There’s multiple opinions on that. As in why using ai for this specific purpose is a negative. There’s also some for why it is a positive.

The two biggest negatives I’ve seen talked about are supporting the utterly horrible companies behind them, and that doing so removes the human from the process when any given protest movement is about humans.

On the positive side of things is the effectiveness of a given “poster” that a single individual can create with their skills and tools. In other words, not everyone can turn out a poster/meme/sign by hand that isn’t going to be ignored because it’s sloppy and badly executed. That argument tends to be bolstered by corollary that it democratizes production so that anyone, anywhere can take part with a cleaner message.

The other positive I’ve seen argued is that by using the tools of the oppressors, the downtrodden are using their own resources against them. Turning out memes and such would cost some degree of money, power, etc, and the result used to raise awareness against the oligarchy behind the theft of labor that trains the generative ai in the first place.

Which, that one is a damn good argument, imo. Those programs couldn’t do what they do without having human creativity to train from. So using it to attack the very establishment that stole from artists in the first place has a nice bit of irony to it.

I don’t have an emotional stance on the matter. Nor do I have a personal conclusion regarding whether or not AI is an acceptable tool for protest. I’m still thinking about the matter, since I have no pressures to form an opinion quickly.

Now, I have opinions about generative models; since I said they’re a form of theft, I think my opinion is obviously not on the side of the way they were trained. Also, it should be clear that in not in favor of corporate control of a tool like a generative model. However, I also hold the opinion that the existence of them isn’t inherently bad, and that they can be a very effective tool for self expression, even though they aren’t the same kind of tool as a pencil or brush or typewriter. That is tempered by an opinion that such tools should be required to indicate in the output that it was generated rather than created.