One small nitpick: It is completely possible for an artist to make all of their own tools, and indeed for the majority of history that is exactly how things went.

But today the artist that can also create a robust version of photoshop on their own doesn’t really exist. Maybe some can write code to that level but certainly not a majority and it’s certainly not the same as sanding wood to make a paintbrush.

Ok, here's a pile of sand, the goal is 1. a computer and 2. an AI to run on it. Go!

(spoiler: bootstrapping yourself up the tech tree gets progressively harder)

There's a substantive difference in whether the artist is using the tool, or the tool works on its own. A paintbrush doesn't produce a painting by itself, a human needs to apply an incredibly specialized creative skillset, in conjunction with the paintbrush to do so.

An LLM takes a prompt and produces a painting. No sane person would say that I 'drew' the painting in question, even if I provided the prompt.

> Regarding copyright, we copyright output not input. Otherwise most photography would be uncopyrightable.

We copyright things that require creative input. A list of facts or definitions did not require creative input, and is therefore not copyrightable.

Using an LLM does not meet the bar for creative input.

> There's a substantive difference in whether the artist is using the tool, or the tool works on its own. A paintbrush doesn't produce a painting by itself, a human needs to apply an incredibly specialized creative skillset, in conjunction with the paintbrush to do so.

That sounds like a kinder restatement of the opinion at the top of the thread: "Artists are mad because this tool empowers other people, who they view as less talented, to make art too."

Artists might not like the phrasing, but scratch the surface and there's a degree of truth there. It's an argument from self-interest, at core.