Meta's AI Stole All My Friend's Books

It's not really a secret that AI language models are trained on stolen writing (and image models are trained on stolen visual art), but we don't really know the extent to which they're stealing. Realistically, we can kind of assume that they're stealing everything they can. Knowing the unsustainable "growth at all costs" business model of this country, I'd say it's pretty safe to assume.

A couple weeks ago, The Atlantic published an article calling out Meta for downloading what appears to be the entire Library Genesis catalog. If you don't know, Library Genesis is an enormous catalog of torrentable books. So big really that you could find nearly any book that has a small amount of attention. Again, I think we knew that these AI language models were using pirated books, but we don't know the extent. But this article gives us an idea, at least in the book space.

Of course no one was compensated and no one was aware. Their stories and their writing were taken for free to help Meta make money, a pretty perfect definition of theft. But I know that and if you're subscribed to my newsletter, I'm willing to bet you know that too. What's on my heart today is what this means for our culture, how we create art, and the erasure of history. The burning of books, if you will.

The Fundamental Misunderstanding of Art

I've seen a lot of comments from AI "art" defenders claiming that AI is "finally making art accessible" or that "they're artists too." And every single one of them has a fundamental misunderstanding of what art actually is. Art isn't the final result, art is the process. It isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. If it were about the destination alone, then it would simply be a product. Of course, I suppose that is their goal.

Art is arguably one of the most accessible things that exists. Humans have been making art for hundreds of thousands of years, no exaggeration. Anyone can pick up a pencil and a piece of paper and make art. Art is not defined by how "good" or "bad" it is, art is defined by the act of creating something. Art is the tool that we use to help us understand ourselves, the world, and our place within the world.

It's a way for us to communicate with each other, to be vulnerable with each other, in a way that we may not be able to otherwise. It's a way for us to share each our pain, joy, and humanity with each other, connecting us together more deeply than we can achieve in any other way. It's a way for us to look deeply within ourselves and release our buried joys and fears and pains into something beautiful. Just as we create languages to be able to connect with one another more deeply, we also create art.

AI "artists" don't want art to be accessible to them, they want the product to be free. They want skill to be accessible to them without putting in the passion, time, energy, love, and pain into it. The very emotions that make humanity so beautiful. They have a desire to bypass the very thing that makes us human.

But even if we say they do that, then what?

How Many Artists Will We Lose?

Considering AI models currently steal directly from work that is being created today, theoretically it could write a compelling story or illustrate a compelling piece today (I know, I know, stay with me). But if we begin undercutting artists in favor of using AI, we will very quickly lose human artists for lack of work. And while I do believe that we're creative beings in our soul, we're still under capitalism's boot and we all need money to eat.

How long before young creatives give up on their dreams of becoming an artist because there's no longer a way to keep a roof over your head and food on your table? Then where will the AI models steal from? What happens when the well of stolen art runs dry? It begins iterating on itself with no new input, learning from it's own mistakes and magnifying them into an iterative infinity?

But how much art do we lose in this process? How much art will never get the chance to exist? The thought of all the art that we have lost because it was never able to exist under capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy... This is already one of my life's biggest griefs. Perhaps that's another newsletter.

OpenAI Steals Studio Ghibli's Style

Last week, my brief stints of doomscrolling were littered with Studio Ghibli mimics thanks to OpenAI introducing a filter that hijacked Studio Ghibli's art style. Suddenly, anyone was able to turn their own photos into a "Ghibli Aesthetic." I saw water bottles, sunsets, street trash, weddings in a mock Ghibli style. The Israeli Occupational Forces even hopped on the trend and used the filter on genocidal soldiers in what feels like the most direct antithesis to all of Ghibli's art.

Aside from the fact that it was so popular that they had to shut it down to cool their GPUs from melting, it was taken from Studio Ghibli without permission or compensation. Tens of thousands of images of weddings, animals, water bottles, and sunsets flooded social media, because everyone just had to have a Ghibli image "of their own."

