As an artist, I think it is a net negative for us. Disregarding the copyright issue, I think it’s also consolidating power into large corporations, going to kill learning fundamental skills (rip next generation of artists), and turn the profession into a low skill minimum wage job. Artists that spent years learning and perfecting their skills will be worth nothing and I think it’s a pretty depressing future for us. Anways thoughts?
Following this, I think we get to the question: is all image production ‘art’ even if it’s done by humans?
Well it depends widely on your premises, plus there are a lot of philosophical answers to what is art. Worse, I don’t see a standard Marxist answer to that. We could consider that separating art as a form of meaningful expression and art as the craft of images is pointless since both are labor therefore both are either free or alienated. But we could also consider that all form of signaling and practical applications of image-making aren’t sufficient to cultural life and therefore “art” without practical purpose should be distinguished in order to be preserved by materially supporting artists