But they conveniently leave out that it costs money to do anything with AI. It’s more like “open to anyone with a credit card.” The vast majority of people don’t have computers powerful enough to run generative AI models locally, and even then, server farms with a billion GPUs will always produce better results
This means that people have to rely on corporate platforms where you buy tokens that you use to get pulls at the various AI slop slot machines, hoping you get something decent. The mechanics more closely resemble a gacha game than any kind of artistic process
By contrast, learning how to draw, animate or make 3D models costs nothing. There’s free tutorials and tools everywhere, and you can also just pirate commercial ones if you want
Again, nothing is being stolen when an individual uses genAI for personal use.
Artists aren’t losing anything. Their stuff is being copied and regurgitated but they’ve lost nothing.
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, I’m absolutely also concerned with how AI is going to impact workers in the commercial art, but the argument that AI is ‘stealing’ is just nonsense for the same reason piracy isn’t stealing. We’re in agreement on the conclusion I think, I just think the argument is poor.