I am rather enthusiastic about IA art, but I agree with the fact that it's a shame for people to use it and pretend it is their own creation. I also agree that it doesn't have its place on this community, as it is a community for artists to share their personal creations. I think that an easy way to differentiate between the creations of AI and people is to be able to see the process. (but also by seeing the spectacular and sudden artistic evolution of the person)
But I didn't agree with your point of view about AI art and its issue ;
A piece of art is seeing by million of people - who will keep this inspiration in the back of their minds, until the day they use it unconsciously or not to create themselves their own piece of art, and maybe sell it after. It is basically the same process as AI for my opinion.
So I personally don't have any problem with that, but I can understand the anxiety of artists in relation to all this.
Here's the difference based on your example. I see some painting, and get inspired by it, later on I paint something and unconsciously pull from that experience. That's not what AI is doing. What AI is doing is more like, I take the ACTUAL painting, and sample it, only it's doing it with billions of images so it gets murky in the unprecedented scale that humans can't really relate to. I don't have a perfect replica in my mind of anyone's painting, and even if I was looking directly at someone's painting, I can't literally paint it exactly like them pixel for pixel. AI can and does. That's not being inspired. It's a piece of software, it can't get inspired. It knows nothing beyond what it's been fed and trained on. It adds nothing original to the table. Anyway though, I'm not upset you and other people are excited by it. It's amazing, I get it, but the way it's implemented now, I feel is grossly immoral.
I think you are mistaken on this point ; it does not sample images, it does not make a kind of puzzle based on the images. It learns from all of them, with millions parameters, transformed into concepts and ideas stored. But it does not actually keep any of its images in its database.
And it is for these reasons that I think this AI is REALLY similar to the brain. Because apart of our consciousness, the brain works like a machine, where our unconscious records billions of data and stores them.
So, for example, the idea of a "bike" has this or that image in our head: it can be bigger or smaller, of this or that color, it can be found in this place, it can be associated with this or that thing,...
This is basically how IA works, for then creating new images, original contents. Because it is an image that does not exist. Humans do not have the exclusive right to the word "original" I expect 😅
So... no, I don't give up, the functioning of this AI is very similar to our functioning as artists and beings with brains.
But, platforms like ArtStation makes it possible to disable allowing AIs to train with their images, if users so wish. I think it's a good compromise to lower tensions.
I hear what you're saying and I understand it doesn't literally collage images together. I've tested it A LOT, I see what it does. I honestly think the technical details are less important than the fact that it can't do anything without that data. Less data, and it would be worse. More data and it will be better. While no image that it makes is exactly like an image from the training data, that does not equal original imagery.
Whether it has been trained to steal artists work, or it directly collages from billions of images, everything it creates is based on the work and labor of other people. Actual artists, even if they're referencing other stuff, THEY still have to create it. Their mark comes from them. So yea, I respectfully disagree.