Arts and Ai

Over the past several weeks, there has been a wave of reactions to recent developments in the world of Ai and the arts, which seems pretty well typified in this article from the Verge. I'd like to get into why I think this line of thought is asking the wrong questions for the wrong reasons, but you'll have to bear with me a little. Let me start with a little about me. I'm a "multi-hyphenate" artist, which is to say I've done a lot of work in a variety of mediums: music production, visual art, writing. I'm not famous, but I've developed a methodology already, and didn't have much interest in the early Ai apps of yesteryear, until one came along that seemed to present some utility as tool rather than replacement. In talking to several artist friends of mine, I heard that MidJourney had an approach to Licensing that seemed to have artists in mind.