Sorry in advance for the mega reply! This is a big topic but I'll do my best.

I was mainly referring to the fact that AI content generators are built from databases full of copyrighted work, which the companies:
- did not pay to license
- did not seek permission to use (especially for paid models like Midjourney)
- do not provide renumeration to the original creators (especially the paid models)
- do not provide credit to the original creators

Effectively, they are copyright laundering, and providing bootlegged content/paid plagiarism.

Not that providing renumeration/credit/seeking permission in retrospect would fix the issue. They need to wipe their current models and rebuild them legally and ethically. But oh... they won't do that, because then the content produced would be lacking.

See, these programs don't just *magically* produce their content out of nowhere.

It all came from somewhere, and that "somewhere" was the entirety of the internet.
Which (contrary to popular belief) is NOT public domain.

For most countries, copyright applies to any created work from the moment it is created, regardless of whether the work is registered with a copyright office or not, and regardless of whether the creator seeks to make money off it or not. Everything on the internet is copyrighted by default (unless it's public domain/under a similar license, or created in a country that doesn't have copyright law, or ineligible for copyrighting due to lack of human authorship/creativity)

It is straight up illegal to take copyrighted content and make money off it without licensing it first. Which is what the paid content generators are doing (like Midjourney).
And the companies behind the free and open-source content generators will sell the tech down the line for profit (so even if it's not generating profit from users right now, it's tech they will eventually make money from)

Ah, so cheap for them, they can make billions on their tech, all without having to invest in pesky licensing fees or following copyright law!

There are also major ethical issues about the instant and easy ability to plagiarise a living working creator by training a model on their work, then pass it off as your own (or impersonate a creator by using their name). They just released mass plagiarism software to the masses open-source.

Creators are pulling their content from the internet in droves. After all, why create or share anything if your work will instantly get stolen and laundered?

This has also led to mass displacement of the creative workforce. Freelancers are losing clients, their income source. People are getting fired from in-house jobs because the company is going to use AI now. Some in-house workers get to keep their jobs, but are ordered by their company to train AI on the work they produce. Meanwhile freelancers are being told their services aren't needed because the company went ahead and trained an AI on their work.

There's also the issue that people are passing off generated content as their own work, which it is not. I mean, we don't say that someone who commissions a person to make something is now "the creator"...

And absolutely, the use of developing country workers to sift through traumatic content in those databases (and for slave wages!) is disgusting and unethical as well.

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To finish up, here are some great vids:

"AI art is going to have consequences" by T B Skyen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIni6Eeg9rE

"The End of Art" by Steven Zapata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjSxFAGP9Ss

They both focus on "AI art", but the ethical arguments are universal and apply to things like ChatGPT too.
Both are chaptered, so you can jump to arguments you want to hear about. But they're worth listening to in full.

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Thanks for making it this far, and for reading. Hope it was of some use ^^;