tracing/paintover is normal and even encouraged in professional art *IF* the source material is for stock purposes. some AIs, including stable diffusion online, offer generated images under a CC0 license, which permits commercial use and does not require credit.
IMO it'd be underhanded to do the minimal amount of editing on a CC0 image and sell it as a cash grab. if they are totally repainting or painting over, or tracing and then taking it a new direction, that's exactly the point of so many stock and CC0 images.
that doesn't get into the ethics of AI art as a whole (and I do think there are issues with treating AI images as stock because of the general ethics), but I just wanted to point out that tracing a CC0 image is totally different from tracing someone else's non-CC0 artwork.
Re: Whimzica Potentially Selling AI Art?
IMO it'd be underhanded to do the minimal amount of editing on a CC0 image and sell it as a cash grab. if they are totally repainting or painting over, or tracing and then taking it a new direction, that's exactly the point of so many stock and CC0 images.
that doesn't get into the ethics of AI art as a whole (and I do think there are issues with treating AI images as stock because of the general ethics), but I just wanted to point out that tracing a CC0 image is totally different from tracing someone else's non-CC0 artwork.