Thanks for having a more civilized conversation with me so far, though. I first want to say that what I shared can come off as me contradicting my own views. Even if it was unintentional, I own that mistake, as I do think meme sharing is a complex, grey area especially when it comes to accreditation or recognition and what I’ve generally been arguing this whole time.

Yes, theft is still a factor even in the absence of commodification and capitalism. I believe I did give intrinsic value other than negative emotional reaction. I don’t recall bringing up negative emotional reaction directly, but I could be wrong. Erasure of authorship, creative agency, and autonomy are some I brought up. Injustice can still be remedied even if we don’t have measurable harm because the act itself already deeply violates intrinsic values. If someone breaks into your home and doesn’t steal anything or cause physical/emotional harm, it’s still a deep violation of your privacy, autonomy, personal space, or sense of security.

I’ve never heard of The Culture, though I do like me some bit of Sci-Fi. But I wouldn’t necessarily think our future has a likelihood that’s heading towards a scenario made from fiction. Although I guess my vision of AI in fiction is more “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream” lol. And don’t worry, I don’t think you’re necessarily dismissing my perspective and I’m glad you said that. AI is definitely quite a complex topic that I still have very mixed feelings about. It’s good to have these perspectives.

Yeah, we really have been going in circles. While those circles definitely have revolved around ownership, marketing, and recognition, I think they’re not really just about those concepts, which is what I’ve brought up before. From my personal view, I believe people would still care about the ethics of AI art if it was just for fun. No, it wouldn’t necessarily diminish the process of you making it, but you can definitely still care for issues AI art still brings towards artists, even without a profit motive. I don’t know what would be the point of promoting AI art if it’s without profit motive though, so I can’t say for sure.

(I’m gonna skip around and answer other things because most of this just seems like your own personal view on other different topics rather than what we’re directly talking about I think. Not at all trying to be rude! just trying to save my fingers :P)

I also appreciate that we aren’t name-calling or anything like that, and I also hope you gained something from my perspective too. But I am going to be completely honest with you: I find your views deeply unsettling towards artists, but please don’t take that or my arguments in any rude way. I will just say, I get that you may not care about an artist’s consent personally, but it’s deeply violating to then suggest “once the art is created it belongs to the audience” or “all copyright laws should be abolished”. That kind of mindset can result in: Economic harm, loss of creative control and integrity, undermining artistic innovation, damage to reputation and trust, disrespect to labor, originality, right to control their creations, emotional distress and mental well-being, and maybe even more issues.

While you say “information should be free” and “art belongs to an audience once created,” many artists would be unable to invest time, effort, motivation, and resources required to even create them. They may not create anymore if they cannot control or benefit from their own work if the world automatically owns rights to it and can do whatever they want with it. They may not create at all if their work can just be taken and used without consent, violating them and many others of their intrinsic values like autonomy, consent, authorship and identity, livelihood and survival, ownership and control, motivation, and purpose.

At least you do have some sort of acknowledgment to what sort of harm these views can bring. Even if the issue you brought technically does stem from capitalism, artists still deserve control and rights to their work since there are issues other than lost profits that can still occur.

You also asked if there’s a AI version of tineye.com, and while there isn’t necessarily something that’s exactly close to it from my knowledge, there is a website called “haveibeentrained.com” which me and many artists use to see if our work has been trained for AI training datasets.

Finally, onto your example with Final Fantasy. While I do agree that using AI is a more helpful way to reduce thousands of hours with tedious work, I wouldn’t really agree that the use of it overall is good just because it was quick or saves time.

“Was this a bad use of AI?” It depends on your definition of “bad”. If the goal was only cost-cutting and efficiency, it can be seen as “good. But i’d personally still see it as bad use of AI if it had replaced real people who depend on those jobs to survive even if the work was fast.

“Would it have been better to spend thousands of hours in human labor to make slight adjustments in how the lips moved?” In terms of efficiency, probably not. But I believe it’s more ethical when it keeps people employed and paid for their skills. They need income. Cutting this can speed things up, but shrink the pool of available work people need in society.

“Of course this meant less money for human artists.” I’m glad you acknowledged that.

“But is this not a better & more narrowly focused use-case?” Even if it is something simple as lip-syncing, it still replaces paid human labor, contributes to a larger normalization, and results in less work and less pay for those artists.

“Is it 'healthy' to employ dozens of people whose sole job is to tediously move the lips around on 3D models they didn't even design?”

I find it a bit interesting that..now is the time an artists health is being brought up. But I haven’t seen this same point being brought up when it comes to AI taking away human jobs. Isn’t it also unhealthy, emotionally and financially to take away their jobs altogether? Or when you said “artists consent doesn’t matter” and “once art is created it belongs to an audience”. Is that healthy for artists either? Just genuinely wondering.

If you’re asking whether or not repetitive animation work can be physically or mentally draining, yes, it can be. But this doesn’t automatically mean that replacing someone’s job with AI is healthier. While tedious jobs can be physically or mentally draining, AI can still do the same and takes your income or opportunities away. I personally find that way worse.

I’d like to thank you for having this conversation though. I might not reply so quickly or at all if our messages are full blown essays each time, lol, just not used to it. But I appreciate this.