The article does a very good job at show how it isn’t stealing. Particularlly this part:
Fair use protects reverse engineering, indexing for search engines, and other forms of analysis that create new knowledge about works or bodies of works. Here, the fact that the model is used to create new works weighs in favor of fair use as does the fact that the model consists of original analysis of the training images in comparison with one another.
I understand that you are passionate about this topic, and that you have strong opinions on the legal and ethical issues involved. However, using profanity, insults, and exaggerations isn’t helping this discussion. It only creates hostility and resentment, and undermines your credibility. If you’re interested, we can have a discussion in good faith, but if your next comment is like this one, I won’t be replying.
It’ls less like a bear and more like a camera that that can navigate the multidimensional latent space filled with concepts that can give rise to novel art. In the real world you can up, down, left, right, in or out, but in a latent space not only can you go those places, you can go to where Muppets meets impasto.
There’s also a spectrum depending on what tool you’re using and your level of involvement, but most people tend to assume and lump everything together into the same category. I know with web based interfaces wit can be slow and cumbersome to iterate, but with open source models based on Stable Diffusion you get a lot of freedom. That’s mostly what I base my knowledge off.
As long as there’s a human to set parameters, iterate, correct, generate, and evaluate, I don’t think there’s any question as to who made it. Just like an image from nature doesn’t need to be a creator, only someone there to capture it.