I've given plenty of nuance in comment after comment on this site. I'm tired of hearing the same slimey garbage over and and over and over again. "It's not theft. It's actually way more complex than that and artists have no right to be upset because they said the model was a database".
If this hurts the art community, that's the fault of the AI companies that scraped their work. If it's legal, I guess you can go and do it, but I'm not going to stop saying it's theft to your faces. AI has alienated a generation of artists from their work. You ought to at least feel bad about it.
Look, I am an artist. I was raised by artists. I live with and love many artists who work in many mediums. Some of them dont like AI some of them do.
The world changes. It is possible that the age of doing gig and illustration art online is coming to a close. I doubt it, but it is possible. Either way some people will have to switch professions or mediums. I definitely feel for those artists who will be effected by the rise of image generation more than I feel for knowledge workers who will lose their jobs to LLMs.
None of this makes it theft. You can say it as much as you like but that wont make it so.
There is always the danger with putting anything online that someone will come along and use it for something you disagree with. Many artists dont put any work online or only do so with caveats because of this. This is no different. Its just one of the risks of putting yourself out there.
I respect what you're saying here and I mostly agree. I still think there's an opportunity to push back on some of what I think is abusive and exploitative technology. I'm gonna stay mad about it. I do think it's theft in a way that using reference in art isn't and I hope we normalize making it unacceptable to automate the artistic process. That doesn't have to mean it's legally theft.
If this hurts the art community, that's the fault of the AI companies that scraped their work. If it's legal, I guess you can go and do it, but I'm not going to stop saying it's theft to your faces. AI has alienated a generation of artists from their work. You ought to at least feel bad about it.