One thing that continues to grate on my conscience about #AI is how artists and writers consistently feel that the technology has STOLEN from them. We all know that web scraping is (and should be) a perfectly legal and acceptable use, because preventing it also prevents all sorts of beneficial behaviors—the Internet Archive wouldn’t be able to exist, for one thing.

But yet, the very nature of AI takes scraped content and regurgitates it as a pink-slime extrusion that it feeds back into the web. And to creators, that just FEELS WRONG; it feels like stolen valor, it feels like exploitation.

And it’s something I can’t (and shouldn’t) shake from my mind each time I see something made by AI. Just because something is LEGAL doesn’t mean it isn’t ABUSIVE and UNETHICAL. Scolding people who complain about AI by telling them that web scraping is good, actually, doesn’t address the main complaint: that somehow, these AI assholes have EXPLOITED A COMMON GOOD and we can’t quite figure out how to stop it.