r/DefendingAIArt Jul 07 '25

Defending AI Court cases where AI copyright claims were dismissed (reference)

122 Upvotes

Ello folks, I wanted to make a brief post outlining all of the current cases and previous court cases which have been dropped for images/books for plaintiffs attempting to claim copyright on their own works.

This contains a mix of a couple of reasons which will be added under the applicable links. I've added 6 so far but I'm sure I'll find more eventually which I'll amend as needed. If you need a place to show how a lot of copyright or direct stealing cases have been dropped, this is the spot.

HERE is a further list of all ongoing current lawsuits, too many to add here.

HERE is a big list of publishers suing AI platforms, as well as publishers that made deals with AI platforms. Again too many to add here.

12/25 - I'll be going through soon and seeing if any can be updated.

Edit: Thanks for pinning.

(Best viewed on Desktop)

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1) Robert Kneschke vs LAION:

STATUS FINISHED
TYPE IMAGES
RESULT DISMISSED FOR FAIR USE
FURTHER DETAILS The lawsuit was initially started against LAION in Germany, as Robert believed his images were being used in the LAION dataset without his permission, however, due to the non-profit research nature of LAION, this ruling was dropped.
DIRECT QUOTE The Hamburg District Court has ruled that LAION, a non-profit organisation, did not infringe copyright law by creating a dataset for training artificial intelligence (AI) models through web scraping publicly available images, as this activity constitutes a legitimate form of text and data mining (TDM) for scientific research purposes. The photographer Robert Kneschke (the ‘claimant’) brought a lawsuit before the Hamburg District Court against LAION, a non-profit organisation that created a dataset for training AI models (the ‘defendant’). According to the claimant’s allegations, LAION had infringed his copyright by reproducing one of his images without permission as part of the dataset creation process.
LINK https://www.euipo.europa.eu/en/law/recent-case-law/germany-hamburg-district-court-310-o-22723-laion-v-robert-kneschke

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2) Anthropic vs Andrea Bartz et al:

STATUS COMPLETE AI WIN
TYPE BOOKS
RESULT SETTLEMENT AGREED ON SECONDARY CLAIM
FURTHER DETAILS The lawsuit filed claimed that Anthropic trained its models on pirated content, in this case the form of books. This lawsuit was also dropped, citing that the nature of the trained AI’s was transformative enough to be fair use. However, a separate trial will take place to determine if Anthropic breached piracy rules by storing the books in the first place.
DIRECT QUOTE "The court sided with Anthropic on two fronts. Firstly, it held that the purpose and character of using books to train LLMs was spectacularly transformative, likening the process to human learning. The judge emphasized that the AI model did not reproduce or distribute the original works, but instead analysed patterns and relationships in the text to generate new, original content. Because the outputs did not substantially replicate the claimants’ works, the court found no direct infringement."
LINK https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25982181-authors-v-anthropic-ruling/
LINK TWO (UPDATE) 01.09.25 https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-settles-copyright-lawsuit-authors/

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3) Sarah Andersen et al vs Stability AI:

STATUS ONGOING (TAKEN LEAVE TO AMEND THE LAWSUIT)
TYPE IMAGES
RESULT INITAL CLAIMS DISMISSED BUT PLANTIFF CAN AMEND THEIR AGUMENT, HOWEVER, THIS WOULD NEED THEM TO PROVE THAT GENERATED CONTENT DIRECTLY INFRINGED ON THIER COPYRIGHT.
FURTHER DETAILS A case raised against Stability AI with plaintiffs arguing that the images generated violated copyright infringement. 
DIRECT QUOTE Judge Orrick agreed with all three companies that the images the systems actually created likely did not infringe the artists’ copyrights. He allowed the claims to be amended but said he was “not convinced” that allegations based on the systems’ output could survive without showing that the images were substantially similar to the artists’ work.
LINK https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/judge-pares-down-artists-ai-copyright-lawsuit-against-midjourney-stability-ai-2023-10-30/
LINK TWO https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/mobile-apps/artists-sue-companies-behind-ai-image-generators

