Unless you're wisely avoiding any and all social media, you may have noticed artists, and people pretending to be artists freaking out about Twitter's "Edit with AI" button. Which often spirals into pointing out that this just makes something already easy to do even easier, and that basically every platform allows this in some manner, and doesn't give a shit. Your rights as an artist were signed away the moment you joined the platform.

Congratulations, you're 15 years late, probably more. Back in the day, many people pointed out that handing everything over to Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any other one company was sure to lead to this.

The old adage rears its head and bellows: "IF THE SERVICE IS FREE, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT BEING SOLD!"

The normie artist panics and comes up with pans and plots: "We'll just stop!" Or "We'll poison everything from know on!" unaware of his own impotence.

These platforms have just spent the last 15 years having more data than has ever been available in prior human history pumped into them. Every image, every photo, all of it now the property of a faceless corporation that will use it as they see fit, and they were freely fed in by a willing populace. Do any of these artists of what could probably be charitably called middling talent really think their future art is unique enough to matter to the algorithm, when weighed against the sum total of 15 years of human knowledge?

They are realizing the situation now. "We have to make our own websites!" They finally realize the nature of the centralized Internet. A tool that is used to enforce conformity. Peer pressure on a global scale. Irresistible for those who feel the need for acceptance from the crowd. And now it has decided that the use of Generative AI is a fun and acceptable activity in all situations. Conform or be destroyed.

Personally I can't help but find it funny at this point. This is the price, you fools. The price you unthinkingly agreed to pay in exchange for a global reach and audience, the ability to make money from a skill of limited practical utility. The system gave you so much, and you willing helped prop it up in return, even as it began crushing others it disagreed with. But make no mistake, this was always part of the deal, be grateful the deal benefitted you for as many years as it did.

I don't feel any sympathy for them, they fundamentally misunderstand technology, art, and business. The question of ownership over the final product? That's a question of business, not one of art. And business is decided by profit. It's no secret that Copyright exists in its current form because it benefitted the Disney Corporation. Now Disney is no longer dominant, and different companies need it to be different for different business goals, and so it will change. Damn whatever rights you think you should have as an "Artist". Being an artist never entered into it. Whether what you produced was art or not never mattered. The second you signed up to a major internet platform, you became a craftsman making a product, and it was about business, not art. Now the machinery makes a product at >80% the quality at <20% the price and the market shifts. Suddenly you find yourself carving expensive Mennonite Furniture. A fine product, but not one with mass market appeal. A small, fiercely competitive market where only the most talented will be successful.

Technology marches on. Look for opportunities to ride the dragon, or look for opportunities in its wake. But you can't kill it. You can't even comprehend the scale of it. Why do you think every platform ever is integrating free AI tools? Because it's dirt cheap for them to do so. It costs the effectively nothing to do so. The value of whatever data you might feed into them greatly outweighs the cost of running them. Compare that with the datacenters using all that electricity and water, they constantly like to use as an environmental argument. You think all that energy is being used to make knock offs of your art? No. Of course not. A modern graphics card can generate thousands of images an hour and uses less energy than playing video games. These data centers have newer, more efficient hardware, and at scale. This is an afterthought. A side effect of what they were going to do anyway.

This is the future humanity chose, the collective cast aside its independence for convenience, and is now is realizing just how much it sold.

Generative AI is here to stay. That question is already decided. Use it as a lever to enhance yourself. Or embrace art itself for its own sake, and create for the joy of creation without expectation of monetary compensation. Or be subject to the future created by the people and companies who do, while you try to find an audience for 5000$ hand carved chairs.