For Kate

 


I’ve been thinking, given a project I’m finishing , about the AI debate, is it art, is it pollution, is it wrong? As much as I or any artist wants to do the right thing,  because we are artists we will do something and very few of us can afford the processes Kate and the others who signed that letter can. 
Does that make what we make bad? 
The studios represented in that photo began to close long before LLMs. We know the reasons: too costly. The gatekeepers of which she has become one don’t talk about that. Nor will they confront the streaming services. Instead they want to deprive the next generation of new tools more powerful and inclusive than any in the history of art. 
They should be paid for the use of their art to train the models. The use of AI to clone their voices and images to create fakes must be outlawed. I believe the EU is coming to that by legislation. The US is in the hands of criminals so it may be some time before things change here. China? China and huge swaths of Asia are intellectual piracy empires. The game goes on and as long as profit trumps rights, it always will. If you want that to stop become a mendicant hotei and turn off the Internet. 
But finally and the point, is it art? That is the wrong question. Is it beautiful? Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. It is a transcendant quality. Beauty transcends context or origin. It does not justify either. It simply is. In a broken world not everything is broken. 

It breaks my heart to defy her. More than I can say..


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