Depends. Are they still making negative money with it? If so, then I'm gonna say no.
It's kind of like robbing a bank, killing everyone inside, then running out without taking anything, dropping your wallet in the process
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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*and also burning everyone else's money at the same time.
And everyone elses environment and rights somehow.
The whole business model of tech startups is to lose money until you cornered the market and make unfathomable amounts of money. By the time you realize „well shit, it really was the biggest heist in history“ it‘s already too late. They are too powerful to be punished for it. So this definition of yours plays right into their cards. The only saving grace here is that AI will never be profitable. But people said the same thing about Youtube and now it looks like Google might swallow Disney soon.
That model only works if people actually adopt the technology
Oh they do. Idiots on fb messenger using ai to edit pictures for thrblolz. They are customers.
So many dumb people love AI.
I think we're past profitable mattering at this point, even if the next model of chatGPT causes your eyes to bleed after prolonged use they'll make it profitable by forcing its use anywhere and everywhere no matter how inappropriate it is for any given application.
We're already there with some products like cars and phones where we just get told what to want and ignored if we disagree.
So, something is only theft if it is profitable?
That's a wonderfully liberating new definition.
Yeah, let's just take the Mona Lisa and shread it.
Can't be stealing if I don't make money from it, right?
Are you dense? That's not the question.
Ok chief. Because it really reads like you just said that in the comment above.
You know, I remember not too long ago when people on Lemmy tried to interpret each other charitably. Then everyone from Reddit came over, polluting the culture, and now practically every exchange on here feels like it's in bad faith.
Your account is 2 months old.
You called me "dense".
Not really in a position to opine there.
art isn’t something you can generate as such. having a model that can copy the Mona Lisa pixel perfectly hasn’t stolen the Mona Lisa. it’s the shitty kids’ movies and TV ads and company logos that are at stake.
art is about effort and ingenuity and is centered around people and places and times and can’t be simply replicated by an industrial process, as much as Disney wants that
Arriving to the Louvre in a lifted F350, snapping flash shots and not paying the cover charge.
No it was photography.
William S. Burroughs called photography "obscene and sinister", while many 19th-century critics dismissed it as a "mechanical" activity lacking soul or a refuge for "failed painters"
Edvard Munch Dismissed the medium by stating, "The camera will never compete with the brush and palette until such time as photography can be taken to Heaven or Hell".
Susan Sontag described photography as "soft murder" and a form of voyeurism, asserting it turns people into possessed objects.
And lastly
“This industry, by invading the territory of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy.” - Quote from 1859 about photography.
Strange, as the above quote sure sounds like it is about AI.
My kids are growing up in this environment and they already have an eye for ai slop. I suspect it's the same thing that led to OpenAI's TikSlop "product" is getting canned. After society had gotten over the sugar rush excitement of new and shiny toys I suspect the interest will fade and people will crave the connection you get from real art made by real people.
At least I hope that is what will happen. We might have to do something to hold the tech companies accountable for their dopamine trigger machines though.
No and the hyperbole around this gives AI authority that it does not deserve. I love art, and one of the things that has peeved me off in the last 10-15 years is how many times I have stood in a gallery and all around me are people with a phone out snapping a pic to say I have been there.
There is only one of that item. One, and in real life if you take the time to view, you can appreciate the delicate lines, the brush strokes, the variation of colour and technique, the grain of the canvas that have stood the test of centuries, and you can marvel that it was once held by its creator. It has the ability to stir something inside you.
Pure art still holds. as another posted alluded digital art is where it changed. It is nothing more than endless reproduction, I am not criticising digital art, it is a movement, and and employer but with it you lose uniqueness and compromise authenticity. It's hard to hear but its the nature of the format. AI is just another form of mass production and I would argue a graduation of the movement.
In short, anyone who thinks this needs to step inside a gallery and assess if AI content can achieve and hold credence.
No one can appreciate shit anymore. They've lost the ability to enjoy anything. Brains are fried.
Try getting 1 person to sit through an album today. Its RARE. Doesn't matter if they're young or old either. The olds forgot their ways and have fried their brains worse than the young.
I would love it if all smartphones and social media dissapeared today.
"Society can improve somewhat" meme.
This suggests that the only things that qualify as art are things that can be made by hand.
So let's flip that a little and talk about writing. A perfect turn of phrase still exists when you type something rather than write it out by hand. The ability the evoke emotion through shared experiences, to evoke empathy or sympathy by telling a story, to bring joy and satisfaction through a literary tale still exist when the medium is "digital".
What a lot of people talk about when they talk about ebooks vs physical books is the loss of physical sensations like the smell of books or the feel of turning a page. I will not say (as an avid reader) that this tactile feedback isn't missing from the digital book experience, and I won't say that it's not an enjoyable part of the experience.
But I will say that just because we can recognize that trade off between the two doesn't mean that the one that came after is lessened as art. Because if that were true it would have been "lessened" by going from spoken story to written story and I don't think that's true. It was changed. Some of the experience changed with it. But that's not the same thing.
No. They're giving AI too much credit this way.
It is more like taking someone's style without consent at all, and for profit.
Few societies and institutions teach about art appreciation to everyone, and the understanding of one's expression through art is also emotional investment, that's why creatives in traditional manual endeavors are understandably enraged at AI and its investors being tactless in taking their style and then mass-producing the generated media for aesthetic but soulless consumption.
Yes. They stole everything and are diverting markets to their newly acquired storehouses. Many many many markets. All AI companies are criminal operations. If you've built a body of work and had it scooped up by a billionaire to have it output simply by referencing your name.... its easy to see this point. Of course the non-creator's voice, who has no work absorbed by these corporations, will be the loudest to defend AI.
yup
AI bad, upvotes to the left please.