"I Just Don't Want My Work Being Fed Into The AI Blender": Queer Artists on Refusing and Resisting Generative AI

TL;DR

This paper explores how queer artists resist and interpret the impact of generative AI on their art practices, emphasizing community, identity, and political resistance.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into queer artists' perspectives on AI, highlighting their refusal, resistance, and limited engagement with GenAI in art-making.

Findings

Queer artists perceive GenAI as anti-relational to their art practices.

Participants actively refuse and resist the use of GenAI.

Limited role for GenAI identified, with some potential in surreal image models.

Abstract

Art-making is a collective social activity through which queer people engage in political resistance, develop identities, archive queer memory, and form community. However, in recent years, generative AI has disrupted queer artistic communities. Through 15 semi-structured interviews, we examine how queer artists are making sense of the encroachment of GenAI into their art worlds. Our findings surface significant tensions between the relationality of our participants' queer art practices and the perceived anti-relationality of GenAI development and use. We detail how our participants refuse and resist GenAI use and development in response and highlight the limited role our participants saw for GenAI within art-making, such as the queer aesthetic potential of surreal image models. Drawing on queer theory, we discuss how CSCW researchers might support queer artists by refusing dominant AI imaginaries and supporting queer world-building.