Why AI art is so controversial

Inspiration = developing your own style, not replication and when it is it’s usually crossing some kind of line. Humans are inspired by so many things at once that they enjoy but using this our brains are able to make something truly original, a good artist will never take so much inspiration that it is plagiarism.

AI = goes farther than inspiration and uses artist’s work directly without consent. A human may see something and put their own interpretation of it onto a canvas, an AI sees several things and directly takes bits and pieces from it and mashes it together into what is usually not a very quality piece of art.

Art does not need to be automated. Soul crushing jobs that provide humans with nothing but tiredness and annoyance can be argued to be something that is automated. I am all for AI and AI development, it could make living in this world just a little easier, but AI art in particular needs to have a few things to ethically be acceptable. 

1. No one is allowed to copyright or sell anything created by AI. There have been several court cases in the past where animals were not allowed to copyright work, as copyright and trademark is a human thing, AIs are not humans and the human putting in the prompt did zero work, therefore there should be zero monetizing and copyrighting of AI work allowed. Since AI draws directly from other artists as well, monetizing it could be considered stealing or profiting off someone else’s art.
2. AI should not scour the internet to learn, it should find consenting artists and learn from them and their pool of work. I’m gonna tell you right now, even if they are a slight minority, there are plenty of artists who would consent to this. Not to mention, AI music doesn’t take from copyrighted music without consent, so why should it be different for art? Oh right, it’s different for artists because we don’t have legal protections like music does. I can guarantee if music artists had the same protections as artists some big musician would be complaining about their music being sampled in the same way artists are right now.
3. The development of AI art should be something we’re doing to see how far it goes in my opinion, not for practical use. Would you rather hire artists for your project who are talented, starving and desperately need the money and are willing to put their heart and soul into your work or a souless machine who’s work isn’t even exactly what you wanted, has several mistakes, has ethical and legal issues floating around? I personally prefer the former, but if you prefer the latter you better be happy with taking jobs away from people who need the money and have the skills.