>Externality seems to describe it best. The individual never directly touched anything and never had malicious intent however I was affected by their actions.
>Is there a better term for this?
Based on the rest of what you've written, the best way I can describe it is "undercutting". Normally that term is used where one seller prices their items much lower than everyone else in the market, resulting in every buyer flocking to him and leaving every other seller without customers.

You brought up "AI artstyle scraping models". I would say this is quite similar to (though not exactly like): an "online artist" capable of "changing" their "artstyle" (that is, they are not locked into one artsyle) opens up a million "commission slots", each with a price point set at 0.01 cents. Why do they set the price so low? Literally any reason can be given (social experiment, crashing the online "art" market, for the lolz). In this situation, the event you mentioned would likely happen (replace "free" with miniscule charge):
>He used to commission and give money but now he doesn't have to, now he can print away his anime waifu without waiting, without needing to go back and forth with artist to get the character just right and for free!

I picked the word "undercutting" because it closely describes the act, but it does have some flaws: the major one being that undercutting assumes a malicious intent to "remove competitors" and "gain a market share". Although there are indeed people using AI models to create drawings for money, I'm guessing your friend isn't one of them.

>Is it wrong to copy files and artstyles? In basic morality it harms another.
What is "right" and "wrong" depends on who you ask; to me it is much more useful to ask "what do they want?" To your friend, they want an image of their waifu designed to their specifications/taste (color, setting, subject matter) at the lowest cost possible (free).

For the "artists", each one has slightly different reasons for drawing. One thing that often gets lost is the idea that the "artists" you see in online communities are not a monolith (though this has some exceptions), and a single person claiming to speak on behalf of the "entire community" is not to be fully trusted. The wants I've thought of so far are:
-they aspire for a career in "drawing images for people online", similar to how furries pay thousands for images of their OC
-they want to "feel validated" by having the number of "followers, likes, shares etc.) increase (no judgement on whether this is good or bad)
-they place their identity in being a part of an "online artist community" and anything they want is based on the "values" held by that community.

If two parties have wants that oppose each other, who decides whether one is "right" and the other is "wrong"? Or rather how do you decide which of these wants is more important to meet than the other?

>Ai have enough data to scrape that it wouldn't hurt them at all if artist's never drew again. Though eventually I think people will notice issues. (I think?)
There's a phrase commonly touted that describes this scenario: model collapse. Essentially it's the idea where continuously training a model on its own output results in it performing worse and eventually becoming useless.

This ignores the possibility that:
-A human is manually curating which output data is useful for training and which data is not to be used, and guiding the training process to specifically avoid collapse
-A human still needs to pick an image according to their wants and standards of quality (i.e. the AI images you see posted online are the ones "somebody" thinks is "good enough")
-Continuously training a model on its own output might not lead to it becoming "worse" (what is "better" or "worse" depends on the requirements of the end user)
-The end state of the model produces images unlike anything else, resulting in a novelty that retain interest
-Someone can revert the model to an earlier generation or use their own offline copy without the cumulative damage (subscription services, online-only, auto-updates: go to hell! )

Of course, this all won't be necessary if people don't notice the images getting "worse", or if they don't actually think the changes are "worse".

>I'm not even sure where to draw the line in morality.
>What do we even make of this event? It's very beneficial to all else.
>We follow morality because it creates a better society
A thought I generally think is important to consider is: Better for who?

How much are your wants aligned with that of "society"? I use the word "wants" here, because it's much easier to determine than "needs". If you don't mind, take a look at >>146586. Do you actually want the "same" ""thing"" as "everyone else"? It's probably sickening to hear this repeated over and over again: "Think of the future! Think of the children!" This line has been used for television, video games, the internet (>>151290)... With that in mind, if you truly enjoy these and put a greater importance on these over "the future, the children, the society", is that something worthy of shame?

Another point: If a group of people would shame and deride you for liking something, can you really say you "like" them? Do you truly, honestly, WANT to be included in their "community"? If they would actively oppose everything you want and ruin everything you hold dear in their goal to create a "better" society, is that "society" even something you want to live in?

