As an artist, when people imitate me, I take it as flattery.
When a machine imitates me, I take it as an insult to life itself.
This is an absolutely rational take.
Individual, noncommercial imitation is flattery.
LLM ripoff is exactly that.
When a machine imitates me, I take it as an insult to life itself.
I might be flattered that someone bothered to make a machine do that. Massaging software to do that also takes skill?
When GitHub Copilot lifts my opensource code, I’m not offended. I only cringe a bit when it’s bad code I regret committing.
I take it as flattery
I respect your position, and I appreciate people who are willing to share their creativity in an inspiring way like that.
However, others don’t see it as flattery. Particularly in eastern cultures, it is seen as mockery or plagiarism. You can choose to disagree about why they don’t want you to imitate their style, but you should always respect the request.
If eastern cultures don’t like imitation, why are there a million identical isekai light novels with an average joe who dies, reincarnates in a slightly altered Dungeons and Dragons world, and gets a harem of women with huge breasts whose personalities are taken straight from TVtropes?
Because humans suck?
Fair.