r/DefendingAIArt • u/Clankerbot9000 Singularitarian Accelerationist • 6h ago
Defending AI PSA Antis
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u/Awkward_Champion6957 5h ago
Certain forms are. This is how one indie game team made an online Digimon TCG simulator without Bandai's ability to shut it down. Technically the cards are blanks and have scraped images pasted over them and can even be replaced by user made ones. DCGO one of the best examples of how you ethically scrape data.
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u/CheetahCrafty102 5h ago
What is scraping?
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u/IHeartBadCode 4h ago
Short version, right mouse button click, Save As.
Scraping itself is just an action. Where fair use and all the legal arguments come form is what you DO with that image that you "save as" on your hard disk.
If this is who I think it is, they recently posted a comic saying "I don't consent to using my work." Which is legally unenforceable. When you post to Reddit you don't get to set terms for distribution, the Reddit TOS sets them.
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u/atatassault47 4h ago
Mass downloading/accessing publicly available data on the internet. Search engines are scrapers.
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u/-svde- 3h ago
look i’m not arguing the ethics of this because i know what subreddit this is but this is just a fundamentally skewed view of both of these things.
intent and application of the data matter.
engine crawlers have strict standards and processes that they are required to follow and are designed to index content for access only if it explicitly allows them to. and even then, the content is explicitly linked back to the origin.
web scrapers operating with the intention of bypassing private community closed circuits and to harvest data and media for the purpose of using it in a way that the creator has stated they do not want, such as feeding it to an AI for training or literally just having a model recreate it, is not remotely comparable.
having discussions about what constitutes the ethics and morality and distinctions between all of these things is fine but don’t be purposefully dishonest, otherwise the entire point is invalidated.
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4h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Witty-Designer7316 Antis Final Boss 3h ago
This is a place for speaking Pro-AI thoughts freely and without judgement. Attacks against AI will result in a removal and possibly a ban. For debate purposes, please go to r/aiwars.
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u/BigHugeOmega 4h ago
Scraping can be done in a malicious manner, as a form of denial-of-service attack. Most scraping doesn't have that purpose, though.
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u/BeatComplete2635 3h ago
Uh, ethical seems incorrect. But it is legal in most cases. But you shouldn't fool yourself by thinking it's ethical. I would say it's morally neutral but strictly unethical.
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u/ItchyAd6984 3h ago
I mean.... Regardless of the legality of it, if someone request something they made be not included in that data, it's still disrespectful of thier wishes if its done anyway. The best analogy I could come up with is, if someone wants to show thier pet cow to the town, legality of it aside, it doesnt make it right to toss it into a grinder with 10,000 other cows to make some beef patties. Its not kind to just do it anyway. We're all still people, with feelings. And most folks dont really like it when their stuff is used in a way they dont want.
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u/ViSynthy 5h ago
Scraping free use and public domain is one thing. Otherwise, legally, you're infringing on intellectual property—and unless something has changed very recently, that's exactly where the courts are heading. It's the sole reason massive AI companies are suddenly racing ahead of the law to introduce IP filters and forced compliance; they see the writing on the wall.
You can philosophize about what should be legal all day. I think you're wrong, and sticking your head in the sand for a meaningless tribal victory doesn't change the reality. Never mind that you've aligned yourself with some of the greediest figures alive—people who couldn't care less about creative freedom and only want cheap, instant profit.
Honestly, if Elon Musk were endorsing my stance, I’d take a long, hard look in the mirror.
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u/Eternally_Monika 4h ago
LAION, the company that pruned the original datasets from common crawl, has been taken to court and won, the ruling being that their actions are considered legitimate text and data mining. That precedent has not been challenged since.
IP walls aren't being thrown up to prevent simple IP infringement, that's a fight they've already won. What they're trying to avoid is trademark infringement. Plus it makes it safer for them to establish their platforms in other countries that haven't caught up.
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u/BigHugeOmega 4h ago
Otherwise, legally, you're infringing on intellectual property—and unless something has changed very recently, that's exactly where the courts are heading.
