It will be true no matter who many bribes those who have never created anything pay to Marsha Blackburn (who miraculously reversed her AI skepticism).
I wonder how many threats of being primaried have been issued by the uncreative technocrat thieves.
Their teachers teach them from a very early age how to hold a carton, and how to draw.
Maybe some miraculous humans will reinvent all drawing of growing by themselves in the jungle, most people will not.
Source: I have kids.
Then they found they could commission an actual artist to draw what they wanted for tens or hundreds of dollars, which is a very good price for getting exactly what you want without having to waste your time playing the token slot machine.
They've always told me the same thing - the job is to hit the minimum acceptable level of quality (which to my untrained eye often looks high, but they reassure me, their work is in fact sloppy garbage), using whatever means necessary, even if that means AI.
They don't even hate AI mostly the way art Twitter does, they hate is because it gives unrealistic expectations to what costs how much, and its often not really possible to get useful results - at least that was the case a couple years ago, things might have evolved.
If AI were good enough, they would certainly use it.
As for Twitter people doing commissions, I dont have firsthand experience, but imo their biggest issue is that there are tons of artists from places like Latam or the Philippines who do high quality work and charge very little, and the people who commission don't care - this was the case well before AI.
Having everyone pay phone/internet, office, streaming, music, etc., subscriptions to large tech companies that are effectively monopolies all do that. It's a bigger, pre-existing issue.
AI Labs are getting a tiny cut of the hundreds saved by not hiring an artist.
So regular people save hundreds, the labs get a few dollars, and the artists get nothing.
The artists are still losing, but it's regular people, especially the least able, who are winning.
The coffee shop isn't cutting OAI a $300 check for doing their spring menu. They are pocketing $295 and paying OAI $5.
The coffee shop who cannot afford the $300 for an artist and homebrews their design in Microsoft Word is still doing just as before, the coffee shop which can afford it and still pays an artist is still doing fine. The coffee shop which is paying openAI $5 for stolen art, gets to look as cheap as they are.
1: https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/santa-cruz-restaurant-ai...
If you are attempting here to shift the focus away from coffee shops (may I remind you, you were the one who brought that as an example) and into video games or software companies, I simply reject that attempt.
That there exists a software company which uses AI in their product and is not failing has no bearing on the framing on how a coffee shop which is too cheap to pay an artist for their logo does indeed look cheap to it’s customers who will be inclined to give that café a negative review or otherwise avoid said café.
99% of people don't recognize AI generated content, and don't particularly care enough to pixel scan every image they see.
You can death grip articles of AI art backlash, but they are all these hyper-narrow one off events. But reality is the general population doesn't really see it or care.[1]
1.https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/17/the-no-1...
This is an internet mob at its worst. Not an example of anything to emulate, in my opinion.
And in either case, this example destroys the framing that coffee shop owners are the ones who benefit from the systemic art theft employed by AI companies.
2) As one of these artists, I am entirely fine with my entire body of work being used for the purposes of model building. The tech is astonishing and fantastic, and I sincerely hope we will be better through it. As the parent suggested: The idea that people in general previously gave a fuck about compensating artists is hilarious. MS builds models with my work, random people bought, idk, another vacation in Thailand or a fourth pair of shoes with the money that they never spent on art. I know which one I would prefer.
But I do find it particularly juicy that people, who, on the whole, never thought too much about paying artists (which I am also fine with btw!), all of a sudden can't stop wringing their hands about the injustice of it all.
Turns out, if it's American oligarchs profiting from everyone's work, they love the idea!
AI is hugely beneficial to our species. Our tribalism and "yeah well they earned it!" response to capitalism's rampant production of billionaires is the real problem, not technology.
Why are footballers and movie celebrities paid 50$m a year? There's the answer.
1% Yes, and 99% No.
Over 99% of uses would not have resulted in hiring someone to do the work had these models not existed as you yourself acknowledge.
Those numbers are also a bit too aggressive - it's easy to miss what kind of gig work exist out there. PowerPoint as a service is a thing on Fiverr for example. A horrible, horrible thing, but a thing none the less.
^1: not at all what art costs, but someone trying to get started might do quick sketches at those prices
Or 3. Something I made and I actually use, but I would never have paid a kid $5 to do.
Yes, I know of Fiverr and similar sites. Even planned on using it once. Even know someone in another country who made side money from it. And yes, it does suck for them. But none of that changes the fact that well over 99% of uses are not depriving them of any money.
You may look at the output and say "Crap!", but the reality is the person using it found value in it.
(To be honest, I used to think "Crap!" to stock photos long before LLMs came on to the scene, so I have little sympathy with stock photo photographers going out of business - those photos exist primarily to attract readers and do not provide any value to the content - they're just like ads in that regard).
Not pointing fingers or saying that you must pay kids to draw things for you, but it most definitely does take work away by replacing an entire class of commissions. Not sure what to do with that fact.
(I'd put things that would never, ever be worth a $5 commission into the throwaway noise category, even if you do use the outcome.)
The people you say are getting "shafted" always got shafted. Their works are the inspiration for all artists and people who lay their eyes on it - maybe they got paid when they made the work, maybe they managed to sell it, but probably not. And still, other artists (and machines) will use remember and be inspired by it, sometimes to the point of verbatim copy (which is extremely common for human artists as well, with verbatim copy and replication being an actual sought after skill).
(Those about to shout "LICENSING", that's a very new invention and we're terrible at it. What are you going to do, cut out the part of your brain that formed new connections while touching GPL code?)
The person (singular) that is actually getting "shafted" at each use is the artist you didn't hire to do the job of making your new work, because it is their skill that got replaced. A skill build from a lifetime of studying other art and practicing themselves, replaced with a skill build from a machine studying other art and by virtue of some closed loops likely also "practicing" itself.
Still, shafting at large, but the obsession with training data is misplaced in that it entirely ignores how society and art worked beforehand.
At the same time, for most of the things you're likely using the tool for, there would probably would never have been an artist in the first place. For example, if you're just making your powerpoint prettier, or if your commission is ridiculous as it often is and yet only willing to offer a single-digit dollar sum per work which no artist should take (RIP the poor souls that take such work anyway).