They did, just on a smaller scale, and they used all games ever played by high-level players. LLMs and image generators were stealing data years before they became viable. And nobody gave a shit. Let’s not pretend most people give a shit about ethics or the environment. Those were impacted long before AI became viable in any way. People hate on AI because it’s affecting everyday prices and employment. Ethics and environment are just convenient shiny arguments few actually stand behind. If tomorrow billionaires turned around and said “actually, here’s UBI for everyone, provided by AI!”, most people would be cheering on intellectual theft and destruction of this earth, and call everyone still against it selfish and regressive.