In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
Yes exactly. The people who can conceivably use AI the best are those with very little to begin with. And should you create something successful you would most likely eventually hire actual artists to assist you. It's never that black and white. There's a lot of bad things to say about the big companies and their fascination with putting AI into everything, but that's really just overlooking the much broader societal impact of AI, which is much more visibly positive for independent creators and smaller companies.
The sudden change in how copyright infringement is weighted by some feels mostly like a tactic to me too. Which is a shame because you don't need such things to get sympathy from most people. Losing job security is not something people are stone cold about, and will most likely support protections on that basis alone. Misrepresenting or lying about it will make allies shy away from you even if they have your best intentions in mind. As someone else put it in one of these threads: "If ethics is on your side, slam ethics. If the law is on your side, slam the law. If neither are on your side, slam the table." and this fascination with harshly applying copyright infringement to people doing things with AI that artists did without AI since the dawn of time is stupid.