Down with the Gatekeepers! Who…are Artists, Apparently

Of all the arguments put forth by the hype-bros for Generative AI, this one is perhaps the most perplexing. And it deserves serious scrutiny.

If you spend enough time in certain circles (*cough* LinkedIn *cough*), you’ll no doubt come across a rather peculiar line of argumentation extolling the world-changing virtues of the slop machines. We are told that these services aren’t to be lauded merely on the merits of what they can do for us in the course of performing creative work, but also for this reason: armed with access to these services, you can Take Down The Man .

And by “The Man”, they mean… artists .

Yes. Artists are the new gatekeepers. People who dedicated their lives to the pursuit of craft and of bettering themselves, collaborating with other creators and adding their unique voices to the human continuum of artistic traditions, are apparently attempting to block the next generation of artists who use Generative AI as their “brush and canvas” !!

Let’s for the sake of argument take these treatises at face value. Is Hollywood really cooked? Are the mighty lords of art & software about to be taken down by the masses wielding genAI prompts? Is this the next Internet content revolution, bigger even than the original Internet?