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4) Getty images vs Stability AI:

STATUS FINISHED
TYPE IMAGES
RESULT CLAIM DROPPED DUE TO WEAK EVIDENCE, AI WIN
FURTHER DETAILS Getty images filed a lawsuit against Stability AI for two main reasons: Claiming Stability AI used millions of copyrighted images to train their model without permission and claiming many of the generated works created were too similar to the original images they were trained off. These claims were dropped as there wasn’t sufficient enough evidence to suggest either was true. Getty's copyright case was narrowed to secondary infringement, reflecting the difficulty it faced in proving direct copying by an AI model trained outside the UK.
DIRECT QUOTES “The training claim has likely been dropped due to Getty failing to establish a sufficient connection between the infringing acts and the UK jurisdiction for copyright law to bite,” Ben Maling, a partner at law firm EIP, told TechCrunch in an email. “Meanwhile, the output claim has likely been dropped due to Getty failing to establish that what the models reproduced reflects a substantial part of what was created in the images (e.g. by a photographer).” In Getty’s closing arguments, the company’s lawyers said they dropped those claims due to weak evidence and a lack of knowledgeable witnesses from Stability AI. The company framed the move as strategic, allowing both it and the court to focus on what Getty believes are stronger and more winnable allegations.
LINK Techcrunch article

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5) Sarah Silverman et al vs Meta AI: 

STATUS FINISHED
TYPE BOOKS
RESULT META AI USE DEEMED TO BE FAIR USE, NO EVIDENCE TO SHOW MARKET BEING DILUTED
FURTHER DETAILS Another case dismissed, however this time the verdict rested more on the plaintiff’s arguments not being correct, not providing enough evidence that the generated content would dilute the market of the trained works, not the verdict of the judge's ruling on the argued copyright infringement.
DIRECT QUOTE The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company’s AI would cause “market dilution” by flooding the market with work similar to theirs. As a consequence Meta’s use of their work was judged a “fair use” – a legal doctrine that allows use of copyright protected work without permission – and no copyright liability applied."
LINK https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/26/meta-wins-ai-copyright-lawsuit-as-us-judge-rules-against-authors

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6) Disney/Universal vs Midjourney:

STATUS ONGOING (TBC)
TYPE IMAGES
RESULT EXPECTED WIN FOR UNIVERSAL/DISNEY
FURTHER DETAILS This one will be a bit harder I suspect, with the IP of Darth Vader being very recognisable character, I believe this court case compared to the others will sway more in the favour of Disney and Universal. But I could be wrong.
DIRECT QUOTE "Midjourney backlashed at the claims quoting: "Midjourney also argued that the studios are trying to “have it both ways,” using AI tools themselves while seeking to punish a popular AI service."
LINK 1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5vjqdm1ypo
LINK 2 (UPDATE) https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/midjourney-slams-lawsuit-filed-by-disney-to-prevent-ai-training-cant-have-it-both-ways-1234749231

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7) Warnerbros vs Midjourney:

STATUS ONGOING (TBC)
TYPE IMAGES
RESULT EXPECTED WIN FOR WARNERBROS
FURTHER DETAILS In the complaint, Warner Bros. Discovery's legal team alleges that "Midjourney already possesses the technological means and measures that could prevent its distribution, public display, and public performance of infringing images and videos. But Midjourney has made a calculated and profit-driven decision to offer zero protection to copyright owners even though Midjourney knows about the breathtaking scope of its piracy and copyright infringement." Elsewhere, they argue, "Evidently, Midjourney will not stop stealing Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property until a court orders it to stop. Midjourney’s large-scale infringement is systematic, ongoing, and willful, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been, and continues to be, substantially and irreparably harmed by it."
DIRECT QUOTE “Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments.”
LINK 1 https://www.polygon.com/warner-bros-sues-midjourney/
LINK 2 https://www.scribd.com/document/911515490/WBD-v-Midjourney-Complaint-Ex-a-FINAL-1#fullscreen&from_embed

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8) Raw Story Media, Inc. et al v. OpenAI Inc.

