I agree with your point about usage defining value in OSS - popular projects gain recognition, contributions, and opportunities through their adoption in commercial applications.

The critical difference, though, is consent. OSS creators explicitly choose licenses permitting commercial use - they opt in to sharing their work. Many content creators never made such a choice for AI training.

The current AI training paradigm doesn't even have a true opt-out model - it simply assumes everything is available. The noAI tags are attempting to create an opt-out mechanism where none previously existed. Without enforcement or standards adoption, though, these signals don't seem to have the same weight as established open source licenses.

There's also a significant difference in attribution. OSS creators receive clear attribution even when their work is used commercially. For creators whose work trains AI models, their contribution is blended and anonymized with no recognition pathway.

The core question is whether creating this opt-out approach is sufficient, or if AI training should move toward an opt-in model more similar to how open source licensing works.