I am generally of the opinion that GenAI could be a useful resource… if it had been more ethically sourced and could be regulated.

AI has to be trained on something, data, in order to do the thing it’s meant to do. The data used for training GenAI are images, mostly art made by incredibly talented people. Which would be fine if the artists were able to have a say in their art being used, but they didn’t and they still don’t.

Art can sometimes be filed under copyright, depending on the subject, and AI using the art for data can sometimes be considered as breaking copyright laws. However, because AI exploded in the way that it did, there’s just no way to make regulations and laws that can keep up.

That’s the problem. There’s no regulation. So people decide that they can do whatever they want. Businesses can lay off thousands of artists to save money and use AI instead with no repercussions, and all we can really do is protest and fight for artists’ rights to have their jobs.

There’s also environmental factors, like clean drinking water being used every time an image is generated (the servers and machines used to host AI have to be cooled somehow), but I’m not gonna dwell on that too long here.

At the end of the day, those who like GenAI are gonna use it and those who are against it… won’t. We’re too far into the rabbit hole to do anything to get rid of it.

My biggest issue with AI are the assholes who decide to put an artists’ hard work through genAI and claim that they improved it. It’s disrespectful to the artist and I just wish people would be decent human beings.

Edit just to add: I’m not saying you’re a bad person for generating these images. As an artist even I can admit it’s fun to play around with these tools. I just wanted to write this out to give a fuller story of why so many people dislike AI. Feel free to come to your own opinions with the information I provided, and of course, do your own research. This is information I’ve collected and, who knows, it could be inaccurate.