[caconym_]

> You're not quite getting it.

I guess I must be failing to respond to the point you're trying to make in the way you expect. I admit that I am not quite sure what that point is.

There are several overlapping concerns here. One concern is the possibility of AI systems violating the intellectual property rights of living artists whose work is not in the public domain and who have not given permission for it to be used in this way. Another (but not the only other) concern is working artists being outcompeted by AI in the marketplace. You seem to be responding to the second concern; I am responding to the first, since it's most relevant to the context of Greg Rutkowski's name and work being included in AI art training sets without his consent and (now) explicitly against his wishes.

If you think I'm arguing that removing copyrighted works from the training sets of AI systems whose operators haven't secured the rights to said works will ultimately prevent such systems from partially or totally outcompeting human artist(s) in some market(s), you're wrong. I have not argued that and I will not, since I don't believe it. What I believe is that the cat is out of the bag with these systems and that we will be stuck with them for the foreseeable future, regardless of how their creators manage to finagle training sets, regardless of their impacts on the prospects of working artists and more broadly on culture. I suspect attempts to curtail their use or ban them outright would do more harm than good. But I also believe that all of the above being true doesn't give us the right to run roughshod over the existing intellectual property rights of artists as we grease ourselves up for the long slide into cultural oblivion.

I hope that helps to clarify my position.