and actually considered it illiberal<\/a> to insist on intellectual property rights. In their view, music should be a public good \u2014 so why not art and books?<\/p>\n

To unpack this, let\u2019s start with the Luddites, so often invoked in discussions about AI these days. Despite the popular narrative we\u2019ve been fed, the Luddites were not anti-progress or even anti-technology<\/a>. What they opposed was the way factory owners used the new machines: not as tools that could make it easier for skilled workers to do their jobs, but as a means to fire and replace them with low-skilled, low-paid child laborers who\u2019d produce cheap, low-quality cloth. The owners were using the tech to immiserate the working class while growing their own profit margins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That<\/em> is what the Luddites opposed. And they were right to oppose it because it matters whether tech is used to make all classes of people better off or to empower an already-powerful minority at others\u2019 expense. <\/p>\n

Narrowly tailored AI \u2014 tools built for specific purposes, such as enabling scientists<\/a> to discover new drugs<\/a> \u2014 stands to be a huge net benefit to humanity as a whole, and we should cheer it on. But we have no compelling reason to believe the same is true of the race to build AGI \u2014 artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical system that can match or exceed human problem-solving abilities across many domains. In fact, those racing to build it, like Altman, will be the first to tell you that it might break the world\u2019s economic system<\/a> or even lead to human extinction<\/a>. <\/p>\n

They cannot argue in good faith, then, that intellectual property should be swept aside because the race to AGI will be a huge net benefit to humanity. They might hope it will benefit us, but they themselves say it could easily doom us instead. <\/p>\n

But what about the argument that shoveling the whole internet into AI is fair use?<\/p>\n

That ignores the fact that when you take something from someone else, it really matters exactly what you do with it. Under the fair use principle<\/a>, the purpose and character of the use is key. Is it for commercial use? Or not-for-profit? Will it harm the original owner?<\/p>\n

Think about the people who sought to limit photographers\u2019 rights in the 1800s, arguing that they can\u2019t just take your photo without permission. Now, it\u2019s true that the courts ruled<\/a> that I can take a photo with you in it even if you didn\u2019t explicitly consent. But that doesn\u2019t mean the courts allowed any and all uses of your likeness. I cannot, for example, legally take that photo of you and non-consensually turn it into pornography. <\/p>\n

Pornography \u2014 not music remixing or file sharing \u2014 is the right analogy here. Because AI art isn\u2019t just about taking something from artists; it\u2019s about transforming it into something many of them detest since they believe it contributes to the \u201censhittification<\/a>\u201d of the world, even if it won\u2019t literally end the world. <\/p>\n

That brings us back to the idea of moral injury. <\/p>\n

Currently, as artists grasp for language in which to lodge their grievance, they are naturally using the language that is familiar to them: creativity and originality, intellectual property and copyright law. But that language gestures toward something deeper. The reason we value creativity and originality in the first place is because we believe they\u2019re an essential part of human agency<\/a>. And there is a growing sense that AI is eroding that agency, whether by homogenizing our tastes<\/a>, addicting us to AI companions<\/a>, or tricking us into surrendering our capacity for ethical decision-making<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Forcing artists to be complicit in that project \u2014\u00a0a project they find morally detestable because it strikes at the core of who we are as human beings \u2014 is to inflict moral injury on them. That argument can\u2019t be easily dismissed with claims of \u201cfair use\u201d or\u00a0 \u201cbenefitting humanity.\u201d And it\u2019s the argument that artists should make loud and clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many artists are upset at companies like OpenAI and Meta for using their work to train AI systems. Every artist I know is furious. The illustrators, the novelists, the poets \u2014 all furious. These are people who have painstakingly poured their deepest yearnings onto the page, only to see AI companies pirate their work without consent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1938,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions\/1938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/asian-idol.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}