> In almost any other context, this is due to someone taking credit away from another person. In this case there’s nobody besides themselves that was involved.

innumerable people were involved. AI is trained on the blood sweat and tears of untold numbers of truly talented artists and creators. and people falsely claiming to have made something they didn’t make, even if it wasn’t the product of the amalgamation of actual artists’ hard work, rightfully ruffles feathers of people critically analyzing the scenario.

> It really seems like people are just upset that people were able to easily create the work, like getting pissed at people for tracing.

the entire point is they didnt create the work. they objectively did the least amount of work of all components involved in the creation process of the art. they could’ve done as little as copy/paste, and clicked a button. that will of course not sit well with people who understand what goes into the art forms AI relies upon in order to even function in the first place.

and tracing can of course be seen as lazy by some, and context matters. people thought disney was lazy for rotoscoping famous sequences from their early films. but the results were stunning and every frame still requires a great degree of hands on skill. getting all bent out of shape over some kid tracing manga is obviously lame. but criticizing some low effort etsy seller for tracing over people in stock images, omitting all detailed facial features because they’re too hard to replicate, and using the paint bucket tool to fill the figures in, then slapping it on cheap decor with contrived misappropriated inspirational quotes and selling it is seen as hacky and supremely lazy by many, and they have a point. AI art, on the other hand, makes the aforementioned etsy seller look like rembrandt by comparison. as stated, context matters.