AI art bans are going to ruin small 3rd party creators

Justice and Rule · 2026-03-21T19:21:55+0000

Morrus said:
Thanks for the unsolicited business advice, but I didn’t ask.

What, you don't want to ragebait your users into more clicks for ads?! You're leaving revenue on the table, Morrus!

Blue · 2026-03-21T19:31:00+0000

Gladius Legis said:
A prompt is: you tell the genAI to make the thing, and the AI is the one making it. Your involvement with it ends after your prompt. Beyond that prompt, whatever it does is out of human hands.

This is like saying a photographer can't be an artist because once you snap the picture it's out of their hands.

Someone who snaps uninspired selfies probably wouldn't be considered an artist.

Someone like Ansel Adams, concerned with lighting, filters, framing, composition, pose (if applicable), taking pic after pic and the curating them to find the ones that really had the impact they want. They're artists.

Your case only works if all prompts are simple, that a first result is always accepted, that there's no iteration, no curation, no changing of details to get the right show just like a photographic artist would do.

Blue · 2026-03-21T19:43:45+0000

Basic Expert said:
AI art is a commodity that has no value. Why buy something made with AI when you can generate the same thing yourself, for free?

Interesting. So you personally are skilled in the same area a photographer needs be skilled to determine a prompt to get the composition, lighting, pose, action, framing, and all the other aspects that an artist looks at, you perhaps generate dozens or hundreds of images and curate through them, and yet you value your time at zero since you need do all that yet you still count it as getting the result for free.

That really is just anti-AI rhetoric, sounding like someone who doesn't want to critically look at the process but just assume that typing in a simplistic prompt once is the only thing that ever occurs because it fits their preconceived bias.

Like a photographer who doesn't know about brush strokes, different mediums, transparency or opaqueness of various paints nor how strong they are when mixing, they still add skill and effort to create art.

Mind you, I'm against models trained on unethically sounded material, be it generative AI art or LLMs. Which is almost everything that is out there now. But that's a completely different issue then you are talking about.

Gladius Legis · 2026-03-21T19:44:50+0000

Blue said:
This is like saying a photographer can't be an artist because once you snap the picture it's out of their hands.

Someone who snaps uninspired selfies probably wouldn't be considered an artist.

Not true, because the photographer still has to physically operate the camera. The photographer has to know how the camera works, and what settings to use in whatever situation or lighting that exists. The photographer has to know things like shutter speed, ISO, exposure, f/stops, etc. The photographer has to still pick out the subject it wants to photograph. Depending on what the photographer wants out of their photos, they have to set up the right lighting, or wait for a certain time of the day. If the photographer's subject is another person, that photographer, in collaboration with that person, has to decide on makeup, hairstyle, clothing, and the subject person has to consent to all of that. The photographer may even need other people (i.e. makeup artists, clothes designers) who are more capable in their craft to apply that stuff to the subject person.

Even in the case of someone snapping uninspired selfies, the snapper still has to physically operate the phone camera.

In either of the above cases, there is a strong human element, often multiple human elements, involved in what the photographer (professional or amateur selfie snapper) does. For one, in neither case is the photographer creating something wholecloth out of an amalgamation of others' art. In both photographer cases, they are working with what is there in reality.

Prompting a genAI takes ALL of that out of the process.

bedir than · 2026-03-21T19:46:27+0000

tetrasodium said:
Weirdly nobody on the anti ai side seems to be all that twisted over stuff like this.

Are you equating procedural generation with LLMs? Why?

Zaukrie · 2026-03-21T19:50:01+0000

Ebook

bloodtide said:
This is just the silly thing that happens every couple of years.

It's like when bookstores and libraries said "Oh 'ebooks' are not real books, and will not be found here!"

The Old Guard will make a big deal of it. Most people won't care. Some will.

In the end, there will likely be less using the Old Guard, and more moving to the more Open Friendly Places.

Ebooks aren't stolen. By open friendly you mean stolen?

Blue · 2026-03-21T19:55:02+0000

Gladius Legis said:
Not true, because the photographer still has to physically operate the camera.

Right, the person writing the prompt doesn't have to physical do so.

Oh wait, you're wrong.

Gladius Legis said:
The photographer has to still pick out the subject it wants to photograph.

Right, the person writing the prompt doesn't have to pick out what they want the image to be of.

Oh wait, you're wrong.

Gladius Legis said:
Depending on what the photographer wants out of their photos, they have to set up the right lighting, or wait for a certain time of the day.

Right, the person writing the prompt will automatically get the right lighting without having to specify it in the prompt.

Oh wait, you're wrong.

Gladius Legis said:
If the photographer's subject is another person, that photographer, in collaboration with that person, has to decide on makeup, hairstyle, clothing, and the subject person has to consent to all of that. The photographer may even need other people (i.e. makeup artists, clothes designers) who are more capable in their craft to apply that stuff to the subject person.

Since we're talking about AI generated art and not real people, I'm going to skip the consent part you put in there.

