These companies and their shareholders really are complete scum in my eyes, just like AI in miltech.
Not because the tech isn't super interesting but because they steal years of hard work and pain from actual artists with zero compensation - and then they brag about it in the most horrible way possible, with zero empathy.
Then comes losing the little humanity left the mainstream culture, exactly as Miyzaki said, leading to a dead cold and even more unjust society.
This is not just about copyright infringement or plagiarism.
Automatically generating text, images and videos based on training data and a tiny prompt is fundamentally about taking someone's work and making money off of it without giving anything in return.
No matter what text you put in the prompt you'll get /something/. Just because you put "studio ghibli anime" in the prompt doesn't mean you're going to actually get that out of it. It'll just be kind of yellow and blobby.
(Also, the style isn't from "people" but a specific guy named Yoshifumi Kondo who isn't around anymore.)
Though… I'm always surprised how respectful Westerners are about Miyazaki. Meanwhile you read other Japanese directors and they're saying all kinds of things about him.
Kids are happy that homework takes less time. Teachers are happy that grading the generated homework takes less time. Programmers are happy they can write the same amount of code in less time. Graphic designers are happy they can get an SVG from a vague description immediately. Writers are happy they can generate filler from a few bullet points quickly.
But then someone comes along, notices people are not working most of the time, fires three quarters of them and demands 4x increased output from the rest. And they can do it because the "AI" is helping them.
Except they don't get paid any more. The company makes the same amount of money for less cost.
So where does the difference go? To the already rich who own the company and the product.
Communism is tossing the frog into boiling water (tens millions of dead), capitalism is boiling it slowly (poor people in first world countries might not afford a dentist but they're not starving yet).
We need a system that rewards work - human time and competence.
There are really only 2 resources in the world - natural resources and human time. Everything else is built on top of those. And the people providing their time should be rewarded, not those who are in positions of power which allow them to extract value while not providing anything in return.
Does anybody here really think rich people deserve to just get richer faster than any working person can? Does anybody really believe that buying up homes and companies and raking in money for doing absolutely nothing is what we should be rewarding?
Then put your name behind it.
