as a certified AI hater, I actually mostly agree with all of this. I do see artistic merit in exploring the latent space of machine learning, combing through the machine's hallucinations to find something strangely beautiful.
but I don't think there's anyway around the fact that if you don't put these disclaimers about no AI, you're not really going to get a lot of that... you're going to get sludge. you're going to get people who see the craft of creation as an obstacle rather than the point using AI to pump out art where all the decisions were made by a machine whose entire purpose is to create a randomized average of art.
I'm no copyright supporter by any means, but it's hard to ignore the malice in big tech's use of artists' data--they don't seek to help us, only to replace us.
I would like to go back to the days of ganbreeder--I played with it a lot myself back in the day, and it was really fun!--but I don't know how we can do that without opening the door to the right wing art haters. I hate to cede ground to them, but there's no way around the fact that they have claimed the territory.
I'm not sure how to reclaim machine learning as a genuine artistic tool without supporting their agenda when the people making the largest and most prominent models are right wingers themselves.