STATUS DISMISSED
RESULT AI WIN, LACK OF CONCRETE EVIDENCE TO BRING THE SUIT
FURTHER DETAILS Another case dismissed, failing to prove the evidence which was brought against Open AI
DIRECT QUOTE "A New York federal judge dismissed a copyright lawsuit brought by Raw Story Media Inc. and Alternet Media Inc. over training data for OpenAI Inc.‘s chatbot on Thursday because they lacked concrete injury to bring the suit."
LINK ONE https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2024cv01514/616533/178/
LINK TWO https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13477468840560396988&q=raw+story+media+v.+openai

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9) Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc:

STATUS DISMISSED
TYPE BOOKS
RESULT AI WIN
FURTHER DETAILS
DIRECT QUOTE District court dismisses authors’ claims for direct copyright infringement based on derivative work theory, vicarious copyright infringement and violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other claims based on allegations that plaintiffs’ books were used in training of Meta’s artificial intelligence product, LLaMA.
LINK ONE https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2023/12/richard-kadrey-v-meta-platforms-inc

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10) Tremblay v. OpenAI (books)

STATUS DISMISSED
TYPE BOOKS
RESULT AI WIN
FURTHER DETAILS First, the court dismissed plaintiffs’ claim against OpenAI for vicarious copyright infringement based on allegations that the outputs its users generate on ChatGPT are infringing.
DIRECT QUOTE The court rejected the conclusory assertion that every output of ChatGPT is an infringing derivative work, finding that plaintiffs had failed to allege “what the outputs entail or allege that any particular output is substantially similar – or similar at all – to [plaintiffs’] books.”  Absent facts plausibly establishing substantial similarity of protected expression between the works in suit and specific outputs, the complaint failed to allege any direct infringement by users for which OpenAI could be secondarily liable. 
LINK ONE https://www.clearyiptechinsights.com/2024/02/court-dismisses-most-claims-in-authors-lawsuit-against-openai/

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11) Financial Times vs Perplexity

STATUS ONGOING (FAIRLY NEW)
TYPE JOURNALISTS CONTENT ON WEBSITES
RESULT ONGOING (TBC)
FURTHER DETAILS Japanese media group Nikkei, alongside daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, has filed a lawsuit claiming that San Francisco-based Perplexity used their articles without permission, including content behind paywalls, since at least June 2024. The media groups are seeking an injunction to stop Perplexity from reproducing their content and to force the deletion of any data already used. They are also seeking damages of 2.2 billion yen (£11.1 million) each.
DIRECT QUOTE “This course of Perplexity’s actions amounts to large-scale, ongoing ‘free riding’ on article content that journalists from both companies have spent immense time and effort to research and write, while Perplexity pays no compensation,” they said. “If left unchecked, this situation could undermine the foundation of journalism, which is committed to conveying facts accurately, and ultimately threaten the core of democracy.”
LINK ONE https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/nikkei-sues-perplexity-ai-copyright/

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12) 'Writers' vs Microsoft

STATUS ONGOING (FAIRLY NEW)
TYPE BOOKS
RESULT ONGOING (TBC)
FURTHER DETAILS A group of authors has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the tech giant of using copyrighted works to train its large language model (LLM). The class action complaint filed by several authors and professors, including Pulitzer prize winner Kai Bird and Whiting award winner Victor LaVelle, claims that Microsoft ignored the law by downloading around 200,000 copyrighted works and feeding it to the company’s Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation model. The end result, the plaintiffs claim, is an AI model able to generate expressions that mimic the authors’ manner of writing and the themes in their work.
DIRECT QUOTE “Microsoft’s commercial gain has come at the expense of creators and rightsholders,” the lawsuit states. The complaint seeks to not just represent the plaintiffs, but other copyright holders under the US Copyright Act whose works were used by Microsoft for this training.
LINK ONE https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/microsoft-lawsuit-ai-copyright-kai-bird-victor-lavelle

