General Discussion

skill to execute something they imagine themselves, they should acquire those skills, rather than being frauds using tools trained illegally on other people's work.

I don't know if you've ever used image generators, but the odds are none of the AI slop images posted here were really all that close to what the fraudster AI user had imagined. They typed in a few words and the image generator gave them a selection of options, which could have looked quite different from one another, and the AI user either selected one of then, like somebody shopping online, or they had the mindless AI tool churn out more images.

And all it took was a waste of electricity and enough callousness not to mind that the AI companies behind the theft were happy to destroy the careers of lots of artists, distracting people with worthless AI slop while those companies damage the environment, destabilize the economy, and support Trump because they don't care about democracy and liberal values.

EDITING to add that not all people using generative AI are callous about the IP theft and harm done to real human creatives. Some are still ignorant of the theft and its impact, despite all the news stories about it.

But I've seen a disgusting number of AI users online who are absolutely gleeful about real artists having their work stolen and being harmed by generative AI. I've seen AI users post that they can't wait till successful creatives go broke and AI users are making all the money instead.

And I've talked to entirely too many creatives who are in despair, and sometime thinking about suicide, for me to feel that use of genAI trained on stolen IP is harmless.