REVBENT IF they are also trying to charge for it
It was always about monetization, otherwise the "ai" would never happen. It's just too resource demanding to be done without expecting returns. Over past few decades, the data companies quietly amassed tons of data, uploaded into their server by armies of clueless normies, enticed by one monkey brain impulse or another. And with the advent of computing power sufficient to run neural nets, they now think they finally found a way to monetize it all.
Even if those "ai" products are "free" for masses to use, the financial gains can happen indirectly via attracting investments or raising stocks value. So even if there is no cost for you to use those products, it'd be extremely naive to think the peddlers are not financially benefiting, or at least intend to.
There's also the familiar scenario where the game of "free" is played for years, during which period more precious data is collected, pretending it's for "betterment of civilization". Then the company "suddenly turns evil" and starts demanding subscriptions. By that time, backtracking or even awakening to the fact that the large scale ip infringement was happening all this time - is nigh on impossible.
So yeah, don't defend data plundering just because products build on it are given to you "for free". It's not a robin hood story. The financial returns are what's it all about.
People who think it's justified to steal ip if a product built on it is "free", clearly never created or even owned a piece of monetizable intellectual property. For better or worse, the majority of population comes in contact with intellectual property solely through consuming it. They're easy to manipulate into adopting this attitude of theft justification, merely on the promise of free consumption.
