Raw LLM Responses

Actually I agree completely with your argument, and this is coming from someone who has used an AI to visualize a concept I had in my head but had trouble putting on paper myself as an image. I think the big difference is I am not looking to profit off of art I didn't make and I am not running a huge multi million dollar corporation that is legitimately ripping off of artist's work without paying them. I think AI is a good learning tool for people who struggle with visualizing the art they want to make, but it's not okay to make the AI do literally everything for free off of publicly available data and claim it as your own. I was working with an AI program to visualize a character in a book I am writing, but the process to get a correct looking image involved me literally drawing out what I could, and putting my own artwork into the AI and using that to help me generate more work I was literally only using to help me build upon and create a final product I am going to be drawing myself. When it is being used like that I don't see it any differently as using a tool, however what you are talking about, these companies aren't just using it as a tool they are strait up ripping off an AI that has been force fed billions of artworks at this point and using it to generate free (to them) content for profit. I think they absolutely should be paying for the works they are putting into the AI, especially if they are going to make the AI do all of the work and profit off of it. Side note if you were wondering, I was using the AI to help me create a non human, alien character, and visualize the proportions of said character to use as reference pieces so I can produce a final product that looks good. I wouldn't be using the AI to draw a cat or some other creature that there are already plenty of images out there to use as references. I think it's a good tool for visualizing unique, uncommon creature characters however I don't think you necessarily need to use it for everything. I do agree it is predatory to use base AI productions for profit though to avoid paying actual artists when it comes to greedy mega corporations though. Also if you're curious, the particular art work I am talking about is something I am planning on using to design cover art for my book. I am not affiliated with a major corporation. I'm just an individual small time artist trying to get a book written and published eventually. I genuinely believe that large corporations with the funding should absolutely pay artists, and should be obligated to create more jobs in general instead of being allowed to cut corners and rip people off. In the US at least they already don't pay their fair share in taxes, so they should be contributing to the economy somehow rather than hoarding wealth. Sorry if this comes off as defensive. Just trying to explain my stance on using AI as a tool verses using AI generated works for profit. As a writer I honestly feel the same way when it comes to writing. After working with these AIs I would absolutely be pissed if a major corporation were using my written work to produce low effort novels for profit. It's going to take me several months to write and edit a book before publishing it, and it would be a slap in the face if someone just took my book, plopped it into an AI and used it to write another book in less than half the time, and claimed that work as their own. Not to mention the years it took me just to figure out the story I wanted to write in my head. I don't see that happening any time soon hopefully, because it does take a lot of effort to get an AI to produce quality products that are actually unique and worth publishing. However I do think major businesses and corporations definitely need to be regulated now rather than later when it becomes an even larger issue. I honestly can't see the CEO of a company drawing with their own hand and putting it into the AI spending days painstakingly tweaking things to get the desired result, and I don't think it's fair for people like you and I to work our asses off and help build up this AI and not receive any benefits, or recognition. (I have intentionally been submitting my own hand drawn work into an AI program that my friend has been developing if I haven't made that clear enough, and my friend has been submitting her own hand drawn work into it as well.)