Argument is that if using, again, publicly available images is "unethical", then does not under this definition memes be unethical, considering how many of them often directly trace these images? Like, are those images I list "unethical" because they use the original?
Publicly-availability is not a license to use them for your own purposes. Memes are shared as-is - and if you want to argue the ethics of sharing images from somewhere else, then cool but that doesn't really matter here. However, using artists' art by scraping and downloading and shoveling it into your computer in order to spit out an image using their work (and style) is different than reposting memes.
If I'm making a work that's a multi-layered reference to some multiple things, that's my creative output using an idea and my own labor. An AI art generator takes an idea, but it uses others' works to composite an image.
Your 'then meme redraws should be banned too' idea fixates on the unoriginality of the
idea, not the labor being performed (and how it's being performed). The ethics issue is how that's being performed - chiefly, the AI is being fed others' works and that is being used to composite an image,
and there is no consent in the use of those works for compositing.
Man, can't wait for argument that rotorscoping is not art. Because that is what you are saying here. Also, again no: art models don't trace original images. They use impression of the original. Just like humans do. We don't have "original.png" in our mind telling us how exactly to copy original when we start working, we have impression of the original. Because that is how human brain stores data.
Actually those images you linked aren't traced (at least, as far as I can tell, off of the original image). And I'll restate this so you understand: I used the argument that AI art is more like tracing as a point of differentiation (though I think 'compositing' is more accurate)... and compositing isn't the same as drawing something from reference, experience, or knowledge. Compositing is taking multiple elements and making a whole
thing out of its parts.
And before you say 'mosaics', I'd argue that a mosaic made out of other artists' works without permission should also be regulated (at least credited as such, with individual artists' works).
(edit: Okay the Chad versus Virgin meme is traced, but the others aren't)
[JoJo memes have nothing to do with art.]
Minor digression - I have a legitimate serious argument that these JoJo redraws have some actual artistic merit, but that's neither here nor there. I do want to sorta make a corncob thread about it now though.
