[Kalium]

I agree, but we should pay attention when we are asked for empathy. In this very thread we have an excellent demonstration of how easy it is for an appeal to feel empathy for people's position to change into an appeal to protect the same people's financial position.

I'll go so far as to say that in many cases, displaying empathy for the artists without also advocating for futile efforts to halt the progress of this technology will be regarded as a lack of empathy.

[exceptione]

It seems like you conflate protecting the financial position with futile efforts to halt the progress of this technology.

You can make sure the people from which their jobs where taken by an AI should be able to live from its proceeds. We all benefit and make progress.

[Kalium]

I am not so much conflating them by accident as expressing my belief that the two are the same. I am not convinced that we can make sure the people from which their jobs where taken by an AI will be able to live from its proceeds.

There's a very real chance that adding these costs on top will drive development away from the sort that pays the people who lose out. For example, attempting to require licensing for images may simply push model training towards public domain materials. Then the models still work and the usable commercial art is still generated cheaply, but there are no living artists getting paid.

We should not blithely assume an ideal option that makes everyone happy is readily available or even at all. The core incentive of a lot of users is to spend less on commercial imagery. The core incentive of artists is to get paid at least as much as before. We should take seriously the possibility that there is not a medium in there that satisfies everyone.