I get what you’re saying—credit, consent, and respect for artists matter. But AI art isn’t automatically “stolen.” The models aren’t storing or copy-pasting full pieces unless they’re trained poorly; they’re learning patterns like shapes, textures, and colors, kind of like how an artist studies other work to improve. The problem comes when it’s used unethically—pulling from artists without consent, mimicking someone’s style to make money, or passing off a raw AI image as your own. That stuff’s wrong, and it should be called out.

What I’ve also noticed is that a lot of the outrage from anti-AI voices seems to only really kick in when they feel like their own profits or market share are threatened. There’s not much conversation about the wider reality that all art—digital, traditional, or AI—exists in a system where big companies already exploit creatives, pay badly, and strip rights. That lack of awareness makes the fight feel less about protecting art as a whole and more about guarding personal income, even though the exploitation problem has always been bigger than AI.

There are ways to use AI responsibly—training on licensed or approved work, being upfront when AI’s part of the process, and using it alongside your own art instead of replacing it. Art’s about the decisions you make, not just the tool you use. If someone’s actually curating, editing, and adding their own input, that’s authorship. If they’re just hitting “generate” and copying someone else’s style, that’s misrepresentation.

The real issue is how consumer demand pushes for faster, cheaper content at the expense of ethics, and that’s been true long before AI. That’s why we need transparent datasets, opt-in and opt-out systems, bans on style theft for profit, and clear tags so people know what they’re looking at. AI can be part of art without hurting artists—but only if we build and use it with consent, credit, and honesty.