Technology

You do realize that you basically just confirmed every fear that artists have over AI, right? That they have no rights or protections to prevent anybody from coming along and using their work to train an LLM to create imitation works for cheaper than they can possibly charge for their work, thereby putting them out of business? Because in the end, a professional in any field is nothing more than the sum of the knowledge and experience they’ve accrued over their career; a “style” as you and MidJourney put it. And so long as somebody isn’t basically copy+pasting a piece, then it’s not violating copyright, because it’s not potentially harming the market for the original piece, even if it is potentially harming the market for the creator of said piece.

A professional career can't be reduced down to a style. There's a lot more that goes into art than styles.

The Dolphin analogy is also incorrect (though an interesting choice considering they got pulled from the Steam store after the threat of legal action by Nintendo, but I think you and I feel the same way on that issue - Dolphin has done nothing wrong). A better analogy would be if Unreal created an RPGMaker style tool for generating an entire game of any genre you want in Unreal Engine at the push of a button by averaging a multitude of games across different genres to generate the script. If they didn’t get permission to use said games, either by paying a one time fee, an ongoing fee, or using games that expressly give permission for said use, I’m sure the developers/publishers would be rather unhappy with Unreal. Could it be incredibly beneficial and vastly improve the process of creating games for the industry? Absolutely. If they released it for free, could it be used by anybody and everybody to make imitation Ubisoft games, or any other developer, and run the risk of strangling the industry with even more trash games with no soul in them? Also absolutely. And a big AAA publisher has a lot more ability to deal with knock-offs/competition like that than your average starving artist. The indie game scene is the strongest it’s ever been thanks to the rise of digital storefronts, but how many great indie game developers go under after producing their first game and never make a second? The vast majority. Because indie games almost never make a profit, meaning they can’t afford to make another.

Profit shouldn't be the sole motivator for creative endeavors. If a tool like the one you describe existed, we wouldn't need to have to "afford" to make things. We could have more collaborative projects like SCP, but with more fleshed out rich detail. I certainly don't spend my time lamenting the fact that I can't monetize every one of my comments and posts.

I used to work at a fish market with a kid who was a trained electrician who was set to follow in the footsteps of his dad who had been one of the highest paid electricians in the US, except he gave up on it because the thing he liked doing the most in the field was replaced with a machine by the time he graduated from technical school. Obviously the machine is more efficient (and probably safer), but instead of entering the field at all, he ended up working a job he hated and to this day has never found a job he has any passion for. What happens to art when professional artists are only NEETs, who have minimal living expenses, and those hired by corporations and the wealthy? Are we going to get the fine art market on steroids, with the masses only having access to AI generated art that will degrade in quality over time as the only new inputs are previous AI generated pieces, unless there’s enough hobby artists to provide sufficient new art, while the wealthy hold a monopoly on human-made art that the rest of us will probably never see?

Your problem is with Capitalism. Your friend is a victim of the capitalist logic of prioritizing cost-cutting over human well-being. The question of what happens to art under capitalism is also a valid one, as capitalism tends to reduce everything into a product that can be bought and sold, but I think the potential outcomes for art are less predetermined than you make them seem. As long as we keep encouraging and nurturing diverse voices, I think we can come out winners.

This is all pure speculation, but it’s the Jurassic Park question: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I don't think it's wrong to give people a free tool to expand their ability to communicate and collaborate.