Really don't like the way these companies basically say:

"Oh yah, we stole, erm, 'trained' our AI tool on your images... Here's what we figure it's worth, now don't bother us".

It's theft. Plain & simple. Doesn't matter how "they" justify it - if you did not explicitly give permission to do so, it's theft. Some "justify" it saying "well we have rights in our license agreement" - eh, no. BECAUSE of the way they've "approached" it - they KNOW it is wrong. (I.e., why would you have to 'hide' what you are doing, and after the fact say 'oh, here's some random money, now don't bother us' if you didn't feel it was wrong - because they KNOW - or rather - pretty strongly suspect - if they said to contributors 'Hey guys! We want to make a tool that will make US more money in the long term, and you less - so we basically want to rip of your images so we can do that, but we'll pay you a couple bucks so you don't feel bad, how does that sound?" MOST contributors would MOST LIKELY say, em, no.

Obviously dall-e/midjourney/etc were the first to just simply STEAL images... and one of the "pesky" little "problems" they have is getting rid of "watermarks"... hmm... how EVER could WATER marks have GOTTEN there? OH the mystery!

(While I have used the tools - and I do admit they are 'cool' - I think the approach to creating them is wrong and they should compensate artists for the hard work they did creating them - PLUS - future compensation for every single images generated based on those. Programatically - it IS VERY EASY to set up such a system. RETROACTIVELY - it is ALSO POSSIBLE. More work - but definitely doable).

Then shutterstock basically ripped things off, then said 'oh haha, yah, here's some money, SOOOOOOOreee! we already ripped it off, so you can't get it back, but here's what we randomly decided to pay you!"...

Sad to see what I would have considered better companies now following suit.

BY THE WAY...

CONTRARY to what these "AI" companies say (i.e., midjourney/dall-e/etc) - it actually IS possible to "backwards compensate"/"retroactively" pay/compensate contributors for the images they took IF they chose to do so...
(a) They "tracked" which images they fed into their training set.
(b) People who generated images used certain 'neural nodes' to create that image.
(c) They keep EXTENSIVE track of EVERY SINGLE THING created with the software.

So it IS possible to to write an algorithm "AI" to do super micropayments (like fractional cents) for EVERY SINGLE IMAGE created, THEN it IS possible to find those contributors (i.e., those images that had the 'pesky little watermarks') - and compensate them - and then it IS POSSIBLE to PAY OUT for EVERY SINGLE IMAGE going forward based on those BASE IMAGES...

It may be a little bit of work - but just an FYI - it IS possible. Contrary to what "they" might say. You'd just have to write a computer algorithm to do so.

So going forward - for EVERY single "AI" image created - you could be compensated fractional cents for 'neural node' inputs to create an image (i.e., $0.0001, because components of your image were used in making a new composite) - which - with the hundreds of thousands (more likely millions) being created every day... would quickly add up. AND - give you a nice future consistent revenue stream.

I see your point but don�t think it is technically possible to tie output to specific learning material which went into the model. So in fact you would need to broadly distribute money to creators undiscriminate of the quality and usefulness of their work. So if 100.000.000 images went into the training the compensation would need to be split between all of them - and MidJourney doesn�t even know them because they scraped the internet.