I say this as an author who has definitely had a lot of my work slurped up by these machine-learning goblins: This was the right call. I learned to write by rea

I say this as an author who has definitely had a lot of my work slurped up by these machine-learning goblins: This was the right call. I learned to write by reading other authors' works, so I'd have to be quite the hypocrite to stop others from learning from me. Still, it makes me sad and tired to know that I'm unwittingly training my own replacement--one that will never be sad or tired itself. In my view, one real gray area is in image/video generation, especially "x in the style of y" kinds of shenanigans. As a society we may need to consider some better protections for an artist's/studio's style, otherwise distinct and novel and interesting styles will become watered down into a sea of bland mimicry until the sweet release of the heat death of the universe.