Many artists are opposed to AI art, and there seem to be three central arguments. First, that these AI models were trained artists’ images without their permission. Second, that the use of AI technology endangers the livelihoods of artists. Third, that AI art is bad art. The first is a rights-based argument while the second is a consequentialist argument, and the third is an aesthetic argument.
1. Rights
Starting with the first argument, I think it’s an open question whether artists truly ought to have the right to be excluded from AI training. If an artist-in-training looked at images on Deviant Art to learn how to draw, we would not say that the artists of Deviant Art had the right to prevent them. If you look at art with an artist’s eye, you’re going to naturally learn from it, and it seems unreasonable to allow people to look at your art just as long as they don’t look too deeply, lest they learn something from it.
However, an AI model is substantially distinct from a human artist-in-training, in that it trains on vast number of images–and also it isn’t a person. You could argue that there’s no rule against humans because it’s simply impractical to delineate how they consume art, while it’s far more practical to restrain AI. AI also poses the risk of accidental plagiarism–which is not unlike human artists! But the risk of plagiarism might be significantly be higher in AI, which could affect our moral judgment.