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

[zakael19]

An ethical discussion in the context of copyright infringement is interesting, because the whole reason we have copyright (and patents) is not because of ethics, or a creator's "natural right" to their work, but because it provides an economic incentive to innovate. That doesn't mean it's unethical to break laws, of course, but I feel like over the last 250 years (mostly in the last 75) the issue has become very clouded, no thanks to Disney lawyers.

And just to make it 100% clear: I'm NOT saying it's ok to steal, or that how LLMs were trained is ok. I'm just pointing out that this idea of "a creator owns their work" has become a moral concept only relatively recently.

On the other hand, that's just what I've read. I'm certainly not an expert on the history of it, and if somebody with real expertise wants to enlighten me, I'm listening.

The idea of "copyright" and intellectual is relatively recent all things considered, evolving relatively shortly after the printing press (but not really protecting authorship and creative works for a little while). However, "morality" was one of its original functions - from a governmental control perspective!

But given that the whole purpose of these big AI companies is not to, like, generate creative works for the hell of it but instead to make enormous quantities of money, far far greater then any of the authors they trained off of will ever see, there's both a legal and moral component here.