Pre-AI I worked on a lot of (niche) open source; I've had several jaw-dropping moments when a friend or employee would tell me we should stop working on X because we're just making a copy of Y which is trending on some part of Twitter.

I was very surprised, so I'd look up Y and find it was just someone charging for a product based on my code. And people in the community would accuse me of stealing.

I've seen this scenario play out with several of my friends too.

This isn't a new phenomenon, AI just makes for a more efficient laundry. Nobody cares, and nobody does their research. The tech industry is full of psychopaths glad to piggy back on your work and find loopholes to get away with it.

It's one of the reasons I'm not so keen on open source anymore. I'm glad to do free work, but being accused of theft while people make money off it is not a great reward. Probably a lot of creatives are feeling the same right now.