Ehh I expected it considering the demographics of reddit outside of creative and media-oriented subs. Tech bros focused on "could we do this" instead of "should we do this" always end up ignoring the moral implications as long as it puts them in a better position. Now by taking without consent they get to play artist too, how fun for them.

Generally people at the ground level who make media (games, art, film, music) understand and agree that this usage of AI is unethical, it's laypeople and executives who don't. Having first hand experience of how much time and skill goes into honing your craft makes it easier to realize how truly fucked up it is that the content is being stolen, and for those who haven't spent the time they like it because it lets them pretend that they have those skills that took us literally tens of thousands of hours of learning and practice to gain. They like that feeling of being an "artist", the praise and pride that comes with it, and they don't like when it's pointed out that they aren't skilled and they aren't creative but instead they just know how to optimize search engine terms. Saying the AI generators using work without permission is theft (it is), it means we're calling the people who use it thieves, and they get defensive and don't want to hear it.

It's just NFTs all over again, the difference this time is that to participate in the unethical behaviour you don't need money so it's more appealing to the general public and they refuse to push back like they did before. For non-artists who understand the problem with it, thank you for being empathetic.

Unpopular reminder that AI art generators steal artwork from artists who don't consent to their work being used and the practice is just as morally bankrupt as turning artwork into NFTs without consent.

> "All art is derivative."

An artist can't rip another off without still putting in their personal skill and experience, someone who's never touched a tablet pen before isn't going to be able to replicate an artist's style. That's not the case with AI because there's zero human touch, it's just eating existing art wholesale without any human-made change and shitting out an amalgamation.

> "What about people who trace artwork?"

People get called out for it all the time, it's only appropriate for children and young teens to do this. It's also technically not legal theft, it's tacky and rude but replication by hand without using any part of the existing pixels isn't breaking any laws.

> "What about photo manip and collages?"

Probably the only argument with even a remote point, however professional artists who collage to improve their pieces and concept art use free-use and paid-for library textures. I can't argue either way for this though as personally I'm not a big fan of people doing this for artwork outside of using texture libraries and free-use photos.

> "An image uses so many different sources that it's not tracing or stealing."

That's like saying that assets that come from money laundering are clean because it's hard to tell where they came from. The assets were still fucking stolen from somewhere, just because you can't tell where from doesn't mean they weren't. Also there are cases of recognizable signatures of artists being found on AI generated work, so go ahead and try and make the argument that it's just an unrecognizable soup.

> "It's just for fun."

AI art is being sold at anime cons and on twitter, people are regularly monetizing the work now. It's notable that few people who do this outright say it's AI generated because they know people won't buy it if that's the case and they'll be shunned by the art community.

Btw every artist I've seen would support an AI art generator if it was only made up of artists who consented, as well as public domain photos and artwork. It's an incredibly useful tool, the problem is theft of the work that the programs are built on.