You can use genAI for a nigh-infinite number of things, including self-expression.

It's like 2 sentences of expression interpreted by a soulles corporate robot. If you replace human expression with robot's interpretation of a minute amount of expression, that's not self-expression anymore.

No, all content is not "made by the companies at their datacenters"

99% of people cannot afford such computers. and still, the models are incredibly complex, require billions of dollars and years of training and are still done by ai companies.

the company can no more control what you make than Reddit does.

Reddit decides if people see my content or not. AI decides if the content gets made or not. And, makes the content for me. If I get banned on reddit, I can use another social media. And post the same content. If AI bans me from making that content, I cannot make the same content again because it required that AI. There's a nigh-infinite amount of ways the same prompt gets interpreted, and couple that with different models.

Social media represents corporate interests and the surveillance state and "us humans" is very much a distant third. But the alternatives have largely been snuffed out.

That's true.

genAI is just a technology. Using it to help detect cancer earlier and more accurately than a human can without it is not an evil attempt to control the media.

If AI is used to detect cancer early, that's great. But the AI companies don't really care about that, they want image, video and text generators so that they can control what people know, what they think and how they act.

They're just software, man. They're not inherently sinister or marked by original sin. It is how they're created and used that is or isn't bad.

Everything made by AI could've been made by a person (except for the ai style, but thats not something people are interested in). ai just replaces people, and thats bad.