It's not. Art very much is imperialist. It's the sort of thing that falls under the category "soft power". The artists--under capitalism--find themselves in the same position as the plumbers or scientists: they must trade something of theirs for capital as to secure life's necessities. Artists sell their products to capitalists and capitalists finance the things that are attractive to them.

Capitalism is the subjugation of all labour to the dictatorship of finance. The artist looks down on the proletariat as they do not have capital for commissions and when the proletariat use generative AI to create what they desire the artist again scorns them. Artists know viscerally that their opportunities of escaping poverty are slim and generative AI further decreases it into a near nonexistence.

The artists' qualms must be purely financial for the proletariat's use of generative AI does not hinder in the least the artists capacity to create, but it does wreak havoc on his financial prospects. "Do not use generative AI! Pay me instead!" he shouts, but the proletariat's response is, "I can barely afford food and housing! I have no money for commissions."

Generative AI enables individuals to create things that were previously denied to them purely because they had not the capital that would've enabled them to procure what they desired. Capitalists spend billions to finance film that propagandizes for them and the artists behind such a production might groan and curse at their employer, but they know this is the way it has to be. In exchange they're allowed a fraction of the empire's loot and carve out a comfortable life.

I think the middle-class are dimly aware that AI is an existential threat to their class and their reactions are to this rather than the proletariat's use of generative AI. If art is your passion! your reason for existence! the thing that makes the misery of life worth it! then generative AI has relieved your burden. You're absolutely free from the droll commissions capitalists force upon you. You're the freest you've ever been to pursue the exact direction that your art demands you to go--explore it every waking moment for your market is gone! You are as free as the proletariat now! Welcome to your new reality!