It doesn’t take much analysis to conclude that the push by some people to accept Generative AI as a valid tool is rooted in a strange sense of entitlement. They act as if they deserve to be artists without doing the work required to be an artist. They talk as if all it takes to make someone an artist is the desire to have made art–sans the actual process of making it. They fixate on the product and ignore the process, brushing it all off as if the stages between idea and realization are irrelevant.

How do these people arrive at the erroneous conclusion that simply having an idea is the hard part, or the valuable aspect of artistry?

As near as I can tell, every artist I know has dozens of ideas popping into their heads daily. Most of these ideas are immediately dismissed. Some get a pin put in them, just in case they come back around. And a small minority get recorded or memorized for later evaluation. Of those that get recorded, a smaller number survive further evaluation and analysis. Sometimes an idea that seems good ends up feeling too derivative, less captivating than it initially seemed, or otherwise not worth pursuing. This leaves us with a minuscule number of ideas that reach conceptualization or outlining, and sometimes those turn into fully-realized creations.

That is the largest part of what it is to be an artist. We kill our darlings far more often than we breathe life into them, and sometimes they don’t get culled until we’ve dedicated substantial time to the process of bringing them to life.

The idea isn’t the hard part; it’s transforming that idea into something worth the time, effort, and bandwidth that is challenging. It’s the research, writing, rewriting, and polishing that takes the most time.

Are all of these Generative AI advocates really so solipsistic that they believe they are the only ones who have artistic ideas? Or is it that they aren’t like the artists I know, and ideas rarely (if ever) come to them, leading them to believe that simply having an idea makes them special?

Are there other careers or hobbies about which people feel entitled to participate?

Do they look at physicists, chemists, physicians, pilots, attorneys, sculptors, woodworkers, and others, the whole time thinking they’re entitled to be one of them too? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around looking at people in most professions and sincerely thinking, “I should be able to do what they’re doing without any of the study, practice, and effort.” None of it comes without work. I don’t care if it’s a teacher, a custodian, or the person jockeying a register at a fast food establishment; they don’t get to wave a magic wand or type in some magic words to get where they are.

What is it about artistic pursuits like music, literature, and the visual arts that have so many people believing they deserve to enjoy the outcomes without any of the effort and time involved?

This isn’t remotely similar to digital cameras and editing replacing film-loaded cameras and dark rooms, or machines taking over where sweatshop labor used to be the standard. Yes, some people lost their jobs due to technological changes, as various specializations became obsolete. But new careers emerged, and many of the same skills translated into the new environments. Photographers still had to know how to take photos (framing and composition, lighting, shutter speed, and so on) and learn to apply what they knew to digital processing of their photos. Machines that replaced sweatshop workers and manual laborers still needed designs and plans to work from. They still required maintenance and quality assurance, and the most skilled workers often still had related work to do, with some new technology involved.

Generative AI is not the same as Analytical or Assistive AI applications, such as search algorithms, spell check, speech-to-text, and other things we take for granted in everyday life. Those are tools that do little more than simplify and streamline certain processes. They don’t replace the human at the core of the creative process.

Pretending that Generative AI is just another tool is like saying that Michelangelo was a tool for the Catholic Church when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Commissioning a piece of art, whether it’s a sculpture or a digital painting, does not make you an artist. That remains the case, no matter how particular you are or how detailed your descriptions happen to be. The U.S. Supreme Court appears to share this perspective, refusing to hear a case arguing that one should be able to copyright the product of Generative AI.

All the arguments in favor of Generative AI are disingenuous. They fall apart under the most rudimentary scrutiny. This is especially true for the folks making the fatuous claim that opposing Generative AI is ableist. The best part about those arguments is that the people making them are the ones with an ableist perspective, infantilizing and patronizing disabled people by talking as if people with disabilities aren’t capable of creating art. Beethoven was deaf before he completed some of his most magnificent compositions, for fuck’s sake. And he’s far from the only example. People with disabilities of all kinds have been creating art for as long as we’ve been creating art, and they’ve been doing it well. These disingenuous assholes–never seemingly disabled themselves–want to pretend that Generative AI is some sort of great equalizer for disabled people.

The only equalizing taking place is pandering to those who don’t want to take the necessary time or exert the necessary effort, while enjoying instant gratification. I’ve heard several arguments in favor of Generative AI centered around people being too busy to sit down and write. Most of us are just as busy. Most authors work full-time jobs while they’re writing. Many of them have children to provide for and other responsibilities. It can take years to get from the first line to the conclusion of a book, even for people who have the luxury of writing as a career. Michael Crichton spent two decades writing Sphere and the better part of a decade writing Jurassic Park. This isn’t a new development. The Catcher in the Rye required a decade of work on the part of J. D. Salinger. Hell, it took me roughly 20 years to write my second novel, Innocence Ends. During these extended periods, what’s being written can undergo so many changes that the final product barely resembles what the author originally had in mind.

While entitlement may be the root cause for the use of Generative AI, it’s greed that keeps the corporations overextending themselves and overpromising all the way to the bank. They plan to take away an artist’s ability to profit from their art, while profiting from the use of Generative AI to produce shitty, lackluster facsimiles of art.

All of this, of course, ignores the theft of Intellectual Property by corporations that aggressively defend their own. It ignores the massive energy consumption of even seemingly innocuous tasks processed through Generative AI. It ignores the out-of-control spending on data centers that spike energy demand without paying proportionate costs, while draining water supplies and often poisoning the groundwater for the regions where the data centers are built.

Generative AI is not providing a net positive to our society or culture, and in the end, the only people who stand to benefit from it are those controlling the service.