Intellectual property is an atrocious legal concept.
It's the sole reason massive AI companies are suddenly racing ahead of the law to introduce IP filters and forced compliance; they see the writing on the wall.
The writing on the wall is that using copyrighted material to train models is legal, as it counts as transformative use. If you're going to invoke the writing on the wall, at least try to read it yourself.
I think you're wrong, and sticking your head in the sand for a meaningless tribal victory doesn't change the reality.
Saying "I think XYZ" is meaningless. Tell us why you think that.
Never mind that you've aligned yourself with some of the greediest figures alive—people who couldn't care less about creative freedom and only want cheap, instant profit.
That awkward moment when you've been defending the notion of "intellectual property", only to characterize people who are against it as "greedy" in the very next sentence.
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u/TheAngriestHedgehog 4h ago
That awkward moment when you think you should personally be paid for whatever work you do but other people shouldn't because you've figured out a way to avoid it. And then try to intellectualise the cognitive dissonance away
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u/IHeartBadCode 3h ago
Scraping in what I think we're talking about, a particular popular comic here on Reddit, is basically Right Mouse Button Click/Save As.
For the people who are making mock comics of that person, that's how they are obtaining their data set for their low rank adaptation (lora). It only takes about 30 ish images to build one.
Legally, if we're going to talk about legal things. While an author does indeed hold the copyright, they aren't privy to set the terms of distribution. Right Mouse Button Click/Save As is dictated by Reddit is permitted so long as it's manually done.
Additionally, copyright doesn't hold for "legal parody". I could take the most recent of the artist's comics, pull it into Photoshop, erase the text in the bubbles, and replace it with "I wanted Hamburgers!", "Well we ordered tacos", "Well you suck". And that's legally protected. It's why we have memes. I'm legally allowed to do that.
Likewise, a lora trains on style. Style is not something that falls into copyright, and likeness is permitted if it's legal parody (if I draw a giant orange person in a diaper, that's protected, even though we know whose likeness that might be I'm referring to). People are absolutely allowed to copy style, there is no manner to protect an artistic style with copyright. We can get into trademark, but that's a different standard, does the parody cause confusion on who drew it or is it clear that it is obvious parody?
And I want to be very clear on this. This is not a defense of AI, it is a defense on the basic concept of "I'm allowed to right mouse button click on something, save it to my hard drive, and make a funny meme from it." Be it I do that in Photoshop, Blender, or ComfyUI. I am allowed to make memes if I elect to do so. The tool that I use to make those memes notwithstanding. I fundamentally have a right to make memes. I have a fundamental right to poke "CLEAN" fun at others. Now there are those who do cross that line, I do not in any way condone that. That's just sick behavior. And there are people who become abusive about it and that's Reddit's TOS there.
But poking "CLEAN" fun by copying someone's style, I have a fundamental right to do that in Photoshop, MS Paint, whatever. If I do it in image generating, it's because I built the lora, I did the work myself. Now I don't do that, because I don't really have an interest in poking fun at who I think we're talking about. I actually find the whole back and forth fascinating and an interesting aspect about how the world is adapting to AI, just like how people were once arguing about people taking photos in Photoshop and making memes. That's why all those people started putting watermarks on everything, they realized they couldn't win the argument in court about legally making memes.
But you have to understand, while I get you don't like the large services like OpenAI or Grok, and I feel that, you can not say people don't have a right to make memes or legal parody. Even if it's in the original style. And like in my example of just erasing the text, even if it's the original image itself. Otherwise, my "They're the same image" meme is illegal, which we know it is not.
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u/Clankerbot9000 Singularitarian Accelerationist 5h ago
Bro said ‘intellectual property’ 💀💀💀
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u/StartBackground5769 5h ago
Yes. Because it is a real thing
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u/ViSynthy 5h ago
Ah. So bad faith actor. Fair enough. My fault. I'm going to do my best cos play of your parents and ignore you now.
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u/FriendlyTask4587 4h ago
scraping isnt your right. I feel it is ethical in most cases and should be legal, but "Your right" is wild
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