I was originally going to put this into the Log, but it might be unwelcome.
You want a way to rattle image-generation Boosters? Most of the arguments they use can be used to defend Googling an image and putting a filter over it.
- “All forms of media take inspiration from one another, so that means it’s fine to Google another image, download it, and apply a filter to call it mine!”
- “Artists are really privilieged, so it’s morally OK to take their art and filter it!”
- “Using filtered images I downloaded from Google for game sprites will help me finish my game faster!”
- “I suck at drawing, so I have to resort to taking images from people who can draw and filtering them!”
- “People saying that my filtered images aren’t art are tyrannical! I deserve to have my filtered images be seen as equal to hand-drawn ones!”
AI Boosters use a standard motte-and-bailey doctrine to assert the right to steal art and put it into a dataset, yet entice people to buy their generated images. When Boosters want people to invest in AI, they occupy the bailey and say that “AI is faster and better than drawing by hand”. When Boosters are confronted with their ethical problems, as shown above, they retreat into the motte and complain that “it takes tons of time and work to make the AI do what I want”. Remember this when you find Boosters. Or don’t, since I doubt the sites where they lurk are worth your time.
If someone dedicated their life to studying these styles and practiced drawing like them day in and day out, would you also say they committed theft? What if they blended the learned styles into new styles? Still theft? What about all of the artists who did exactly that and we have been building on for decades/centuries?
I do not equate copyright infringement with theft. That’s some grade A bullshit.
