What does Generative AI mean for the working classes?

The internet has been flooded with AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli, the animation studio founded by the famous Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki. What made Studio Ghibli’s work so special was not only its distinctive style but also the fact that the images were all hand-drawn.

The contrast between the high skill and hard labour of the original Studio Ghibli images and the Ghibli-style pictures churned out by ChatGPT-4o couldn’t be starker.

The easy proliferation of Studio Ghibli images through Gen AI has once again put the spotlight on questions about what generative AI means for the working classes, and for the value of their intellectual labour.

Is Gen AI another chapter in the history of automation and deskilling? Is it a means to enhance worker surveillance? And what does it mean for the future of the ‘creator-economy’?

Guest: Jason Resnikoff, Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands.

Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu

Edited by Jude Weston