You make it sound like some force of nature is causing this to occur. These things exist because people are making them, despite there no longer being a healthy reason for doing so.
(I’m not saying there’s reason for AI development in general to stop, but these generative things that are designed to slot neatly into the role of human artists specifically have no reason to be developed further beyond proving it was possible, and that happened a while ago.)
The force of nature is that our society will utilize any technology before even considering its ramifications. "Touchscreens in cars? Let's do it!"
I think you might enjoy Neil Postman's book "Technopoly", which discusses the subject of weighing the pros and cons of a subject instead of just diving in headfirst every time some new technology is developed. His YouTube talks are also great.
I think that’s more of an emergent behavior, not a force of nature. But I agree that enough people might do stupid stuff to create this kind of emergent behavior, which seems to be happening now. Like maybe 90% or more of people think these art AIs are distasteful, but enough people can’t stop themselves from filling in the blank square where something is possible to create but hasn’t been created yet, so people keep trying to make it. Even though there doesn’t seem to be any upside or goal, since I’ve never gotten an explanation of one.
And I think if you’re going to create something that has a little bit of potential to harm at least a few people, you should at least have a decent goal or reason for creating it.
Life is a force of nature. Evolution is a force of nature. The development of society (across species, not just human) is a force of nature. The development of technology is an aspect of that. In other words, macro-economic trends such as the development of automation ARE in fact an aspect of evolution, aka, a force of nature.
Doesn't matter if that's not the sense in which the phrase is used, these things are arising out of the collective unconscious, not as the result of mere individual will.
GDPR has a severely muted effect because Americans are still doing the same things they were before. It'll be even more ineffectual for AI. Nearly all AI research you hear about is being done in the United States. European regulations will only stop Europeans from using it, but you won't be able to escape it anyway because of how much American culture is continuously imported into Europe. Meanwhile, the reverse is almost completely not true; very little European culture makes it into American culture. This will just kneecap European creators and companies. I wish Europe the best of luck with this.
Since we are talking about music, maybe I'm living in a European bubble but last time I was in the U.S. people were listening to classical music (basically OG Euro music), Beatles, ABBA, Elton John or newer stuff like anything involving David Guetta whatever. Plenty of European music being listened to in my niche (metal) as well. Music knows no borders.
That's implementation details. It could be the case that no art produced in the EU can be used as training data (or similar), not necessarily that EU AI models are forbidden from being trained on art. I find the former case the most probable.
That being said - it's happening, and nothings going to stop it regardless of which side of the fence people sit on.