I completely agree. It makes something that was already very hard that much harder. I have a friend who played guitar in a "famous band". They made it. Meaning, they played on David Letterman and went on extensive tours, had a huge fanbase, etc. Some years back, he reached out to see if I had any leads on IT jobs. I was surprised to say the least, but his response was simple, "there's no money in it." That conversation really hammered it home that you can "make it" and still live without financial security. Fast forward to today, and the situation is even more dire given what is happening with AI.

I don't think highly of AI made stuff uploaded without clear labelling as such.

But it's almost certainly not AI's fault if your mortgage is not paid, your cancer not treated or you can't pay birthday presents for your kids. Music was already extremely "cheap", and success has very little with how much or little work you put into it (extremely unlikely either way).

Let's fund art, but this business model you want to do it by is hardly worth saving.

> AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission.

I want to be clear. I am 100% on-board with AI being absolutely shit.

Buuuut, this has always been the case. Before it was scammers taking images from the web and undercutting you with prints, now it's scammers stealing your artistic style.

It sucks, but it's not a brand new problem. What makes it particularly bad now is that there's a much larger flood of it.