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.
The underlying problem is capitalism. The idea that people can own information (aka IP) is a complete scam on humanity. The only “justification” is that artists would starve otherwise despite the fact that artists benefit last and least from IP. A truly just society would provide basic human needs for artists and people in general so they can survive without the artificial and violent controls of capitalism.
If you post “I need that on a tshirt” on a twitter post where an artist showcases their work, the image will be automatically plagiarized by a bot and put on a tshirt. The fact that this is profitable shows that intellectual property laws fail to protect vast majority of artists. (https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/172vq82/i_want_this_on_a_tshirt/ I apologize for the reddit link).
