1. It's called looking a gift horse in the mouth. It's just bad form
2. 20 images in a folder on my computer in less than 30 minutes is much faster. Beyond that did we account for the finding, communicating, negotiating with these nebulous free artists that supposedly exist? Also a huge time sink. Your last sentence here was unintelligible so, I'm guessing it's referring to genrative ai programs, and the bad hands, odd faces, extra limbs or similar look to whatever source you use, I'll address that. Local ai generation can go a very long way to fixing that, with artist styles in loras used to dictate a style, rather than the over used Nai or anime or pixar knock offs. Are the defaults overused? Absolutely. Do people not give enough attention to said ai errors? Absolutely. However, with enough knowledge they can easily be reduced or eliminated, and unique images that do not fit the stereotypes can be generated consistently. Personally, I like the nai look. Can't explain why, and I realize I might as well say I enjoy pumpkin spice, but there it is.
3. If you come from a programing background, then yeah that may look simple, but the point was these projects are done by people with little or no background with programing, so with that perspective, or with no experience at all, yes it is complicated. The "get good bro" argument does not work here, when these are literally peoples first projects in that space. I taught programing for a living, yes it is difficult for people to understand.
4. Love you too!
5. The point was, just because there's no initial money cost, doesn't mean there isn't one.
6. I didn't understand this, but aI assume theres a guy doing Visual Novels with no generative ai. Great, that was happening before ai. The point was, these smaller projects can happen more frequently because of generative ai. I have seen many artist make their own style loras to create ai art with said style captured. Generative ai is a tool, a powerful one, that can drastically speed this stuff up. Is it always great? No. There are some great artists out there. But if we're being honest, there's alot to be desired from the regular crowd, likely those that would be willing to work for free. Hell, I helped fund Big Ambitions, and that guy has so many art style changes and image reworks, his final release is jarring to look at, and he used a set website to generate his art. It should have been an easy win.
7.Objectively better. To use the same example, having 20 pictures in a file on my computer, ready to go is "objectively better" than having to wait for someone else to finish the same amount of work at their leisure. Law wise, this is all uncharted territory. Disney has very little they can do about this stuff, and now, even they are rolling in a generative ai for making videos into Disney Plus, which I find insane. The problem with making a law against all this, is that the tech is already out in peoples hands. Just because California made it illegal to make memes in ai with peoples likenesses didn't stop the actual creation of them. Loras for celebrity likeness can still be found, and worse, still created using websites that don't actually allow them to be distributed. Civitai for reference. The simple fact that makes me confident with all of this is that more content has been generated by ai, than by actual humans leading up to the creation of ai. Our legal systems have to prosecute on a case by case basis. Recall the people that were put on trial for downloading music and movies from Napster. It didn't stop the piracy, and most things can be easily pirated today, it's just that smart companies have made it easier to buy what you want in a format you want, rather than navigate the alternatives.