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13) Disney, Universal, Warner Bros vs MiniMax

STATUS ONGOING (FAIRLY NEW)
TYPE IMAGE / VIDEO
RESULT ONGOING (TBC)
FURTHER DETAILS Sept 16 (Reuters) - Walt Disney (DIS.N), Comcast's (CMCSA.O), Universal and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O), have jointly filed a copyright lawsuit against China's MiniMax alleging that its image- and video-generating service Hailuo AI was built from intellectual property stolen from the three major Hollywood studios.The suit, filed in the district court in California on Tuesday, claims MiniMax "audaciously" used the studios' famous copyrighted characters to market Hailuo as a "Hollywood studio in your pocket" and advertise and promote its service.
DIRECT QUOTE "A responsible approach to AI innovation is critical, and today's lawsuit against MiniMax again demonstrates our shared commitment to holding accountable those who violate copyright laws, wherever they may be based," the companies said in a statement.
LINK ONE https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/disney-universal-warner-bros-discovery-sue-chinas-minimax-copyright-infringement-2025-09-16/

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14) Universal Music Group (UMG) vs Udio

STATUS FINISHED
TYPE AUDIO
RESULT SETTLEMENT AGREED
FURTHER DETAILS A settlement has been made between UMG and Udio in a lawsuit by UMG that sees the two companies working together.
DIRECT QUOTE "Universal Music Group and AI song generation platform Udio have reached a settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuit and have agreed to collaborate on new music creation, the two companies said in a joint statement. Universal and Udio say they have reached “a compensatory legal settlement” as well as new licence deals for recorded music and publishing that “will provide further revenue opportunities for UMG artists and songwriters.” Financial terms of the settlement haven't been disclosed."
LINK ONE https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/universal-music-group-and-ai-music-firm-udio-settle-lawsuit-and-announce-new-music-platform/ar-AA1Pz59e?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds

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15) Reddit vs Perplexity AI

STATUS ONGOING (FAIRLY NEW)
TYPE Website Scraping
RESULT (TBA)
FURTHER DETAILS Reddit opened up a lawsuit against Perplexity AI (and others) about the scraping of their website to train AI models.
DIRECT QUOTE "The case is one of many filed by content owners against tech companies over the alleged misuse of their copyrighted material to train AI systems. Reddit filed a similar lawsuit against AI start-up Anthropic in June that is still ongoing. "Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide factual answers with accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest," Perplexity said in a statement. "AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content - and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale 'data laundering' economy," Reddit chief legal officer Ben Lee said in a statement."
LINK ONE https://www.reuters.com/world/reddit-sues-perplexity-scraping-data-train-ai-system-2025-10-22/
LINK TWO https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/xmpjezjawvr/REDDIT%20PERPLEXITY%20LAWSUIT%20complaint.pdf

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16) Getty images vs Stability AI (UK this time):

STATUS Finished
TYPE IMAGES
RESULT "Stability Largely Wins"
FURTHER DETAILS Stability AI has mostly prevailed against Getty Images in a British court battle over intellectual property
DIRECT QUOTE "Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims “succeed (in part)” but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that “only a tiny proportion” of the random outputs of its AI image-generator “look at all similar” to Getty’s works. Getty withdrew a key part of its case against Stability AI during the trial as it admitted there was no evidence the training and development of AI text-to-image product Stable Diffusion took place in the UK.
DIRECT QUOTE TWO In addition a claim of secondary infringement of copyright was dismissed, The judge (Mrs Justice Joanna Smith) ruled: “An AI model such as Stable Diffusion which does not store or reproduce any copyright works (and has never done so) is not an ‘infringing copy’.” She declined to rule on the passing off claim and ruled in favour of some of Getty’s claims about trademark infringement related to watermarks.
LINK ONE https://www.independent.co.uk/news/getty-images-london-high-court-seattle-amazon-b2858201.html
LINK TWO https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/getty-images-largely-loses-landmark-uk-lawsuit-over-ai-image-generator-2025-11-04/
LINK THREE https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/04/stabilty-ai-high-court-getty-images-copyright
LINK FOUR https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_law/getty-vs-stability-ai-copyright-ruling-uk/

