NFTs are down, AI looms: How can creatives keep their cash flowing?

Even before ChatGPT, Midjourney, and all the other AI systems out there today that produce text and images as if on an assembly line, life wasn’t easy for artists and creatives. Money was generally only available in the conservative art scene with all its gatekeepers and agendas, in creative agencies that are not exactly known for lavish salaries, or often precariously as freelancers. Then came the boom of NFTs, making it seemingly possible to earn cash with (digital) art and without a gallery – also in the global South – and to even build up a community of one’s own in the process.

But now? NFT prices and the associated web3 discourse have crashed, even if probably not forever. And with AI, another digital technology threatens to disrupt the work of many artists. We want to discuss, explore, and network to collectively identify how creatives can (still or suddenly) make money today, how (and if) they can use AI to their benefit – and whether it can help to organize themselves, be it in a cooperative, collective, union or DAO.