Hi there Tom -

Indeed, this stuff is incredibly cynical and exploitative. As mentioned earlier I absolutely understand (and agree) that the tech is fascinating, and that the "slot machine" aspect of it is highly addicting. But as soon as one reads deeper into the way it works, the darker aspects of the tech reveal themselves.

Perhaps this will get regulated fast (starting with Europe first, probably) but I am still worried about what an ethically-trained version of the tech could still do. After all, one of the most enjoyable aspect of appreciating art is to be able to research the influences and background of an artist, what they have to say, and so on. AI-generated art skips all of that since everything is regurgitated by a trained ML model without anything to share. So not only does it devaluate art, it also fully erases the humanity behind it.

And then some people even add to these ML models and feed other artists' work ontop of it, to generate targeted facsimiles specifically imitating a person.

Very sad times ahead IMHO, as some are already planning to shove this stuff onto kids, to allow them to "visualize their imagination". This is so cynical and evil that it makes my blood boil. Nothing about this is altruistic, this is just the current year tech gold rush taking the place of 2021's "NFTs" and 2022s "tHe mEtaVeRsE".

But, the silver lining is that I am happy that perhaps my posts here in this thread led you to research the topic further. So that's that :)