Hey, y’all. Lazarus here once again. I had some Thoughts while I was uploading the images from Hawthorne‘s board in my last post and some time on my hands, so I’m gonna write them out before I lose my train of thought. Therefore, y’all get a twofer here on Open Sorcery today. Wheee.

I noticed while I was uploading Hawthorne’s images that most of them were likely generated with AI. That got me thinking about how everyone is how up in arms about how unethical AI “art” is. I completely agree with them, for the record. However, unless a person is seriously lucky, generative AI is often  most people’s only option. Seriously, unless you’re fucking financially blessed, how many people can you count on one hand that can afford to commission an artist and have it not break their bank? Furthermore, how many people do you know, if you are one of those blessed few, that actually do commission artists?

Generative AI is absolutely fucking unethical, absolutely fucks artists up the ass with Joseph cacti, but I would also argue that it’s a symptom of a much larger problem. And that problem is capitalism. Most people nowadays struggle to make ends meet because they’re living paycheck to paycheck and are too fucking tired to create. Call me crazy, but I would bet everything I have that the people responsible for designing these generative AI programs are very aware of this fact and taking advantage of that rather than creating conditions that are favorable for actual fucking human creativity.

This creates an ethical quandary wherein people would like to express themselves but either cannot make the art by themselves due to burnout or what have you, cannot afford to pay an artist, resort to generative AI, and artists get screwed over in the process. More and more people are becoming aware of this quandary, but there is no better option available until or unless the root of the problem gets fixed.

I hate it. I wish the tech bros would do what their ancestors did in the Renaissance and hire a Gremlin or Gremlins to paint shit for them and dunk on their enemies. But instead, we have fucking CHATGPT and increasingly shit architecture and infrastructure.

In conclusion, can every billionaire attempt to colonize Mars and fail miserably already so we don’t have to deal with their fuckery anymore?

Thank you for coming to my rant. Stay tuned for more magic, lovely gremlins. May a rich, bored fucker with too much money and too many enemies hire you as their personal Art Gremlin. ✨

-Lazarus