>I think people online should be more encouraging about telling people to take on greater challenge. It shouldn't be "Cheater!! No-skill!!!", they should reply with a more positive way like "Nice job, a trick to that boss is to roll towards the slashes!" (dark souls example) or for Minecraft "Try leaving a special block or torch to never lose your way." To encourage players on navigation so they won't feel as afraid to lose their items on death.
>Yes I know people aren't realistically that nice or positive but I will dream
>Taking on greater challenges is very rewarding, (usually) I wish more people encouraged me when I was little to take on greater challenges.
You have a great deal of hope, Bishopu. Don't let it die out.
I've posted about this often before (see >>143018, >>145520, >>151332, >>151386), but it feels as though the "average" person on the internet (not here) has gotten more... "unpleasant". It's a bit like the difference in how even though early multiplayer chat would call you a "fucktarded inbred cocksucker", you know they weren't being serious and could count on them being fun to hang around (kind of like here, actually ). In contrast, I don't know if the same feeling can be found on the "common" internet.

>There was a time of Human computers that would take like a week to calculate complicated stuff (like at NASA). Now there's a computer to do that. Oh how they lament, their job that takes a lot of brainpower to do is obsolete and replaced. Sad but the world is (I think) a better place for it.
Yes, I've heard of similar stories: the typewriter, the loom, IKEA furniture... It's important (to me at least) that you avoid "moral justifications" for people losing their jobs. I say that mechanical and electrical computers replacing human computers enabled significant improvements in technology, but I would not say that the human computers who lost their jobs """DESERVE""" it. It is merely something that happened, not a result of some "moral failure" or "punishment" for not being "virtuous enough" (though I might wonder whether they saw it coming, and if they were unable to adapt to the changes in time).

>I would argue that pirating something you had no intention of buying anyway is absolutely fine since you were never a potential customer anyway
Thing is, if you knew that you could get something that, functionally, based on your assessment, meets every requirement you want, without any cost attached, did you actually have any intention on spending money to get that something in the first place? I guess it would sort be like how you saw a promotion for a new movie that's come out, and decided to wait on an available torrent to watch it. Although that does raise an interesting thought: if you saw an artist who does commissions online, and you know that you can make a local StableDiffusion model based on the images they have posted online "for free", did you actually plan on paying them in the first place?
I don't know where I was going with this, actually

>I'm an artist and the only things I have against AI is that most of the time they look bad, lack anything that makes them stand out and are often dumped in the thousands to the point that searching for a particular image online gives you more AI generated images than not
That is a problem I've also encountered. One thing I can compare it to is if a billion images from Gacha Club were released on the internet, and search engines were unable to exclude them (>>144251). One thing I've kept in mind is that: the person posting this AI image thought it was "good enough". That's not to say that whatever they made is "bad", but more "I don't like it". It can be frustrating though, if it's more difficult to find something you like using a search engine as a consequence of mass uploads of AI images.

>my currency is people's replies (nothing is more pleasing than a thread I start with a drawing of mine full of replies and contributions, believe me)
I believe you, because I'm also partly guilty of the same thing

>I interpret it as stating that pirating adobe products is something that everyone SHOULD do to punish adobe
So I am guessing that's based on someone finding the company messing with their software in a way they don't like (or the subscription payment model), and wanting to exert pressure with the goal of stopping them and undoing their changes to the software suite

Since you're an artist, what are your thoughts on tracing and references, and copying an art style/pose/color palette? I've only heard of this second-hand, but apparently early Deviantart used to have a trend where users accuse each other of "stealing poses and brushes".

>I think art created to be a tool or commodity (corporate art, commissioned art, art that serves a purpose like as public signage or a software's UI) isn't really all the special
>now, art as expression? that's something different. art that is born out of passion and a desire to convey one's own heart to others is irreplaceable: no one who is seeking out that kind of art will ever be satisfied with AI, and AI can never replicate it to begin with (having no thoughts or feelings or self to express).
I've found that the problem appears to be that (in English at least) the word "art" is used to describe both of these things, and people keep flaming each other when their definitions don't align ("its not real art bcoz it haz no SOULLLZ!!!").

>and if you acknowledge all that and decide that you're gonna make art without concern for the money, then I think that you're awesome and worthy of respect (if not money).
I agree here. Extreme respect for deciding that your hobby is for you and not forcing it into a job that doesn't work or a job you'll hate (In a way, you are your own commissioner and client )

>one thing I can definitely agree on though is that we'll need to find a way to filter out the low-quality stuff from the internet, because we're gonna get flooded with it no matter what happens. it's bad now but will get worse. (;ﾟ∀ﾟ)
Have you noticed a decrease in the quality of search engine results starting mid-2024? I honestly believe Google used to be more reliable in 2014. But yes, I would like the option to filter out AI images, just like how I like having the option to filter out SFMs, Minecraft and IRL images if I so choose.

It doesn't help that people making AI images don't like tagging them as AI because of the massive risk of mob brigades on the internet.