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My friend who paints said my AI art was just 'fancy theft'
She told me my cityscape image looked exactly like a piece from a local gallery show, which made me check the training data. I stopped using that model and now only use ones with clear artist permission. Do you think using any trained model is wrong, or is it okay if the source is open?
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young.michael2mo ago
Actually the real theft is how much electricity these models use. Training a big AI model can burn more power than a hundred homes use in a year. So even if you get "artist permission," you're still taking a massive environmental toll that nobody agreed to. That hidden cost gets ignored while everyone argues about copying styles.
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patel.shane2mo ago
Has anyone looked at where that power comes from though? If it's pulling from a grid running on coal, that's a huge carbon hit. But if the data center uses solar or wind, the math changes a lot. The type of energy matters just as much as the total amount used. We should be pushing for these companies to build their own clean sources instead of just taking more from the dirty grid.
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emmamason25d ago
Ask patel.shane a good point about the energy source, but doesn't that just shift the problem around? Even if a data center runs on solar, the panels and batteries still require mining and manufacturing that draws from the same dirty grid in other places. How do we measure the full cost from start to finish, and who gets to decide what's acceptable?
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