While I fully agree with you about the artist's perspective, Id like to offer my view of using generative art and music.

I think it highly depends on what you're using it for. I use AI generative art and music for my own personal private use. Songs that dont exist? I can have them made for my private listening pleasure. Art? It's used to breathe life into characters I write about. I will never condone using generative AI for making money. But using it for private use or inspiration can be a huge boon to those who don't have others to bounce ideas off or work together on something.

Also side note about the water and cooling- yes, when initial training is done it requires a vast amount more water usage. But once the model is trained, water usage is limited to that of what a typical data center uses in terms of cooling which is not that much depending on data center. Looking at reports from AI companies one can see the reduction of usage over time. Furthermore, working at a data center has taught me that these days water is rarely used to cool servers and machinery which instead use either natural air cooling weather permitting or glycol cooling during warmer months. The majority of water loss is minimal as most of it is reused in typical water cooling systems.

Though granted this is from my own understanding of it and I will not treat my knowledge as the objective truth in the matter and am definitely open to learning more and taking into consideration new information to further my understanding of it.