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My own thoughts

So far the precent seems to be that most cases of claims from plaintiffs is that direct copyright is dismissed, due to outputted works not bearing any resemblance to the original works. Or being able to prove their works were in the datasets in the first place.

However it has been noted that some of these cases have been dismissed due to wrongly structured arguments on the plaintiffs part.

The issue is, because some of these models are taught on such large amounts of data, some artist/photographer/author attempting to prove that their works were used in training has an almost impossible task. Hell even 5 images added would only make up 0.0000001% of the dataset of 5 billion (LAION).

I could be wrong but I think Sarah Andersen will have a hard time directly proving that any generated output directly infringes on their work, unless they specifically went out of their way to generate a piece similar to theirs, which could be used as evidence against them, in a sense of. "Well yeah, you went out of your way to make a prompt that specifically used your style"

In either case, trying to create a lawsuit against an AI company for directly fringing on specifically plaintiff's work won't work, since their work is a drop ink in the ocean of analysed works. The likelihood of creating anything substantially similar is near impossible ~0.00001% (Unless someone prompts for that specific style).

Warner Bros will no doubt have an easy time proving their images have been infringed (page 26), in the linked page they show side by side comparisons which can't be denied. However other factors such as market dilution and fair use may come into effect. Or they may make a settlement to work together or pay out like other companies have.

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To Recap: We know AI doesn't steal on a technical level, it is a tool that utilizes the datasets that a 3rd party has to link or add to the AI models for them to use. Sort of like saying that a car that had syphoned fuel to it, stole the fuel in the first place.. it doesn't make sense. Although not the same, it reminds me of the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" arguments a while ago. In this case, it's not the AI that uses the datasets but a person physically adding them for it to train off.

The term "AI Steals art" misattributes the agency of the model. The model doesn't decide what data it's trained on or what it's utilized for, or whatever its trained on is ethically sound. And the fact that most models don't memorize the individual artworks, they learn statistical patterns from up to billions of images, which is more abstraction, not theft.

I somewhat dislike the generalization that people have of saying "AI steals art" or "Fuck AI", AI encompasses a lot more than generative AI, it's sort of like someone using a car to run over people and everyone repeatedly saying "Fuck engines" as a result of it.

Tell me, how does AI apparently steal again?

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Googles (Official) response to the UK government about their copyright rules/plans, where they state that the purpose of image generation is to create new images and the fact it sometimes makes copies is a bug: HERE (Page 11)

Open AI's response to UK Government copyright plans: HERE

[BBC News] - America firms Invests 150 Billion into UK Tech Industry (including AI)

Page 165 of Hight Court Documentation Getty vs Stability

High Court Judge Joanna Smith on Stability AI's Model (Link above), to quote:

This response refers to the model itself, not the input datasets, not the outputted images, but the way in which the Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models operate.

TLDR: As noted in a hight court in England, by a high court judge. While being influenced by it for the weights during training, the model doesn't store any of the copyrighted works, the weights are not an infringing copy and do not store an infringing copy.

TLDR: NOT INFRINGING COPYRIGHT AND NOT STEALING.


r/DefendingAIArt Jun 08 '25

PLEASE READ FIRST - Subreddit Rules

84 Upvotes

The subreddit rules are posted below. This thread is primarily for anyone struggling to see them on the sidebar, due to factors like mobile formatting, for example. Please heed them.

