Probably an unpopular opinion on this forum where everyone is considering can something be done vs should something be done, but it sounds like theft to me.

But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money backed entities will just steal all the art and put it behind a paywall or advertisement.

As much as I appreciate the easy search (because actual useful search has become nonexistent since AI) and the ability to ask AI to find some metadata from a large data payload, I also dislike AI, because it has effectively broken the open internet and the willingness for humans to be open to freely sharing knowledge.

It's not theft, it's copying. Two different words, with two different meanings, and different legality, for very good reason. You can only steal things that can be taken away, which is why theft is bad, because it deprives the original owner of something they once had.

Copying does not directly deprive anyone of anything. In fact it just adds more value to the world, and makes it more available to more people.

Nobody can "copy" stuff and put it behind a paywall, because the original is still free. It's the prevention of copying that leads to expression being locked behind paywalls.

It's said that copying disincentivizes creativity and creation, but in practice it does the opposite. Just look at the incredible amount of music, fiction, software, stories, art, and information that have proliferated since the birth of the web.

What copying does do is it indirectly deprives people and companies of the ability monopolize profits on particular expressions without competition. But I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.

For example, look at the software industry. I'm extremely grateful that patents and copyright are so rarely enforced in software and UI design, and that we've all been copying the good ideas that came before us for decades with no consequence. I'm grateful the same is true of food recipes, too. I think the world would likely be a richer one if this was true for most fields and art.

Back in the day there were these Star Wars games. Now obviously Mark Hamill costs money and he wasn't going to come back for anything less than a Disney "offer you can't refuse" pay check.

So they got someone who could fake it pretty well.

Ofcourse fast forward in 2026 an actor automatically sells off their face, voice and soul when they sign a contract in perpuity.