Right, the prompter doesn't has to decide on makeup, hairstyle, or clothing. Nor either be personally skilled enough to describe those, or might need other people who know things to help craft the prompt with those details matching what they want.

Oh wait, you're wrong.

Gladius Legis said:
Even in the case of someone snapping uninspired selfies, the snapper still has to physically operate the phone camera.

Right, the person still doesn't have to write the prompt.

Oh wait, still wrong.

Gladius Legis said:
In either of the above cases, there is a strong human element, often multiple human elements, involved in what the photographer (professional or amateur selfie snapper) does. For one, in neither case is the photographer creating something wholecloth out of an amalgamation of others' art. In both photographer cases, they are working with what is there in reality.

Prompting a genAI takes ALL of that out of the process.

At this point, I think we can just jump to: Oh wait, you're wrong.

Every single point you made still requires skill in writing the prompt, in iterating through images finding what works and doesn't, and adjusting to get it closer to your vision, curating the final pictures to get the ones you want. Just like a photographer.

Gladius Legis · 2026-03-21T20:00:13+0000

Blue said:
Every single point you made still requires skill in writing the prompt, in iterating through images finding what works and doesn't, and adjusting to get it closer to your vision, curating the final pictures to get the ones you want. Just like a photographer.

I would hesitate to call it a skill, because you don't have to be anything resembling a polished writer for a prompt to work in an LLM. At best, you can argue that you just need to write enough details of what you're imagining. But the AI is still doing all of the work after that. Unlike the photographer working in reality, who has to have that imagination and actually execute it entirely through human hands.

Milieu · 2026-03-21T20:08:52+0000

Blue said:
Interesting. So you personally are skilled in the same area a photographer needs be skilled to determine a prompt to get the composition, lighting, pose, action, framing, and all the other aspects that an artist looks at, you perhaps generate dozens or hundreds of images and curate through them, and yet you value your time at zero since you need do all that yet you still count it as getting the result for free.

Yes, and the US Copyright Office agrees.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2: Copyrightability

The Office concludes that, given current generally available technology, prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output. Prompts essentially function as instructions that convey unprotectible ideas. While highly detailed prompts could contain the user’s desired expressive elements, at present they do not control how the AI system processes them in generating the output.
. . .
In theory, AI systems could someday allow users to exert so much control over how their expression is reflected in an output that the system’s contribution would become rote or mechanical. The evidence as to the operation of today’s AI systems indicates that this is not currently the case. Prompts do not appear to adequately determine the expressive elements produced, or control how the system translates them into an output.

The gaps between prompts and resulting outputs demonstrate that the user lacks control over the conversion of their ideas into fixed expression, and the system is largely responsible for determining the expressive elements in the output. In other words, prompts may reflect a user’s mental conception or idea, but they do not control the way that idea is expressed. This is even clearer in the case of generative AI systems that modify or rewrite prompts internally. That process recasts the human contribution—however detailed it may be—into a different form.
. . .
The fact that identical prompts can generate multiple different outputs further indicates a lack of human control. As one popular system explains on its website, “[n]o matter how detailed . . . the same text describes an infinite number of possible” outputs. In these
circumstances, the black box of the AI system is providing varying interpretations of the user’s directions.

Repeatedly revising prompts does not change this analysis or provide a sufficient basis for claiming copyright in the output. First, the time, expense, or effort involved in creating a work by revising prompts is irrelevant, as copyright protects original authorship, not hard work or “sweat of the brow.” Second, inputting a revised prompt does not appear to be materially different in operation from inputting a single prompt. By revising and submitting prompts multiple times, the user is “re-rolling” the dice, causing the system to generate more outputs from which to select, but not altering the degree of control over the process. No matter how many times a prompt is revised and resubmitted, the final output reflects the user’s acceptance of the AI system’s interpretation, rather than authorship of the expression it contains.

In the case of a nature photograph, any copyright protection is based primarily on the angle, location, speed, and exposure chosen by the photographer in setting up the camera, and possibly post-production editing of the footage. As one commenter explained, “some element of randomness does not eliminate authorship,” but “the putative author must be able to constrain or channel the program’s processing of the source material.” The issue is the degree of human control, rather than the predictability of the outcome.

The Office also agrees that authorship by adoption does not in itself provide a basis for claiming copyright in AI-generated outputs. As commenters noted, providing instructions to a machine and selecting an output does not equate to authorship. Selecting an AI-generated output among uncontrolled options is more analogous to curating a “living garden,” than applying splattered paint. As the Kernochan Center observed, “selection among the offered options” produced by such a system cannot be considered copyrightable authorship, because the “selection of a single output is not itself a creative act.”

(footnotes removed)

See also Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence

Bill Zebub · 2026-03-21T20:26:58+0000

FrogReaver said:
I’m confused. 3rd party creators existed before AI. So why would not using AI harm them? Human artist prices should theoretically drop, so their product should get cheaper to make with human art.

Without taking a stand on this particular issue, the general statement "Workers in Industry X existed before Technology Y was created, so why should not using Y harm them?" has obvious answers for many, many values of X.