How 2022-23 might be the worst year for artists online

(Photo taken by Nanako Kashiwagi)

After a shockwave of media covering the semi-recent acquisition of Twitter from Elon Musk, changes have happened not only on the free social media platform but a phenomenon occurring within the internet as a whole that has affected artists.

First:

Transferring ownership to Elon Musk wasn’t the initial problem (nor was the firing of hundreds of employees)—it was the latest paid verification system. As an artist who works off of commissions (custom artworks for paying customers), being able to draw a broad audience on the internet is especially hard when it’s locked behind a paywall. When artists need to pay their bills, they can hardly afford to pay $8 a month for a status symbol, but also the only way out of practically being shadow-banned on a change that was supposed to encourage free speech. Twitter, being one of the most open and free sites while still maintaining rules about harassment, bigotry, and polarization, has now changed into an anarchy of slurs and selective bans and unbans from Musk himself. Artists are often marginalized, and people who want to spread their voice about public issues are not being pushed to the bottom of the Twitter algorithm for being a “troll” or a “bot,” as Musk tried to protect against it. Still, it makes it harder for an artist to gain traction or following.

Second:

Recently, more and more “AI artists” have been taking over the digital art scene. People argue it’s a tool used just like digital art in comparison to traditional, and others argue it’s a compilation and reorganization of unconsenting artists. AI art relies on the gathering of premade art to generate a new piece; however, how a bot gains these artworks is often skipped over when congratulating the programming genius that is the artistry that is created afterward. The late South Korean illustrator Kim Jung Gi died in October of this year, sadly passing away at the age of 47; his art has impacted the community. As a person, I am deeply disturbed by the disrespect brought upon his artwork via AI generation. AI art solely based on his work was created a few days after his passing, posting artworks that mimicked his unique style and put artists on high alert. No consent was given towards its creation, nor was any respect given to an artist as a person. To push the limits of an immoral collection of artworks sounds illegal, and it is to some extent. However, legal experts find it difficult to entirely pinpoint and stop the unwanted gathering of artworks specifically because the collection of images stored is not spread publicly. Merely the mashing of these artworks is making crediting extremely difficult.

Perhaps the combination of these two topics is that artists now fear the extinction of their jobs. A phrase you might often hear from any medical professor or law enforcer is “I hope for a day when this world no longer needs my job,” under the assumption that this ideal world is one where people are healthy and happy, abiding by the law; however, one job that was supposed to never have been targeted by robotic redundancies was the human ability to create, to be creative and to learn. Yet, the existence of AI art threatens that. In addition, the shadow ban from Twitter and the recent swarm of AI art enjoyers (primarily focusing on people who followed NFTs for a while) now threaten the existence of aspiring artists, young artists, and marginalized artists. At the same time, their hard work put into creation does not find the light of public viewing but the compilation of robotic mixing and mashing.

As 2022 comes to an end, the light at the end of the tunnel for artists still has not been reached; in more recent days, the polarization and public access to these generators have increased, leading more people to argue with each other. While Twitter is no stranger to arguing, it doesn’t stop the onslaught of unethical gatherings or artwork, nor the suppression of smaller artists just trying to make a living. There’s no contest that AI artwork is, at times, very beautiful, but its effects on a community and entire career are frightening.

As an artist and frequent social media user spreading my artwork, this hits very close to home, and it is worrying to think that in a few years, jobs like animation or character design might also be threatened by the adaptation of AI.