Common Loot

I woke up to an image of a man being thrown in handcuffs by what could only be an immigration officer. This piece of artwork happened to be developed by generative AI and constructed with the Studio Ghibli flair. Under it were my friend’s words in a text bubble reading “The country is shot.”

This is going to be quite the stream of consciousness that I have because I am under-caffeinated and exhausted by everything.

I really wondered why someone would want to create this content to begin with. I know that there is a veil of racism that is slowly being cast upon us using techniques like leveraging Gen AI. But if it is just a one-off situation that someone created “for the lulz” I feel that we are doing a great job shooting it down. But that doesn’t stop the spread of people talking about the use of Studio Ghibli’s signature style in anything separating itself from the political spectrum.

Founded by Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, Studio Ghibli went on to create movies that had heartwarming stories and a unique art style that made everyone fall in love. Everyone has a favorite Studio Ghibli movie. I recall watching Spirited Away at a very young age multiple times over. It was the pure uniqueness of the style that drew me in. I would be in my late teens where I stumbled upon Princes Mononoke and took in it’s themes and messages.

For someone who doesn’t insert themselves into the world of anime often, I can see why people would be drawn to it. My younger brother has a tattoo paying homage to My Neighbor Totoro, and I also gifted him an artbook over the holidays. His own display for the love of Studio Ghibli is literally worn on his sleeve.

It makes sense that the world of Tech Bros would try to leverage this love into a form that essentially removes the love, passion, and anxiety caused by one’s stress over the lines. Being an artist and hoping that someone out there would understand exactly what it is that you are trying to present is a whole other area of madness that a ton of people can easily understand… except those in the tech world.

We have seen it tons of times before, from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg dancing on a stage to present some hardware to Tim Cook telling me that a newly enhanced Siri will actually help me when I never fucking use it to begin with. These people don’t understand what it means to be an artist and create something, and the only ones who understand less are the ones peddling AI.

Artists as a whole have abandoned any idea that AI could help them. That AI could generate the framework in which they could use to pivot into something else, and to me that feels inherently false. It is designed to skip steps that are necessary for one’s understand and growth. You will never become good at the thing unless you continue to try the thing over and over again. I am only writing this because I have spent years upon years, pulling my hair out and wondering “will anyone get this?” AI cannot do that. I’m sure those who are programming it have, but they will never be the ones who hope they are as a person are understood.

Robots do not create artwork, the soul does. And the tech bros who are here to use Studio Ghibli’s works lack one along with corporate executives too. This is because they have given their entire lives as slaves to capitalistic dogma, scoffing at the idea that artwork is important. Need proof? Artists and creatives have been getting scammed for ages now, becoming underpaid for creating some of the biggest blockbusters you have ever heard of. Often times, creatives developing the complex fight scenes in any Marvel movie are making pennies compared to even the bonuses that executives receive. SFX artists, actors, and plenty more have been fighting for a better life.

It isn’t easy in the gaming world either, where there are constant layoffs just when a company’s stock price rockets up into the stratosphere, claiming they have record breaking profits over the past several years. But I digress.

Tech people who “dabbled” with the generative AI art, believe it or not, have a sense of artistic sense within them. At least this is a strong belief I have because why go after the world of art when you could actually benefit society in other ways. But to them, art is easy. They have this interest in it but no drive to pick up a pencil and sketch something. They are missing the entire point of art in the first place and it’s because they just feel like they can’t do it.

Instead, these tech bros are taking this “love of art” that they have which is purely on a surface level and trying to quantify it in a way that makes sense to them. Their struggle is the program itself and getting it to work but that isn’t what art is, and somehow this is incomprehensible to them. They haven’t shown an interest in the arts before or told that money is more important, but now they entered into a moment of their lives where something is missing from it. Money is great, it keeps me housed and living but it doesn’t do what I want it to do. These people have money but it doesn’t give them the creativity that they strive for.

It doesn’t matter how much “art” they put out. It doesn’t matter how “cool” they seem. They’ve never had the heart of a starving artist. They’ve never painted their feelings into a canvas for the world to see. They could continue to try to put a song together, or draft a sonnet, discover emotions through the art of poetry. These are all elements of life that enrich the soul, that brings people together in ways that even I take for granted. When we feel alone we can pick up a book or look at the world from a different perspective because someone picked the right colors that perfectly displayed their feelings. And sometimes we laugh because an artist was able to craft the most elaborate dick joke known to man.

We laugh, we cry, we become lost in thought because of art and the struggle to create it.