Artist-washing (verb): to intentionally distract from AI models’ exploitation of creators’ life’s work by finding individual artists willing to use those models

Another paper funded by big tech (this time Google) arguing that they should be allowed to train their AI on people's life's work without payment/permission if it's 'publicly available'. One of its actual arguments: "A large and diverse corpus of training materials also helps ensure that models reflect cultural diversity." To be clear, this is arguing that billion-dollar corporations should be able to commercially exploit the work of other cultures, for free and without their permission - and that this unpaid commercial exploitation is actually *good* for those cultures. Genuinely shocking that this argument is still being rolled out. The solution to a lack of cultural diversity is not to exploit the work of those cultures. It is to ask their permission, and to pay them.