I've spent every day since thinking about the consequences of this filter and others like it that will inevitably pop up. Perhaps the thing that bothers me the most is that it makes me worry that the meaning behind art will too easily be stripped from the art itself because of mass dilution. My favorite things about Miyazaki is that he's very staunchly anti-war and his works emphasize how critical radical imagination is.

Side note: that isn't even going into his criticisms of humans part in climate change. Do you know how much water it takes to cool down melting GPUs?

Anti-war messaging is especially important right now as we're in a time in history where being anti-war is deeply valuable (we always are, but I digress). Every one of Miyazaki's works has nods to the horrors of war or the small pieces of humanity that get trampled in war time. His use of radical imagination always opens my heart and mind to thinking outside of our own reality. They remind me that just because things are the way that they are right now, they don't always have to me. That we can build an entirely new world from the small beauties of the world. In an anarchist way, of course.

We're Losing More than Just Artists

And when every piece of your art includes the heart and soul of your anti-war messaging and radical imagination, your messaging and style intermingle. Your style becomes your messaging. The two combined become your signature. Even more prevalent for writers because your own personal story so clearly underscores your writing, but this is true in all art. Our art is a manifestation of how we see the world.

But what happens when the internet floods with images in your style without your heart and soul? What becomes of your messaging in relation to your style? What happens to your signature?

We say that you can't separate the art from the artist because the art is part of the artist, because the art and the artist are one. But maybe we stand corrected and this is the way we sever the artist from themselves, how we butcher our connection to one of the most human parts of ourselves.

Art Movements Parallel History

To someone who doesn't consider themselves to be an artist, though I would argue that we all are, it can feel like art is simply about the pretty final product. But art is the tool that we use to understand the world, it's the output that comes after the input of living and learning. It's a conversation with other artists, your community, and the world, it's not just a pretty product. As such, art movements parallel what is happening in peoples lives, meaning they parallel what is happening in the world.

During the Great Depression we see an uptick of pieces that advocate for labor unions and communist and socialist causes. But you also see propaganda for Roosevelt's New Deal. You can even see criticisms of the rise in fascism of the time. All of this art together creates a conversation between the people, the government, and the culture. Looking back at them from today, we can paint a picture of this time in history. Because art is part of the historical record.

This capitalist society works endlessly to convince us that value is only in the product and not the process, the part that can be sold for profit. This systematic art theft that is "AI art" is no exception to the current events parallel. Consuming goods and entertainment at a record breaking rate means that the extraction of resources also happens at a record breaking rate. Just as Nestle privatizes free water to be sold back to us, my friends books were taken for free by Meta to be sold back to us, Studio Ghibli's style was taken by OpenAI for free to be sold back to us.

These "AI artists" will say "art is finally accessible to us", but it's a product that they don't have to pay for that is accessible to them. The product without the introspection and connection to the world required to create art, the introspection and connection they're likely afraid of.

And just as the world is at risk of a global water crisis, if all the art that people makes get stolen from them and stripped of it's meaning, the well of skilled artists will also run dry. Because if we can no longer get paid for our art and the intention can be stripped from it so easily, how many artists will be forced out? And without those artists, how much historical context would we lose? And we're back to the burning of books.

How Do We Create Anti-War Art?

Let me share with you what keeps me up at night, and I'm keeping it overly simplistic for the sake of example. Imagine someone shakes the world with a collection of radical, anti-war art that touches the hearts and souls of billions. An artist or a collective that takes our collective breath away and makes us reconsider our place within the wars of a few powerful men. A message so clearly woven through all of their pieces that it reverberates the humanity of us all through each of us individually.

How quickly could someone feed this collection into an AI model to create a Studio Ghibli style filter that can produce hundreds of thousands of pieces that look exactly the same but without the message? They could probably do it faster than the collection could even manage to shake the world.

The thing is that I think that iterative learning will cannibalize itself eventually. I mean, have you ever had a conversation with someone who can't seem to contribute anything to the conversation? You know those times when you say something and the person just repeats it back to you in different words? You know the kind. Without you in this conversation, it would spiral into gibberish.

The real question is: will it be too late? Will the experts have already left the field? Or rather, been forced out? Without the experts contributing half of the conversation, how much of our history will have already been lost as it spirals into gibberish?