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Kiwifarms has been dropped by a number of ISPs and this blockade may well escalate. Certainly they receive less sympathy than their opponents and aren't feared as much.
I wouldn't expect much from China, it took them about 3 years to stop ruining their economy with Zero Covid mandates and roughly 10 times as long to merely begin acting as if they realize the costs of one-child policy. For now they're apparently more concerned about generative AI's potential for depicting Chairman Xi as Pooh (or otherwise unflatteringly), so they're banning non-watermarked images. I've seen Western artists extol this move as a step in the direction of protecting their precious rights.
I do not think any but the most rabid artists are seriously banking on this kind of fundamental triumph (some are very rabid though). They're more or less okay with OpenAI's work and do not notice Google Imagen etc. at all. Their winning scenario has more to do with denying their clientele the opportunity to cut them out, introduction of royalties for centralized AI corporations using datasets with artistic content, prohibition of independent (especially local) end user content generation, and its stigmatization on par with CP content; probably some certified-artist-only subscriptions (in the same vein as access to some scientific data is limited to only .edu emails).
This can succeed and go beyond the domain of art, especially if aided and abetted by other parties interested in centralizing AI tech (e.g. longtermists, national security).
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