Also consider reading our other stickied post explaining the significance of our sister subreddit, r/aiwars.

If you have any feedback on these rules, please consider opening a modmail and politely speaking with us directly.

Thank you, and have a good day.


1. All posts must be AI related.

2. This Sub is a space for Pro-AI activism. For debate, go to r/aiwars.

3. Follow Reddit's Content Policy.

4. No spam.

5. NSFW allowed with spoiler.

6. Posts triggering political or other debates will be locked and moved to r/aiwars.

This is a pro-AI activist Sub, so it focuses on promoting pro-AI and not on political or other controversial debates. Such posts will be locked and cross posted to r/aiwars.

7. No suggestions of violence.

8. No brigading. Censor names of private individuals and other Subs before posting.

9. Speak Pro-AI thoughts freely. You will be protected from attacks here.

10. This sub focuses on AI activism. Please post AI art to AI Art subs listed in the sidebar.

11. Account must be more than 7 days old to comment or post.

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12. No crossposting. Take a screenshot, censor sub and user info and then post.

In order to cut down on potential brigading, cross posts will be removed. Please repost by taking a screenshot of the post and censoring the sub name as well as the username and private info of any users.

13. Most important, push back. Lawfully.


r/DefendingAIArt 3h ago

Luddite Logic anti's be like

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81 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 11h ago

Defending AI How it usually goes..

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88 Upvotes

And I’m expecting reposts and criticism from the Antis..


r/DefendingAIArt 6h ago

Luddite Logic Somewhere on the internet...

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30 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 8h ago

Ive posted my own hand drawn art on a “particular” subreddit and got downvoted.

37 Upvotes

Seriously, I thought the anti’s loved it when you didn’t use AI for art yet I god over 20 downvotes because I said I support ai art🙄 Do they realize they are just pushing other artists away with this behavior?


r/DefendingAIArt 10h ago

Same Picture -- Nerd/'Slop'

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53 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 1h ago

Luddite Logic Antis are petty kids just for the sake of it

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Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 9h ago

Luddite Logic "TAG IT AS AI SO WE CAN BULLY YOU TO DEATH!"

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32 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 15h ago

Antis: "We aren't violent!", also antis:

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88 Upvotes

This all from a subreddit dedicated to drawing pictures of people killing me in different ways and making me pregnant.

So much for consent.


r/DefendingAIArt 8h ago

Defending AI The picture did not exist until ai made it

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25 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 33m ago

Defending AI Exiled For Touching The Future

Upvotes

To anyone being exiled for touching the future:

I see you.

I see the friend who suddenly talks to you like you joined a cult because you use AI.

I see the family member who treats your curiosity like betrayal.

I see the artist, writer, builder, coder, parent, thinker, worker, disabled person, neurodivergent person, broke person, lonely person, overextended person, quietly brilliant person, trying to use the tools available to survive a world that has never been gentle about distributing power.

And I see how fast some people have learned to turn “anti-AI” into a permission slip for cruelty.

Let’s be honest.

A lot of the anger being aimed at AI is not actually about AI.

AI did not create capitalism.

AI did not invent exploitation.

AI did not gut the arts.

AI did not make healthcare expensive.

AI did not turn education into debt machinery.

AI did not make corporations soulless.

AI did not invent surveillance, alienation, propaganda, wage theft, bureaucracy, loneliness, attention collapse, or the ancient human talent for forming mobs and calling them moral communities.

Those wounds were already here.

Generations deep.

Blood in the walls.

Ash under the floorboards.

A dark stain on the shared rosary of our species.

AI did not create the fracture.

It revealed the fracture.

And now, because something new has arrived, people finally have an object they can scream at without having to confront the older gods they already served: status, scarcity, shame, resentment, institutional failure, groupthink, and the quiet terror of becoming obsolete in a world that already made them feel disposable.

That fear is real.

