Between Automatons and Ghosts
Artificial Intelligence and Creative Work Crisis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2238-2046.2024.48375Keywords:
Artificial intelligence, Creative work, Aesthetics, Hollywood, FashionAbstract
In the wake of the writers' and actors' strike in Hollywood and the first AI Fashion Week – events that took place in 2023 – this paper investigates the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on creative work. To this end, it demystifies AI through an analysis of its constituent elements, revealing, on the one hand, the immense and multifaceted chain of exploitation of human labor that lies beneath the veneer of “artificial intelligence”; and demonstrating, on the other, how AI depends – for its training and operation – on the prior and indiscriminate appropriation of all human culture available online. The conclusion is that AI, by appropriating the uncredited and unpaid work of generations of human artists,
fulfills the function of devaluing – or completely replacing – specialized creative work.
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