The fact they are not people does not mean they can’t use the same legal justifications that humans use. The law can’t think ahead. The justification is rather simple, the output is transformative. Humans are allowed to be inspired by other works because the ideas that make up such a concept can’t be copyrighted because they can be applied to be transformative. If the human uses that idea to produce something that’s not transformative, it’s also infringement. AI currently falls into that same reasoning.
You call it a self serving lie, but I could easily say that about your arguments as well that you only have this opinion because you don’t like AI (it seems). That’s not constructive, and since I hope you care about artists as well, I implore you actually engage in good faith debate other than just assuming the other person must be lying because they don’t share your opinion. You are also forgetting that the people that benefit from image generators are people. They are artists too. Most from before AI was a thing, and some because it became a thing.
Again, sorry to hear your husband feels that way. I feel he is doing himself a disservice to dismiss a new technology, as history has not been kind to those who oppose inevitable change, especially when there are no good non-emotional reasons against this new technology. Most companies have never cared about artists, that fact was true without AI, and that fact will remain true whatever happens. But if they replace their artists with AI they are fools, because the technology isn’t that great on it’s own (currently). You need human intervention to use AI to make high quality output, it’s a tool, not the entire process.
The Hollywood strikes is a good example of what artists should be doing rather than making certain false claims online. Join a union, get protection for your craft. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean you can’t fight for your right to demand specific protections from your employer. But they do not affect laws, they are organizational. It has no ramifications on people not part of the guilds involved. If a company which while protecting their artists, allows them to use AI to accelerate their workflow, and comes out on top against the company that despite their best intentions, made their art department not as profitable anymore, that will also cause them to lose their jobs. Since AI is very likely not to go away completely even in the most optimistic of scenarios, it’s eventually a worse situation than before.
And lastly, I guess your husband does different work than the digital artists I work with then. You have a ton of generation tools for meshes and textures. I also never equated it directly to AI, but you stated that they use no tools which do all the work for them (such as building a mesh for them), which is false. You wouldn’t use the direct output of AI as well.
I implore you to look at “algorithmic art”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_art
The fact they are not people does not mean they can’t use the same legal justifications that humans use. The law can’t think ahead. The justification is rather simple, the output is transformative. Humans are allowed to be inspired by other works because the ideas that make up such a concept can’t be copyrighted because they can be applied to be transformative. If the human uses that idea to produce something that’s not transformative, it’s also infringement. AI currently falls into that same reasoning.
You call it a self serving lie, but I could easily say that about your arguments as well that you only have this opinion because you don’t like AI (it seems). That’s not constructive, and since I hope you care about artists as well, I implore you actually engage in good faith debate other than just assuming the other person must be lying because they don’t share your opinion. You are also forgetting that the people that benefit from image generators are people. They are artists too. Most from before AI was a thing, and some because it became a thing.
Again, sorry to hear your husband feels that way. I feel he is doing himself a disservice to dismiss a new technology, as history has not been kind to those who oppose inevitable change, especially when there are no good non-emotional reasons against this new technology. Most companies have never cared about artists, that fact was true without AI, and that fact will remain true whatever happens. But if they replace their artists with AI they are fools, because the technology isn’t that great on it’s own (currently). You need human intervention to use AI to make high quality output, it’s a tool, not the entire process.
The Hollywood strikes is a good example of what artists should be doing rather than making certain false claims online. Join a union, get protection for your craft. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean you can’t fight for your right to demand specific protections from your employer. But they do not affect laws, they are organizational. It has no ramifications on people not part of the guilds involved. If a company which while protecting their artists, allows them to use AI to accelerate their workflow, and comes out on top against the company that despite their best intentions, made their art department not as profitable anymore, that will also cause them to lose their jobs. Since AI is very likely not to go away completely even in the most optimistic of scenarios, it’s eventually a worse situation than before.
And lastly, I guess your husband does different work than the digital artists I work with then. You have a ton of generation tools for meshes and textures. I also never equated it directly to AI, but you stated that they use no tools which do all the work for them (such as building a mesh for them), which is false. You wouldn’t use the direct output of AI as well. I implore you to look at “algorithmic art”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_art