I guess part of my issue with the argument is that creators seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to put their work out into the public, but

I guess part of my issue with the argument is that creators seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to put their work out into the public, but then they want to also control what people can do with it. These two themes, although I can see the need and logic for them, seem to be totally antithetical on a practical basis. In some sense art creation is, indeed, a risk.. you put something out there, and then you hope it is perceived well, and hope that it isn't abused. That's what makes making art such a difficult thing.. you are putting something out there, a piece of yourself.. but not acknowledging the associated risks, that someone might hate it, that someone might not understand it, or indeed that someone might "sample" your work into a new context, is being totally disingenuous with yourself as an artist. Of course I have no issue with the idea that artists should be fairly compensated, and the whole legal idea of copyright exists exactly for that, and I'm incredibly interested to see how this whole thing plays out in the legal sense. But I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced that using publicly available sources for training AI, that don't explicitly come with copyright terms that forbid it, is in any sense unethical, because I think it's entirely possible that it may end up being considered fair use. Artists want to get paid, yes, but the whole "I didn't get to opt out" argument doesn't really sit well with me, because the degree of post-publication "control" being implicitly demanded in that argument doesn't seem to be very balanced. In fact you did get to opt out, software for example comes with extensive legal documents describing exactly how derivative works can use it, but books and photos generally don't, and maybe in the future they will have to, but the idea that retroactively interpreting the role of copyright on existing works to include special considerations for AI just doesn't seem that obvious. You might not like that you published work in a way that someone was able to use it in a way that you disapprove of, without explicitly forbidding said usage, but the fact is that you did. The rest is for the courts to sort out. And I think it could go either way.