Some fake-artist AI-using twit decided to alter a Michael de Adder cartoon. UPDATED.

[orthoclad]

2. AI is theft, purely and simply.

It has stolen the work of generations of artists so that some Grinch can pretend he's a cartoonist.

That's the moral perspective. The pollution perspective is even worse. The AI-enabling data surveillance centers burn huge amounts of fuel to run the processors. And they destroy entire water sources.

The entertaining convenience of pretending to be an artist is fed to us to distract us from the main use of these server farms: surveillance and analysis. These centers scavenge and store every single fact of our lives, then they make use of the analytic abilities to associate every fact with every other fact and fit them into a bigger picture - in the service of our tech-ish oligarchs. Think Palantir.

So in addition to the moral and environmental downsides of AI cartoons, there is a political dimension.