Possibly controversial opinion: I think the biggest reason why so many people hold conflicting views on this is because of who the victim is in each case.
The loudest voices complaining they were directly hurt by Copilot's training are open source maintainers. These are exactly the kind of people who we love to root for on here. They're the little guy involved in a labor of love, giving away their work for free (with terms).
On the other hand, the highest-profile victims of Stable Diffusion and DALL-E are Getty Images and company. They're in most respects the opposite of open source maintainers: big companies worth millions of dollars for doing comparatively little work (primarily distributing photos other people took).
Because in the case of images the victim is most prominently faceless corporations, I think our collective bias towards "information wants to be free" shows through more clearly when regarding DALL-E than it does with Copilot.
> On the other hand, the highest-profile victims of Stable Diffusion and DALL-E are Getty Images and company. They're in most respects the opposite of open source maintainers: big companies worth millions of dollars for doing comparatively little work (primarily distributing photos other people took).
It's puzzling to me you acknowledge people are taking these photos and getting a cut from their use through the marketplace, yet still see Getty as the biggest victim.
If Getty could AI-generate their whole portofolio and keep 100% of the sales to themselves they'd do it in heartbeat (and I'd expect them to partially go that route). The most screwed people are the photographs ("the little guy" in your comparison)
The loudest voices complaining they were directly hurt by Copilot's training are open source maintainers. These are exactly the kind of people who we love to root for on here. They're the little guy involved in a labor of love, giving away their work for free (with terms).
On the other hand, the highest-profile victims of Stable Diffusion and DALL-E are Getty Images and company. They're in most respects the opposite of open source maintainers: big companies worth millions of dollars for doing comparatively little work (primarily distributing photos other people took).
Because in the case of images the victim is most prominently faceless corporations, I think our collective bias towards "information wants to be free" shows through more clearly when regarding DALL-E than it does with Copilot.