@joerg So, we just... let them win? Or what are you suggesting? That because "it is already here", we shall not care about artists basically having their work stolen?

This is not an "should AI exist" topic, AI is here to stay, we cannot avoid that, it is a tech like any new techs.

But we can, however, restrict what companies are allowed to use as their training data, and we can voice the damage we see when people generate images using stolen artwork, and claim them as their own.

The alternative is a word more or less free of creative artists, as we kill their source of income.

This is like the opposite of what automation should do. It should remove the need for us doing "boring, repeditive work so that we can have free time to express ourselves"

Instead, it takes away the income of those that do.

So no, we should not settle with "that train has left the station"

@lettosprey is using existing art to train AI really stealing? Is what AI does, so fundamentally different from what art has always done?

Taking inspiration, remixing, deriving has, at least when it comes to art for economical gain, always been the norm and the occasional spark of genious that brought something radically new, never before seen, that moves a whole field forward, the rare exception.

To me, the discussion and the arguments around AI echo those of similar revolutions. Like the invention of (relatively cheap) paper, the printing press, the photographic process, the talking movie, the phonograpic record, the music cassette, etc. have always been decried as the end of something fundamental but reliably turned out to be the starting point of something new.

Yes, the cycle is steadily accelerating and yes, AI will mean the loss of income for many, not only in art, but has anything good ever come from resistance to that kind of change? Is there any indication that this time things will be different?

@joerg " is using existing art to train AI really stealing?"

Yes. I am not really interested in explaining why very indept, there should be plenty of resources explaining this.

But the key is that there is no inspiration. AI is not aware. AI is algorithms that mushes existing data to create new output.

AI is nothing without training data. "training" is a regardless a bad word as there is no real "training".

AI has no awareness. AI will never understand what a horse is.

So this is fundamentally different from artists learning to draw by looking at art. AI are algorithms. Given the same input and the same dataset they will always output the same thing.

If AI understood anything we would not have the glaring flaws we have now. We would not have AI companies being terrified of datasets being polluted, because AI would understand that a car is not a horse.

We cannot debate if this tech is ok or not unless people understand how it actually works.