The market sees a source of profit in the effort required to become and remain an artist

As anyone who has actually been an art student can tell you, it’s not a state you can just slip into. Unless you already have lots of money, you often have to swim against powerful social and practical currents just to become and remain an art student, let alone get somewhere with your art. Generally, institutions that are supported by the concentration of effort and money created by a body of striving art students do well as long as the striving continues, not whether it produces good art, happy art students, or successful art careers. In this sense, schools are platforms, art students are the users, and the art making is the traffic that keeps the platforms profitable. The actual art that gets made is the user-generated content that makes the platform interesting to new users. “AI Art” and the owners of the tools that produce it are quickly turning this analogy into reality (“reifying” it in art-speak). For that and many other reasons, I don’t think we should just slide onto a new version of this sort of platform without examining its terms and what agency we might retain for ourselves in joining – or refusing to do so.