Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just the way of capitalism, and it's how the entire economy works. I mean, you're so concerned with the artists work being stolen, but what of the scientists? Yes, the art produced by Stable Diffusion isn't possible without the artists, but it's also not possible without the countless scientists who have worked over decades to get this technology to where it is. I didn't hear artists complaining when they wer…
Scientists are generally paid, at least with public grant money or corporate sponsorship, or by working in corp labs. Artists and writers generally earn their living by selling their works. If they are not paid for their works, they starve, which is why the stereotype of the "starving artist" exists. This is like MS scanning all Open-Source code and generating PROPRIETARY results from that code. Like the art, it was…
> If they are not paid for their works, they starve, which is why the stereotype of the "starving artist" exists.
Sort of. Most people actively doing the hard labor in scientific fields are in fact Ph.D. students, who are paid meager stipends, if anything. They also frequently literally starve due to how little they are paid. And yet, it's their hard work that goes into published papers, which then are read by engineers (read: highly-compensated millionaires), who then implement those ideas into production code, which is sold for profit.
Further, much of the scientific process is actually volunteer work. I don't peer edit and review for free, in my spare time, just so Microsoft has an easier time reading the papers that pass through my inbox. I do it because the scientific process requires it, and this is the process we've decided on as a society. But maybe in the future, all scientific research will be for-profit, paid access only. That's the way it will be if the profit keeps getting captured by corporations without proportional taxes being paid back into the system.
> Scientists are generally paid, at least with public grant money
That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is the scientists who are paid with grant money are the lucky ones, because the pie is so small. So many other scientists are doing side jobs, hustling, and giving up their dream to be a scientist because the opportunities to make a living in this field are so few and far between. Being a scientist supported by a grant or corporation is a lot like being an artist with a patron, actually.
And why is it this way? The pie is so small to begin with because science is generally not profitable, and so research cannot fund itself. Nonetheless, we as a society feel that scientific research is a worthwhile endeavor, so we fund science, and tax corporations who use the fruits of science industrially. Those funds will then be reinvested into more science.
But now Microsoft and the rest of the big corps don't want to pay their taxes, yet they still want to freely incorporate public-funded research into their for-profit technology products. If that plays out, well who is going to fund the science? The scientists can't, the public won't, the corporations won't.