In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
You come across as anti-tech out of spite. Yes, generative AI is snake oil, but that is a question of scope and power and speculation, not utility of easy to create pictures.
I am so happy with the vast amount of free art available these days. As a blogger, it's easier than ever to find a free topical picture.
"hooray convenience, fuck your livelihood."
This is literally how everyone behaved when bank tellers were replaced by ATMs, when coal diggers were replaced by drills, when daily laborers were replaced by tractors, when Morse code operators were replaced by the telephone, when travel agents were replaced by websites, when warehouses and factories started delivering you your Amazon package in 1 day instead of 5 because they replaced humans with machines...
And now that technology is coming for artists instead of all the other jobs it replaced so far, now you wanna go back to the way things were?
Get with the times. I don't wish this situation upon anyone, it's devastating to see your profession reduced to a few clicks, but it's silly to say "nah, THIS change is crossing the line". Hundreds of millions of people before you lost their job to new tech. Let me know when you hire a town crier instead of whipping out your phone and searching for the news, and I'll hire you for a painting instead of getting AI to apply some paint-like filters on a photo. Until then, I'm sorry but your job is in the process of being rendered obsolete, like so many others before it.
Who said this is where I draw the line? My job isn't under threat from AI until it can actually reason, which an LLM will never achieve. Or at least, we'd better hope not because professorGPT is just a confident moron at the moment. That's not how the foundational technology works. It may be able to amalgamate something convincing enough to pass for people who don't care, but it will never understand art. Hell, it can barely produce usable code and that is with the tremendous benefit of defined syntax, which art does not have.
Drills didn't have to steal the expertise of diggers to operate, and the diggers became the drillers because they knew where to dig and how to not die in the process. Telephones didn't immediately cut out skilled labor and many became switchboard operators. Day laborers are still hired every day? Do you even understand how dumb your argument is?
Gen AI has nothing without being fed source material, if that material is not being paid for or in the public domain, it is just plain theft. Any other argument you want to make is going to have to reconcile with that fundamental problem first. Until then all you're doing is advocating for the wealthy to own everything because you get to say "but it's convenient, fuck the consequences."
Also the irony of championing AI in a solarpunk community of all places. The current model is as bad as it could be through the lens of solarpunk ideology.