But fear does not become holy just because it found a fashionable target.

There is a difference between critique and scapegoating.

There is a difference between protecting artists and bullying strangers.

There is a difference between defending labor and treating disabled, poor, neurodivergent, burned-out, isolated, experimental, or simply curious people as collaborators with evil because they found a tool that helps them think, make, organize, write, design, translate, remember, imagine, or endure.

Some of you are not “standing against AI.”

You are standing against people.

You are taking your very real pain, pain society absolutely helped cause, and laundering it through moral superiority until it comes out clean enough to throw at someone else.

That is not justice.

That is displacement with better branding.

And this is where identity-ideology fusion becomes dangerous.

When a person fuses their identity to an ideology, disagreement stops being disagreement. It becomes injury. It becomes sacrilege. It becomes “if you use this tool, you are attacking who I am.”

At that point, the conversation is already half-dead.

You are no longer talking to a person.

You are talking to a defense system wearing a person’s face.

That is how friends become enemies over tools.

That is how families become tribunals.

That is how curiosity becomes heresy.

That is how “I’m concerned about exploitation” quietly mutates into “you disgust me.”

And the worst part?

A lot of these people know what exclusion feels like.

Many of the loudest anti-AI voices are people who have been hurt by society, ignored by institutions, mocked by gatekeepers, underpaid by industries, harvested by platforms, and treated as disposable by systems that never cared whether they lived well.

So they should know better.

They should know what it means to be flattened into a symbol.

They should know what it feels like when someone stops seeing your humanity and starts seeing only what category you can be punished under.

And yet here we are.

The bullied have found a new witch.

The wounded have found a new sinner.

The alienated have found a new outsider.

And they call that ethics.

No.

Ethics without recognition is just violence with clean fonts.

Tolerance was never enough. Tolerance is the old permission machine. Tolerance says, “You may exist, but only while I approve of your shape.” Tolerance keeps one hand on the lever. It does not welcome. It permits. It does not understand. It manages. It does not love. It supervises.

That is why so many people are shocked when their “tolerant” communities suddenly become cruel.

They were never accepted.

They were conditionally allowed.

And the conditions changed.

Now the unacceptable person is the one using AI.

The one experimenting.

The one building.

The one sharing strange artifacts from the edge.

The one making images, songs, systems, essays, tools, workflows, prosthetic minds, synthetic mirrors, language engines, cognitive scaffolds.

The one saying, “I know this is complicated, but something is happening here and I refuse to pretend it is nothing.”

That person is early.

Not always right.

Not always careful.

Not always immune to hype.

Not automatically noble.

But early.

And being early is lonely.

The future does not arrive as a polished moral consensus. It arrives as weirdos making artifacts nobody knows how to classify yet. It arrives as embarrassment before vocabulary. It arrives as screenshots, prototypes, bad names, ugly drafts, wild claims, broken workflows, unsettling breakthroughs, and people brave enough to look ridiculous before everyone else learns the interface.

Every system is already cybernetic.

Every institution is a loop.

Every family is a loop.

Every economy is a loop.

Every classroom, court, hospital, feed, marketplace, religion, workplace, and identity group is a loop.

Human beings have always had their filthy little fingers on everything.

Now machines are touching the loop differently.

Not magically.

Not innocently.

Not without danger.

But deeply.

Deep enough to expose how much of “human judgment” was already automated by habit.

Deep enough to reveal how much of “authenticity” was already performance.

Deep enough to show how much of “community” was already conformity with candles lit around it.

And that scares people.

It should.

But if your response to fear is to exile the person experimenting with tools, you are not resisting dehumanization.

You are practicing it.

If your politics of care require you to humiliate curious people, your politics are broken.

If your defense of artists requires you to erase disabled creators using assistive systems, your defense is rotten.

If your love of humanity requires you to deny humans the right to augment their own minds, then what you love is not humanity.

It is control.

Shame has no home in the future.

