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Screenshot of a tumblr post by hbmmaster:
the framing of generative ai as “theft” in popular discourse has really set us back so far like not only should we not consider copyright infringement theft we shouldn’t even consider generative ai copyright infringement
who do you think benefits from redefining “theft” to include “making something indirectly derivative of something created by someone else”? because I can assure you it’s not artists
okay I’m going to mute this post, I’ll just say,
if your gut reaction to this is that you think this is a pro-ai post, that you think “not theft” means “not bad”, I want you to think very carefully about what exactly “theft” is to you and what it is about ai that you consider “stealing”.
do you also consider other derivative works to be “stealing”? (fanfiction, youtube poops, gifsets) if not, why not? what’s the difference? because if the difference is actually just “well it’s fine when a person does it” then you really should try to find a better way to articulate the problems you have with ai than just saying it’s “stealing from artists”.
I dislike ai too, I’m probably on your side. I just want people to stop shooting themselves in the foot by making anti-ai arguments that have broader anti-art implications. I believe in you. you can come up with a better argument than just calling it “theft”.
AI art generation isn't theft, it's the training that's problematic. These companies are using artists' work for free and without credit to generate massive amounts of profits, while simultaneously putting these artists out of work.
While I'm on this soapbox, making AI art doesn't make you an artist any more than commissioning an art piece does. There is literally no difference between telling the AI what you want it to draw, and telling a human what you want them to draw. You are not an artist, you are a client.
Except humans are smart and can fill in the blanks of what you mean when you tell them to draw a picture. You don't need any skill because the artist is skilled.
The slop generators are dumb af, massaging them to produce good results is definitely a skill. They aren't good enough to fill in the blanks like a human artist and it's up to the prompt generator to convince it to draw something that doesn't look like shit.
I will concede that you can be a skilled prompt generator. It is still not the same thing as producing art yourself.
I think it's art-adjacent, what we should find is that actual artists are going to be better at generating good prompts.