Generative AI Is Not Free

One of the occasional defenses of generative AI is that it quote-unquote ‘democratizes’ art and writing — and then, as with the NaNoWriMo statement yesterday, it becomes somehow problematic to condemn generative AI, because what, do you hate DEMOCRACY? Do you not want everyone to have access to art and writing? Oh! Oh! Somebody doesn’t want the competition, doesn’t want the masses to rise up with the FREEDOM of their RENEWED ACCESS to ART and STORY, you PRIVILEGED ELITE BASTARD.

But I think it’s important to take the air out of these things (often by kicking the absolute shit out of them).

Generative AI is not democracy.

Generative AI is not free.

Because that’s the cornerstone of the idea, right? It’s a freely accessible tool that evens the playing field.

But generative AI has considerable costs.

Let’s go through them.

1. Money, Cash, Ducats, Coin

Access to much of generative AI will cost you actual money in many cases, though certainly it’s also becoming freely accessible at some levels — and more and more services are forcibly cramming it into their existing platforms, which, I’d like to note, is seriously fucking annoying. I’m waiting for the day where my microwave tries to write and sell its “slam poetry.”

Still, free now isn’t free forever. I mean, the “first taste is free” drug deal rule applies here, c’mon. They get you interested, you use it, and suddenly it costs more, and more, and then more again. They have to do this. The development of this fucking nonsense horseshit has been a billions-of-dollars investment. They want that money back, and if that means they have to put it on a chip and have Elon Musk fire it into your skull with a modified .22 rifle, then that’s how they’ll do it. If it remains free to use, then that means it’ll come with advertising jackhammered into it. (“Every time I ask it a question, it answers ‘Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme,’ wtaf.”)

2. Future Money

Generative AI is meant as a disruptor. And classically, disruption is not always a good thing. (One might argue it’s rarely a good thing.) Big shiny new tech company shows up, reinvents a thing by offering it cheaply and loopholing its way around regulations, you get hooked, the older industry withers on the vine, the shiny new tech company nests inside the chest cavity of the older industry until its dead and it can erupt out from the carcass in a spray of blood and bone, and then it just charges you even more than the older industry did for what may potentially be a lesser product.

As such, the way one can currently earn money from art and writing is at risk thanks to the rise of generative AI. How this might happen is myriad — Amazon getting flooded with AI books makes it harder to find any book; companies learn they can generate “content” with the push of a button and either choose to do so or use the threat of doing so as leverage to reduce the money they will pay for art and for writing; generative AI’s implementation damages enough outlets for art and writing and sends them packing, which means fewer outlets for artists and writers, which lowers opportunity and, by proxy, money; generative AI acts as a labor scab during union disputes for creators; writers and artists are no longer hired to iterate and create but rather to “edit” and “fix” the work “created” by generative AI, which is to say, generative AI artbarf robots puke up a bunch of barely digested material and a company pays a cut-rate to once-notable writers and artists to push that slurry into some kind of shape, like they’re Richard Dreyfuss with the mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And that’s just a sampling.

Ultimately, it puts power in the hands of corporations and tech-bros, and removes the power from artists and writers. And will try to eat away at copyright laws to do so.

That’s not democracy. And it certainly doesn’t come free.

3. Future Artists, Future Writers

There is a literal human cost. There will be people going forward — and, I’m betting, there are people right now — who are going to turn away from the art-and-writing path because of this. I know kids who already look at those career paths with the question of, “What’s even the point?” There will be a bonafide brain drain from the bank of artists and writers. (Not to mention teachers, or any other career currently being targeted and poached by generative AI on behalf of awful corporations.)

(And here, my conspiratorial eye-twitch red-thread-on-a-bulletin-board personality comes out and says, well, that’s awfully convenient — we’ve already seen such a heavy lean into STEM and away from the Humanities, because artists and writers tend to be thinkers, philosophers, they tend to have empathy, they tend to be less interested in the hustle culture churn of corporate life, and this only drives that nail in deeper, doesn’t it?)

Again, doesn’t sound like it’s democritizing shit. Anything that makes it harder and less likely to become a thing isn’t democritizing that thing.

4. The Costs of Actual Theft

Uh yeah, it steals shit. That’s how it works. It can’t do it without stealing shit. They’ve admitted it. Out loud. I don’t know how to explain to you the very real cost of having your work yanked out of the ether and thrown into the threshing maw of generative AI so your creations can become hunks of fake meat in their artbarf stew. But the cost isn’t metaphorical. It’s literal.

Once again, that’s not democritizing anything. It’d be like saying, “Ahh, Google has stolen your vote, and will vote on your behalf. How wonderful! You don’t even need to do it, now. We’ll handle it for you, for free. See? We’ve democritized democracy!”

God, even as I typed that out it feels alarmingly possible.

*shudder*

5. Environmental Cost

You don’t need to look far to learn about the environmental costs of generative AI. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s here, and even casual use can increase the burden on our environment.

A sampling of things to read:

How AI’s Insatiable Energy Demands Jeopardize Big Tech’s Climate Goals

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

AI brings soaring emissions for Google and Microsoft, a major contributor to climate change

We’re in danger of turning away from our already too lax environmental goals. We need coal and other fossil fuels gone, we need to protect water usage, and here comes AI to gobble up the water and our power and force us onto our back heel, all because some dickheads want a robot to lie to them about how many giraffes they see in Starry Night or because they need the magic computer to draw for them a picture of a 13-fingered Donald Trump freeing White Jesus from the cross with a couple of M-16s.

The only thing that’s democritizing is the death of our natural environment. Wow, nice work, Tech Bros. Guess that’s why Google removed their plan to DO NO EVIL from their mission statement.

6. The Damage to Informational Fidelity

It is increasingly hard to tell truth from fiction. Visually, textually, it’s getting easier and easier to just… lie, and to do so with effective facsimiles made from generative AI. Trump posting that Taylor Swift endorsed him, or creepy videos from Twitter’s AI showing Kamala Harris covered in blood and taking hostages, so newer abilities on a phone to just take an image and edit in whatever you want with the touch of a button — a giraffe, a bloody hammer, a hypodermic needle, a child’s toy, a sex toy, a loaded gun, whatever. The laws are far far too slow to catch this. This will be propaganda, given a nuclear-grade steroid injection. This will be revenge porn, god-tier level.

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To sum up?

AI isn’t free.

It isn’t sustainable.

It isn’t democratizing a damn thing.

The tools and skills to create are already available. No, not perfectly, and no, the industries surrounding art and storytelling are certainly imperfect. But AI doesn’t push the existing imbalance into the favor of artists and writers, but rather, the opposite. And as it does so, it burns the world and fucks with our ability to tell truth from fiction, even right from wrong.

It’s weird. It’s horrible. I kinda hate it. I hope we all realize how absolutely shitty it is, and we can eventually shove its head in the toilet, same as we did with NFTs and crypto. Shove it in, give a good couple flushes.

Anyway. Buy my books or I die. Thanks!