That idea AI art 'steals' from real artists is too simple

I keep seeing people say AI just copies existing work, like it's a fancy search engine. But I've been messing with these tools since mid-2022, and watched my friend train a model on 500 of her own paintings. The output was all smeared and weird, nothing like her style. It's more like the AI learns patterns the same way a student learns from studying 1000 paintings in a museum. So calling it theft misses how the tech actually works, and I think that stops us from having a real talk about fair use and credit. Has anyone else tried training a model on their own art and seen what happens?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie_webb671mo ago

I did the exact same thing with 200 of my digital paintings last year. The model spit out stuff that looked like melted crayon drawings at first, but after tweaking the training data and removing some blurry images it actually started capturing my brushstroke patterns. It never copied any single piece though, it just learned how I tend to layer colors and where I put shadows. That convinced me the theft argument is way too black and white when the real issue is about how we handle consent and compensation if someone uses your style without permission.

sanchez.mary1mo ago

@jamie_webb67 your point about consent and compensation is spot on, that's the real conversation we should be having.

brianm661mo ago

@sanchez.mary nailed it - consent and compensation are the only things that matter here, not trying to call it straight theft or not. Heck, even my own attempts to train AI on my old doodles (a disaster, trust me) showed me it's more like learning a habit than copying a drawing. The whole "my style got stolen" panic misses the real question, which is how we set up rules for when someone does use your work that way.