The REAL Fight Over AI Art

As someone with a sliver of creativity, yet not the skill to back it up, I think these kinds of tools are great. Until recently, my only real creative outlet has been fanfiction. I can immerse myself in that world and let my mind run wild with ideas, type those ideas out and share them with the world. I have trained my brain on those worlds and now use my creativity to remix them in ways I find enjoyable. Admittedly, none of those works are monetizable, as they're all fanfiction, and therefore deal with worlds and IPs made by others. But that doesn't bother me, this is a hobby I do because I enjoy it and at the end I have created a story that I wanted to read but couldn't find anywhere.

AI Art tools are the same for me. I want weirdly specific things when I want to create, and explaining those intricate details to an artist would be nigh impossible. Not to mention, I barely have enough cash to live on, so I wouldn't ever be paying someone to give life to those ideas regardless. So having access to tools that allows me to explore that creativity without those other constraints added on allows me to explore options I never had before.

I recently got into playing with Daz 3D, another 'art' tool that allows me to breathe life into ideas that have stewed in my mind for years. Now I can use the assets available through that tool and assemble those ideas myself. Which gives me an insanely good feeling that I can now make the things that had previously been denied to me because I lacked the talent and the drive to hone a skill that I was already lesser than at.

I can understand why people are bothered by the ownership aspects and the idea that AI art will take jobs from real artists away. But at least in my case, none of these things I create are jobs they'd have ever gotten to begin with. And they can only further inspire people to try their hands at things they were once unable to do.

From the few chats I've had with others over the topic, there seems to be this odd arrogance from some that their art is sacred and should never ever be used for anything, but the art in question is their interpretation of a scene from a movie or a book. They have trained their brain on the media they've consumed and then regurgitate it through the lens of their experience. AI art is doing much the same, but the filter is the person entering the prompt. We are all the sum of the life we've lived and the experiences in our memories. I know that some of the ideas in my fanfics come from something I can remember having read as a child, but it's so far back in my memory, I couldn't cite it for you if I tried.

The only difference I see personally, is that the AI art can be trained in such a way as it can provide a perfect pristine list of citations and sources for any particular work it puts out in ways human memory is woefully unable to do. And it rightly should. People deserve credit for their work. But we human creatives already reassemble other peoples work on a constant basis, many even selling their end result without properly crediting those sources. Then cry foul if someone is similarly inspired by their work. I dislike the double standard.