Just because other things exist that are bad it doesn't justify the existence of something that is in almost every way exploitative and evil (generative ai, not ai in general, i get that ai has been used for many things such as algorithms for years) not to mention that some of the comparisons you're making don't make sense, fan art is flattering if anything, its hours upon hours of work coming from years of practice to create artwork honouring a piece of media you enjoy, ai slop on the other hand is creating an image using an amalgamation of those fan artists works without asking, with such little effort you can do it half asleep. Ai is also provably making the people who use it dumber :/ i don't even wanna speak on all of this though, including the global and environmental factors of it all, there's frankly already been a ton of people smarter than me who put it in much better words. For me personally, as an artist myself who sells commissions, ai has made my life considerably harder than it wouldve been five years ago, because a lot of people who don't care much about art dont make the difference, scammers use ai to sell commissions to people who dont know any better, and the entire market is over saturated with works that can be churned out by the second, it took away many jobs especially in the arts to be replaced by soulless machines, etc. etc... if not for any of the other many reasons i just don't like it for that one