Fuck AI

The consent thing is pretty much a myth.

Most people don't bother to think what licence they are publishing their art under when they upload it to the internet. It's almost always a creative commons licence or something similar that allows anyone or at lead the company that owns the website you are uploading it to, to use that image for whatever purpose they fit. Which includes training AI models.

And I'm sure you'll disagree with this point, but when a human uses an image as a reference or inspiration, or even just views an image and subconsciously recollect it when creating their own art, do they ask for permission to do so?

I don't really like to engage in esoteric arguments like these because the "purpose" of art is entirely subjective. So to you that cycle might be the purpose of cresting, to others it won't be.

I'm not trying to weave electric sheep or anything that effect. I'm using tools that are available to turn the product of my creativity and imagination into a material thing in the real world. Sometimes that's with a pen and paper, sometimes it's a camera and editing software, sometimes it's cloth and stich and sometimes it's with a bit of software and a mouse, and sometimes it's with a more advanced piece of software and a keyboard.

Drawing a line in front of that last one and saying it's not valid or immoral or not real art is very much arbitrary and I remember many years ago people making similar arguments to draw the line in front of using any computer program. AI is simply a tool that you can use to create art just like any other, it makes art widely more accessible and easier to produce than ever before, yes that means some people will use it to make slop, just like digital art and photoshop and cameras allowed more people to make slop and things that don't have "use" beyond advertising or spam or whatever (frankly the idea of art needing a "use" is a bit antithetical to what I think the point of art is)

So basically I think there's no real argument to why people are drawing a hard line in the sand here and decaying anyone and everyone that uses AI as inferior or lazy or something to that effect other than those people being scared of change and wanting see themselves and the thing they like as superior.