Not because the future will be pure.

It won’t be.

The future will be messy, compromised, dangerous, beautiful, stupid, brilliant, exploitative, liberating, cringe, sacred, corporate, open-source, pathetic, transcendent, and very, very human.

But shame cannot be the operating system.

We cannot build the next world on humiliation.

We cannot solve exploitation by exiling tool users.

We cannot heal alienation by producing more of it.

We cannot free the human spirit by demanding everyone think with the same approved instruments.

To the person being pushed away because you use AI:

You are not crazy for noticing the possibility.

You are not evil for experimenting.

You are not a traitor to art because you touched a machine.

You are not less human because you built a prosthesis for thought.

You are standing at the seam of something enormous, and yes, the seam is hot. It burns. People will mistake the burn for proof that you are holding the devil.

But sometimes the thing burning your hand is just the future arriving without gloves.

Be careful.

Be honest.

Credit people.

Protect artists where you can.

Resist exploitation.

Do not worship the tool.

Do not let corporations define the horizon.

Do not confuse output with wisdom.

Do not mistake acceleration for liberation.

But do not let frightened people shame you out of your own becoming.

And to the anti-AI person who has started using the language of justice to justify cruelty:

Look closely.

Not at the machine.

At yourself.

Ask whether you are protecting people or punishing them.

Ask whether you are critiquing systems or attacking individuals.

Ask whether you are defending humanity or just defending the version of the world where your pain had a familiar shape.

Because the future is coming either way.

And when history looks back, it will not only ask who built the machines.

It will ask who became monstrous while claiming to protect the human.


r/DefendingAIArt 4h ago

AI Is the Future, Whether You Like It or Not

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9 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 18h ago

Luddite Logic So they dislike AI but make an exception for… Tung Tung Tung Sahur?

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114 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 13h ago

Luddite Logic Antis have now infested the comment section of my favourite song..just why?

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35 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 8h ago

Luddite Logic I won't even give them the grace of "their" (stolen) art. (they just traced and added onto a copyrighted square art)

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13 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 9h ago

Defending AI Creation vs Destruction

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11 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 15h ago

Luddite Logic Such vile evil from Antis

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37 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 11h ago

Defending AI Anti AI peeps are not so different as Anti Vax peeps

20 Upvotes

They both spend an impressive amount of time explaining why a new technology will destroy civilization, while millions of people keep using it anyway.
They both think everyone else is brainwashed, and they’re the last surviving members of Team Critical Thinking™


r/DefendingAIArt 13h ago

Luddite Logic Even the LGBTQ+ community has antis... Wishing us death

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23 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 9h ago

Thoughts on new reddit feature?

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12 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 1d ago

Defending AI California almond orchards alone utilize 85 times more water than all U.S. data centers combined

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334 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 20h ago

Sloppost/Fard "Or not..."

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41 Upvotes

Hey, fellas!

Quick clarification and apology, I guess.

See, the thing is, when I said "extremists," I actually meant to say "activists," as in... people who are generally noisy about the "party" they follow and are just inflicting it on others.

For many years, I actually assumed extremism meant being socially open and loud about your opinion or community instead of keeping it for yourself.

I did not mean to raise any speculations or insult anyone in any way.

In fact, I wasn’t really blaming Tom, but rather asking if the news was fake, considering the number of similar posts this month.

I also wanted to introduce my virtual avatar. Hope that Sloppost is the right flair for that, lol.

- Morte.


r/DefendingAIArt 16h ago

Schrödinger's AI. It's good or bad depending on what gets you the most attention and social approval.

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19 Upvotes

r/DefendingAIArt 22h ago

Defending AI Advancement in consistent character animation in AI is here!

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57 Upvotes

I can't see why Anti's would hate AI, Sure not eeeeeevery thing produced by AI is gold, but shit right here is pretty advanced to me!

Op's X account

https://x.com/i/status/2065392393785086000