Do not start with me with this shit. Of course artists need to eat. I'm on the fucking internet essentially begging because I struggle with capitalism and the idea that almost all forms of employment force me to restrict my intellectual property, or assign it to someone else. Every time I'm forced to do it because the bank account is low I can feel it grinding down my soul. It is antisocial to prevent people from building upon my ideas (or any ideas). We should take every step we can to strengthen the commons. (see "Everything is a Remix"[0])
I dropped out of fucking high school and was homeless couch surfing in LA for years trying to break into steady VFX work, I don't think for a lack of skill/blood/sweat/tears[1]. I'm well aware artists need to eat.
The problem isn't technological progress, (jfc this is all open source!!! stability is doing god's work by undermining the value of ghouls who try to restrict access to these models for personal profit). It's certainly not that copyright is too weak in preventing people form building off the aggregate styles and work of artists. I learned style by fucking copying the masters[2]!! This is how art is supposed to work. The problem it's the disgusting economic/political system that has twisted copyrights and patents into a device to enable rent seeking for those who can afford to purchase/commission them rather than protecting the innovation and creativity that they were meant to.
While I'm strongly on team "train the AI on everything and reduce IP protections to strengthen the commons" as much as such a team exists, I think it's important to point out that this is a argument that misses the forest for the trees.
It's only relevant when taking a very logical/semantic view of the situation, when you take a more holistic view it breaks down. The scale and implications of the two things you're comparing are completely different. While I probably agree with you in general I think these sorts of arguments don't really help people understand our point of view because they sidestep the economic and social implications which are at the heart of this.
I dropped out of fucking high school and was homeless couch surfing in LA for years trying to break into steady VFX work, I don't think for a lack of skill/blood/sweat/tears[1]. I'm well aware artists need to eat.
The problem isn't technological progress, (jfc this is all open source!!! stability is doing god's work by undermining the value of ghouls who try to restrict access to these models for personal profit). It's certainly not that copyright is too weak in preventing people form building off the aggregate styles and work of artists. I learned style by fucking copying the masters[2]!! This is how art is supposed to work. The problem it's the disgusting economic/political system that has twisted copyrights and patents into a device to enable rent seeking for those who can afford to purchase/commission them rather than protecting the innovation and creativity that they were meant to.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc
[1] https://www.reddit.com/gallery/unqmux
[2] https://imgur.com/a/NDRWVj8