From Cara:

We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation

Okay I wanted to talk real quick about this aspect. Lot's of folks want AI to require things only held in copyright. And fine, let's just run with that for sake of brevity. Disney owns everything. If you stick AI to only models which the person holds copyright, only Disney will generate AI for the near future.

I'm just going to tell you. The biggest players out there are the one who stand to profit the most from regulation of AI. And likely, they'll be the one's tasked by Congress to write drafts of the regulation.

In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily

And the thing is, is Photoshop even "human-made art"? I mean that was the debate back in the 90s, when a ton of airbrush artist lost their jobs. And a large amount of Photoshop that was done, was so bad back then we had the whole Ralph Lauren, Filippa Hamilton thing go down.

So I don't disagree with safe from AI places. But the justification of Cara's existence, is literally every argument that was leveled at Photoshop back in the 90s by airbrush artist who were looking to protect their jobs and failed because they focused way too heavily on being anti-Photoshop that the times changed without them. When they could have started learning Photoshop and kept having a job.

I think AI presents a unique tool for artist to use to become more creative than they have ever been. But I think that some of them are too caught up in how CEOs will eventually use that tool as justification to fire them. And there's a lot of propensity to blame AI when it's the CEO's writing the pink slips, just like the airbrush artists blamed Photoshop, when it was newspapers, the magazines, and so on that were writing the pink slips.

I just feel like a lot of people are about to yet again get caught with their pants down on this. And it's easy to diss on AI right now, because it's so early. Just like bad Photoshop back in the 90s led to the funny Snickers ad.

Like I get that people building models from other people's stuff is bad. No argument there. But, open models, things built from a community of their own images, are things too but that's all based on the community and people who decide to be in a collaborative effort to provide a community model. And I think folks are getting so hung up on being anti-AI, that it's going to hurt their long term prospects, just like the airbrush folks who started picking up Photoshop way too late.

There's not a stopping Disney and the media companies from using AI, they're going to, and if you enjoy getting a paycheck, having some skill in the thing they use is going to be required. But for regular people to provide a competitor, to fight on equal footing, the everyday person needs access to free tools. Imagine if we had no GIMP, no Kitra, no Inkscape. Imagine if it was just Adobe and nothing else and that was enforced by regulation because only Adobe could be "trusted".