by Ronin Volf
I’ve been watching an interesting phenomenon unfold on social media, mainly on Threads. Artists, musicians, and writers—people who typically pride themselves on being progressive, open-minded, and forward-thinking—are increasingly vocal about wanting to return to the pre-AI days, when art was uniquely “human.”
Make Art Human Again, if you will.
The Psychology of Resistance
There’s fascinating research by psychologist John Jost and colleagues on the psychological underpinnings of political conservatism. Their work identifies core features like resistance to change, intolerance of ambiguity, and needs for order and closure as fundamental to conservative psychology. This isn’t about policy positions or voting behavior—it’s about how people respond to novelty and uncertainty.
And here’s the thing: you don’t have to be politically conservative to exhibit these psychological patterns. The anti-AI movement is a textbook case of progressive-identifying people displaying deeply conservative psychological responses to technological change.
To be clear, I’m not calling these artists right-wing. I’m observing that their reaction to AI—the fear, the calls to preserve traditional practices, the resistance to a new technology—mirrors the same psychological profile that characterizes conservative responses to change throughout history. When conservatives resist social change, we recognize it as reactionary. When artists resist technological change, it’s the same impulse with better branding.
The Openness Paradox
This conservative response is especially strange coming from artists. Artists are supposed to be high in openness to experience—it’s practically a job requirement. Experimentation, pushing boundaries, exploring new tools and techniques—this is supposedly what creative people do.
Yet we’re watching a large portion of the artistic community publicly reject what could be an incredibly interesting new medium for experimentation. This is conservative behavior: prioritizing the familiar over the novel, defending established practices against new possibilities, choosing comfort over curiosity.
And here’s where it gets even more interesting: we know from other fields—scientists, for instance—that people are using AI tools privately while maintaining anti-AI stances publicly. The social norm has become so powerful that even people who find AI useful feel compelled to hide it. This isn’t principled opposition; it’s social conformity. It’s conservative groupthink dressed up as progressive values.
When your community demands public rejection of a tool that people privately find valuable, you’re not witnessing openness to experience—you’re witnessing the enforcement of orthodoxy. That’s about as conservative as it gets.
I Get the Fear (Sort Of)
Now, I understand where some of this comes from. There’s a real fear that AI-generated content will flood the market and make it harder for human artists to find work or get noticed. That’s not an unreasonable concern. The anxiety about economic displacement is legitimate, and I don’t want to dismiss that entirely.
But here’s the thing about conservative psychology: it’s often rooted in genuine anxieties. Conservatives aren’t wrong that change can be disruptive and threatening. The question is whether the response to that anxiety is adaptive or simply reactive.
And the anti-AI response? It’s been almost entirely reactive—the most conservative form of problem-engagement there is.
Where Are the Creative Solutions?
Here’s what really reveals the conservative psychology at play: for a group of self-proclaimed creatives, there’s a remarkable lack of creative problem-solving. The response to AI has been complaints, doom-posting about environmental impacts, calls for bans and regulations—all forms of “stop the change from happening.”
But stating a problem isn’t the same as proposing a solution. Bitching about AI’s energy consumption doesn’t address how artists adapt to a changing landscape. Demanding that AI be banned or restricted doesn’t engage with the reality that the technology exists and isn’t going away.
Where are the innovative business models? The new ways of connecting with audiences? The creative adaptations to a new technological reality? This is where progressive, change-embracing thinking would shine. Instead, we get conservative impulses: regulate it, ban it, protect the old ways.
If you’re truly creative and open to experience, shouldn’t you be able to think creatively about your own survival? The lack of adaptive responses reveals that the conservative psychology runs deep.
The Entitlement Economy
This conservative mindset also shows up in the entitlement many artists display. But let’s be specific about what’s happening here.
Social media and digital platforms created a golden era for aspiring artists—roughly 2010 to the early 2020s. Suddenly, building an audience didn’t require gallery connections or industry gatekeepers. Instagram, DeviantArt, Patreon, TikTok—these platforms democratized access in ways that were genuinely revolutionary. You could post your work, build a following, maybe even make money through commissions and sponsorships.
A generation of artists came of age during this period. They learned that being an artist meant posting online, building a following, getting commissions. This became the expectation: create digital work, post it, build an audience, monetize.
But now we’re seeing the next wave of democratization—AI tools that let even more people create and share visual content. And the artists who benefited from the first wave of democratization are resisting the second wave. They rode one technological disruption to success and now want to freeze the landscape exactly where it benefits them most.
This is textbook conservative psychology: “The changes that helped me were good. The changes that threaten me are bad.”
For most of history, being an artist meant likely dying unknown and penniless. The brief window where online artists could build sustainable careers was an anomaly, not an entitlement. Progressive thinking would recognize this and adapt. Conservative thinking demands protection of a temporary advantage.
And here’s the kicker: anti-AI artists seem to believe they’re owed protection, owed an audience, owed a living from their craft. Meanwhile, people using AI tools to create—who might not have traditional artistic training but are genuinely experimenting and expressing themselves—are dismissed as not “real” creatives. Never mind that AI users often can’t even claim copyright on unmodified prompted content. They have fewer legal protections and less legitimacy than traditional artists. Yet somehow they’re the threat?
