This reply is not meant to say your objections and arguments are not valid; I think this view should absolutely be part of the I’m-sure-are-coming legal wranglings on this topic.
Just for perspective; these are of some of the arts/entertainment developments that I have lived through from the time I was in college on through my working life:
Home video (Boy, did Disney fight that one)
Word processing
Video games
Digital photography
Digital ink-and-paint in animation
The internet
Photoshop
CGI movies
Social Media
Photo-real CGI
Cel phones as essential life/business tool
AI story generators
Streaming
VR (work in progress)
And now AI image generators.
In each development, (not including the last 4 yet) jobs were lost and entire career fields became extinct as other jobs and careers were born and the entertainment industry morphed and adapted.
When Photoshop and similar applications were on the horizon, one of the major news magazines warned of the coming of the “Fiendish hell machine” (exact phrase) that could fool the eye and present a false reality. A fair enough concern, especially regarding historical records and photographic evidence in trials, but so far we’re all dealing with it ok.
A.I. images are a new, unique situation. I have faith that things will work out. It’s not going away; things can’t be un-invented—as much as some of us might wish otherwise. But they can be regulated and reigned in (to an extent).
I just spent an hour trying out the Bing app for myself. It is indeed fun and delightful as a playful inspiration-jogger (like shaking a massive box of photos and seeing where they fall), but after several goes one does see the patterns, repetitions, and repeated elements. And there’s a lot of uncanny valley there.
For what it’s worth, each Bing-generated image is, they say, digitally watermarked as such. But I can envision a lot of issues to be dealt with in the near future.
But in the end, at least for now, people do not become fans of image generators and do not actively seek out those images for purchases. People become fans of specific *artists.* I think that’s encouraging.
