We Still Pay for Artisan Goods
Every day, people are making purchase decisions across products and brands. We often give more value to artisan or homemade products over industrial products: bakery cookies over packaged cookies, farmer’s market berries over large brand berries. Pet owners are cooking for their pets instead of giving them kibble. Diners are spending more for high end restaurants over fast food convenience. Shoppers spend more on handmade leather goods over machine-made products.
But there’s also huge industry of machine-made or -assisted products people buy every day. Machines make products well at lower cost and higher speed, leading to better affordability for the consumer. Sometimes, the machine-made product might be better quality than the hand-made product. I know the basics of sewing, but I would not trust my hand sewing over a sewing machine. The machine will product a better result - especially if it’s used by a fashion professional and not me.
AI is just a machine. I don’t understand why people expect it to produce work better than artisans. I am not a musician so, using AI to write a song, will create a better result than me trying to compose. I have to admit to really enjoying videos posted on social media of recipe comments set to song by AI. The creator who is posting recipe comments is not a musician, so that song is better than if they composed it themselves, but the song wouldn’t exist if the creator didn’t have a tool. They wouldn't pay a musician to write a song for recipe comments, but AI is cheap and makes a good-enough product for this use.
If we are so accepting of machine-made goods, why aren’t we accepting of machine-made art? Call it what it is: creative junk food that is cheap and satisfying. Want something authentic to watch or listen to? Maybe something that will challenge you and push you out of your comfort zone? Go discover artists pouring their souls into their work. You get what you pay for. If you’re paying the streamers for access to authentic art, go use it for its full potential. Otherwise, AI can make you something cheap but bland.
Just as we pay bakers for high quality cookies and bread, let’s pay artists for high quality art. Human produced work is a luxury good that deserves to be valued for the expertise and time that goes into its creation.
