I get some of the surface level reasons, and those annoy me too. Cramming AI into everything is dumb and unnecessary.
However, I do feel that at a deeper level, it has a lot of useful applications that will absolutely change society and improve the efficiency and skills of those who use it. For example, if someone wants to learn to code, they could take a few different paths. There are the traditional paths, just read or go to school and learn to code that way. Or you could pay for a bootcamp or an online coding education platform. Or, you could just tell an AI chatbot you want to learn to code, and have them become your teacher, and correct any errors you make in real time. Another application is in generating ideas or quick mock ups. Say I'm playing a game of d&d with friends. I need a character avatar so I just provide a description to the AI and it makes it up quick. It might take a few prompts, but it usually does a pretty good job. Or if I have a scenario I need to make a few enemies for, I could just provide the description of those enemies and have a quick stat block made up for them.
I realize that there are underlying issues with regard to training the AI on others work, but as someone who is a musician myself, and a supporter of open source as often as possible, I feel that it's a bit hypocritical for people to get upset about AI "stealing" work with regard to code or other stuff that people willingly put out there for free for others to consume. Any artist or coder could "steal" the work of others for inspiration for their work, the same as an AI does, an AI is just much more efficient about it. I do think that most of the corporations that are pushing some new AI feature or promising the world or end of the labor force is full of shit, and that we are definitely in some sort of an AI bubble, but the technology itself is definitely useful in a lot of ways, and if it can be developed on a more localized and decentralized scale (community owned AI hubs anyone?), it could actually be a really powerful and beneficial technology for organizations and individuals looking to do more with less.
I feel this reply is somewhat misguided and reiterate many of the (frankly, a bit frustrating) AI propaganda talking point.
"It is not AI, it is capitalism": It is AI in capitalism, which is the reality we live in right now. If you take anything and put it in an utopia with a bunch of constraint, then of course it will be great. But that simply is not the world we are living in.
Some people hate cars, because it is a inefficient, polluting, and unsafe way to travel. But what if cars are all running on renewable energy, is super small, and never collide with pedestrian or cyclist.
Some people hate meat eating because it is inefficient and forces animal to live in inhuman conditions. But what if we can make animal photosynthesis and make them live happy, free, and full lives. Then no one will be against meat eating, but again, that is not our world right now.
Just because there is an alternative utopia where AI is perfect that doesn't mean it is right now, and its flaws causes the hatred on the internet.
Now, most AI center are polluting, consume large amount of energy, and those AI that people mostly uses are built with stolen knowledge. Finally, society should optimize for the well-being of the people, and artist are people, AI are not. All the AI people use nowadays funnels the money to the richest few, while majority of the population, even AI experts, don't have the means to train useful AI model as of now.