Comment by nineteen999

> Why are "artists" special?

There is a very entitled class of "artists" out there who are trust fund babies, where mummy and daddy pay for everything, their art career is for show and any money it generates is play money for them. In my personal experience frequently these are the ones that most commonly refer themselves as "artists" and are the loudest shouters on that side of the debate.

Many artists I know that struggled to afford paintbrushes or musical instruments or whatever while developing their craft seem less vocal, they are used to the idea that they are probably unlikely to ever be paid or reconised sufficiently for their work because it was like that for a long time before LLM's came along. Artists in 3D studios for example often work for way less pay than a lot of us would deem acceptable just for the ability to do what they love for a job.

The best artists I know that work professionally (eg. graphic designers etc) are pragmatically using generative AI in productive ways to streamline their workflow.

Not that there's no merit to the "theft" debate at all. I do feel like a lot of people claiming to have had their work "stolen" by big companies probably don't have a portfolio online big enough or noticable enough to have been included in the training data. But for those whose work (eg. prolific and talented indie creators on Sketchfab, Artstation, Soundcloud) they have a point and I feel for them.