That’s conservative thinking: those with established positions fearing displacement by newcomers with different approaches.
The Capitalism Contradiction
Many anti-AI artists frame their opposition in anti-capitalist terms—AI is just corporations stealing labor, automating us out of existence, the usual late-stage capitalism grievances. And look, there’s something to that critique.
But here’s where the conservative psychology really shows: you can’t rail against capitalism while simultaneously insisting the system should protect your ability to make money from art. What anti-AI artists actually want is the benefits of capitalism—copyright protection, market control, ability to monetize creative work—without the downsides: competition, disruption, technological displacement.
That’s not anti-capitalist. That’s just wanting to be the protected class within capitalism. It’s wanting capitalism to work for you specifically while insulating you from its harsher realities. That’s a deeply conservative position.
If you actually held progressive, change-embracing values, you’d be asking: “How do I adapt? What new models can I create? How do I build genuine connections with people who value what I create?” Instead, the response is to demand regulatory protection—conservative instinct all the way down.
The Copyright Conundrum
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the argument that AI training on copyrighted work without permission is fundamentally different from human artistic influence. This is probably the strongest argument anti-AI advocates have, so it deserves examination.
First, the vast majority of artists—especially emerging digital artists on social media—likely didn’t have their work included in major training datasets. Training data typically came from large-scale public repositories, museum collections, stock photo sites, and widely available online sources. If your work was used, it was probably because it was publicly accessible online—which raises questions about what “protection” existed in the first place.
Second, AI-generated content from simple prompts, without sufficient human alteration, isn’t protected by copyright. It has no legal rights. It can technically be copied, shared, even sold by anyone without repercussion. So why are artists so afraid of content that has no legal protection? If anything, uncopyrighted AI content should be less threatening than human-made work that is protected.
Unless we’re being honest about what the fear actually is: it’s not about copyright or theft. It’s about competition and displacement.
And let’s talk about consistency. Are we going to protect all the artists making copyrighted content and showing it off for views on social media? What about the musicians playing cover songs on YouTube and TikTok? Artists have been casually flexible about copyright when it serves their interests—sharing, remixing, taking inspiration, working in established styles and genres.
The plagiarism argument reveals conservative thinking. Most artists constantly recreate existing ideas and styles. Influence, homage, working within genres and traditions—this is how art has always functioned. Every artist builds on what came before. Every musician learns by copying others. Every writer is influenced by their reading.
But now, suddenly, when AI does this at scale, it’s theft? That’s just conservative boundary-drawing: when we do it, it’s tradition and craft and influence. When they do it differently, it’s illegitimate and must be stopped.
The only real difference with AI is the scale and speed, not the fundamental nature of how creative influence operates. Rejecting it requires inventing new rules about authenticity and originality that conveniently protect established artists—classic conservative moves.
Reality Check
Let’s maintain some perspective: AI isn’t replacing all art and music uniformly. AI can’t paint a physical canvas or sculpt marble. It can’t perform a live show, can’t create the experience of being in a room with a musician or standing in front of an original artwork.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the artists complaining loudest about AI are often the ones most vulnerable to it—digital artists who built their entire practice and audience on social media. These aren’t gallery artists with physical work and real-world reputations. They’re not musicians playing live venues. They’re illustrators, graphic designers, digital painters whose work exists primarily as pixels on screens, shared and consumed in the exact digital space where AI can replicate and compete most easily.
And this is where the conservative psychology becomes almost tragic. These artists built their careers on one wave of technological democratization (social media, digital tools, online platforms), rode that wave successfully, and are now resisting the next wave. They had a sweet spot—roughly 2010 to 2020—where building an audience online was relatively accessible but not yet saturated or automated. Now they want to freeze that moment in time.
The progressive response would be: “AI is good at what I do online, so I need to build real-world value—original physical pieces, live events, direct community connections, things that can’t be replicated digitally.” Instead, the conservative response is: “I built my entire practice in a purely digital space and I demand that space remain protected for me specifically.”
It’s revealing that many of these artists have no real-world artistic practice, no gallery presence, no live performances, no physical community. Their entire identity and income depends on digital engagement—likes, shares, commissions for digital work. They’re pure products of internet culture, and they’re threatened precisely because they never built anything beyond the screen.
Progressive, change-embracing artists would see this vulnerability and adapt. Conservative-minded artists see it and demand the world stop changing.
Make Art Human Again?
So yes, anti-AI artists are exhibiting conservative psychology. Not politically conservative, but psychologically conservative: resistant to change, defensive of traditional practices, anxious about new tools and new creators, demanding regulatory protection rather than creative adaptation, enforcing social conformity over genuine exploration.
The real irony? In trying to protect what they see as progressive values—human dignity, anti-capitalism, authentic creativity—they’ve adopted the most conservative psychology imaginable. They’ve become exactly what they usually mock: people afraid of change, demanding the world stop moving so they can catch their breath, insisting the rules be rewritten to protect their particular advantages.
It’s MAGA energy with better aesthetics.
The question isn’t whether AI disrupts the art world—it obviously does. The question is whether artists will respond with progressive adaptability or conservative rigidity. Right now, we’re seeing a lot of the latter dressed up as the former.
What do you think? Are anti-AI artists exhibiting conservative psychology, or is resistance to this particular technology different somehow?