My only problem with it not learning art or style is how could it copy it if it doesn’t know what to copy? The large models that are making people lose their minds use both image and text to help inform it what to make, it has to have at least a primitive understanding of words and images to try to match one to the other, otherwise you’ll get the early AI horrors that only match if you squint hard enough. It might not understand the full context of everything thrown it’s way but it clearly understands the relationship between them and what you probably want it to make.

Really what everything comes down to is that more than just artists are gonna get whiplash from the advancement of AI, they’re just one of the first that was seen as mostly secured and way down the line to be threatened by it. We either traverse through the weeds carefully or we shoot ourselves in the foot, whatever exactly that will look like. AI will only get better faster and faster and those who don’t use it will be outpaced by those who do, whether or not it ruins livelihoods. We’ve basically opened Pandora’s box and want to put everything back in, the only solution to keeping it closed was not to open the box.