depends. if they do that, no lie, they invite the streisand effect by doing so.

the only way for that to occur is for the person to scrub the internet of all references to their art work and make sure any public or private viewings happen in person with no capture devices of any kind allowed. then you have a chance at accomplishing not having your art be absorbed.

the reality is, if it exists on the net, it will be absorbed by others out there. sometimes just out of sheer spite. if it weren’t so easy to shit out a home brew ai stable diffusion model or lora in hours, then sure, there might be a way of legally pursuing. fortunately art is now going to become so democratized that there will be a myriad of new artists to copy from.

but at this point that’s like trying to shut down pepe the frog as a meme. just ain’t gonna happen. pepe’s been let out of the box.

i think the artists are scared that with ai in the mix, they’re going to be replaced. but that’s not true the same as painters weren’t replaced by photoshop and digital painters. they could actually embrace the change and lean into it, but unfortunately people tend to be like lemmings in their own echo chambers and the artist echo chamber said “THIS IS BAD! THIS IS STEALING!” never once thinking about all the methods they’ve stolen from others along the way. oh sorry, we will call it “influenced”. my bad.

but yeah, if they lean into it, great things can occur. a friend of mine has literally trained a private home brew model of her own artwork and then added in shit tons of fantasy concepts into the mix. as a result, a shit ton of her heavy lifting for illustration in graphic novels is already done. artists could be using it for inspiration or for reference.

honestly i can’t wait for the artist echo chamber to just calm tf down