As somebody who almost went into the video game industry, I look at it the same way I look at people saying that you should buy a game “to support the devs” even if the company has all kinds of issues like not paying their workers well.

With games and movies, the workers already got paid. Whether you buy the game or not doesn’t affect the devs at triple A companies - they got paid before it shipped, and the same with movie actors. They did their job and got paid, so meme away without a care. In that sense, movies and games are the exact opposite of the generative AI issue. You wanna play the latest Ubisoft or Activision-Blizzard slop? Pirating it and somehow finding a way to slip the devs 20 bucks for the beer fund is far more helpful to them than paying $70+ for it at retail.

Memes are honestly the perfect content to make with generative AI. The only issue is that the software we have right now is made by companies taking the work of others and not giving them their due. We aren’t doing it with a profit incentive, but they are. Which puts us in a situation where people want the reward of making art without putting in the effort or paying somebody else to put in the effort. It’s like these companies are selling coloring books of stolen artwork. You can’t link back to the original artists (if you could even spot the style of one specific artist in the generated image), so you can’t even bring attention to them. Making a meme out of art posted on social media can actually be a great advertisement for the artist (so long as people know where and how to find them) because that’s often part of the reason why artists post their art on social media in the first place. They’re advertising their skills to people who want to commission artwork. When people repost art without a source, they can actively harm the original artist. I’ve seen tons of artists complain about how reposts of their work by bot accounts will get thousands of views and likes while the original post on their account will get like one hundred views.

The tech is great, but the companies making it aren’t. And by using it, you generate revenue for them and incentivize them to continue their malicious practices. Until we’re in a position where artists are being fairly compensated, we need to be mindful of where this stuff is coming from.

One of the companies that makes one of the big digital art programs partnered up with a website design company a few months ago that is using gen AI in their website template maker. But, this company has hired artists to make the stuff that they’re training the program on, and the artists get royalties out of it. That’s how it should be - the artists got paid for their efforts, they get the credit that they’re due, and nobody has to spend all day making stupid buttons for a website UI.

Image generators are not an essential resource. They’re a luxury. Using that as justification to keep doing a corporation and exploiting the working class just makes you a class traitor for convenience who doesn’t want to feel guilty about it. Like buying stuff from Amazon or Starbucks right now while their workers are both in the middle of massive strikes.

Some consumption is less ethical than others. If you wouldn’t buy stuff made in sweatshops, then why are you okay with putting artists in the same position? Until we get image generators that are open source and pay artists to use their work, we should stand with our fellow working class in solidarity.

It’s easily missed, especially in the form of text. There’s too many people who believe crazier things to not take stuff at face value, I know.