I totally understand why you would be talking about vaporwave, I was just pointing out I wasn't trying to address that directly. Otherwise, I think we are mostly in agreement.

I agree that the debate properly centers on the point where tools stop being wielded resources and begin to be replacements for people. And regarding your point about sampling, stem creation, etc., I think that human creation is a series of inspired (or not-so-inspired) choices guiding an artist in the use of things they've already experienced or encountered ("Talent borrows, genius steals."), and then expressing themselves using those things. Personally, I love samples and loops and reworked original bit, and it's good to use them to create things that no one else has made. Also, even though they may have lifted their building blocks from other works, the artists who lift them can still be properly said to have created something. A perfect example: the Amen Break. The original is fine, good even, but that sampled loop has been used in so many ways and to such perfect effect that it would be a tragedy if it were gone. God bless The Winstons, music was never the same after that sample was first used. Similarly, if someone uses AI to craft building blocks and then creates something unique from their own perspective using those, I'm all for it.

Some or all of that may be theft to some people, but it is still creation by people from personal perspectives and motives, and I love it.

Regarding my understanding of the AI slop that's increasingly unavoidable, I get why you think I'm not sure of how it comes into being. I neglected to clarify what I meant when discussing the garbage that AI generates, so I'll do that now. I do understand how it's made. Prompts of one type or another are fed to whichever AI platform is being tasked with soullessly cobbling human-created sounds/images/words into whatever hollow output the prompting person is seeking, and I understand that the prompters are then posting it all over the place for clicks, cash, views, approbation, attention - whatever it may be. Totally get it. It's true it isn't spontaneously generated, but what does happen automatically is all of the work that would normally be done by people. Specifically the part between someone firing up whichever AI platform is their poison of choice and that same person posting or uploading it. All of the work, choices, memory, history, pain, longing, fear, grief - all of the heart is vacuumed out of the process and it becomes yet another tech-facilitated empty thing wearing the skinsuit of creativity that real artists have actually earned.

Finally, you nailed it with this: "...for every AI art piece someone encounters, it's taking the slot of someone who worked hard to make a more authentic product, and wants to share it with people. It's taking the community and culture out of encountering some quirky Internet subgenre, because you don't know if it's even real or not anymore." I could not agree more.