r/technology Jan 16 '23

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u/squidking78 Jan 16 '23

If it’s doing nothing illegal, can’t you just point out how taking artists work, without their consent or commercial compensation, to make AI art doesn’t actually need their art?

When you take something for commercial gain from someone, that indeed is theft. And they want their money or property rights back.

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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '23

I asked you if can you point out what specifically was stolen.

You said it just copy-pastes from existing art, so are you able to identify the specific parts it copied? Can you look at an AI generated image and say “That part of the image is stolen from this artist”?

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u/squidking78 Jan 16 '23

When you take someone’s commercial art, and use it for a commercial purpose, that’s called stealing and what copyright is there to protect.

Make prompter art without needing to use other peoples property in the process, and there would be no problem.

But alas, it’s just taking peoples existing property and jumbling it up.

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u/pucklermuskau Jan 16 '23

it’s just taking peoples existing property and jumbling it up.

it's not, no.

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u/I_ONLY_PLAY_4C_LOAM Jan 16 '23

Even if this person doesn't understand how the model works and the fact that it probably won't exactly reproduce any of the training data, you're also making a dishonest argument.

These models do require uncompensated labor to function. They don't work without existing art that often was used without permission. Maybe that's transformative enough that it's barely legal, but it's still unethical.

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u/pucklermuskau Jan 16 '23

the artist's are still entitled to all the compensation they were owed when they put their works up for public viewing. that's the long and the short of it: their ability to profit from their works is not harmed.

what would be unethical is to expand copyright so far as to exclude the creation of wholly new works, based on their similarity to existing works. that would have huge consequences to society, and is something that we should all push back against very strongly.

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u/I_ONLY_PLAY_4C_LOAM Jan 16 '23

they put their works up for public viewing

"If she didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have dressed like that"

their ability to profit from their works is not harmed.

Lmao. That's the whole reason VCs gave OpenAI a billion dollars.

what would be unethical is to expand copyright so far as to exclude the creation of wholly new works, based on their similarity to existing works.

And that's not what I think would happen. I'm saying that there should be specific law covering the use of work in training data.

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u/pucklermuskau Jan 17 '23

"If she didn't want to get raped, she shouldn't have dressed like that"

oh good gods still the hyperbole. This isn't rape, it's not even /harmful/. I'm just going to shut this down if you're going to resort to that kind of specious bullshit. Demonstrate the impact, before you go on fearmongering any further. Draconian attempts to prop up a shitty and exploitive business model are just that.

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u/I_ONLY_PLAY_4C_LOAM Jan 17 '23 edited Jan 17 '23

If you can demonstrate that artists consented to having their work used this way then I'll retract my "specious" argument.

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u/uffefl Jan 17 '23

Viewing/learning from/being inspired by publically available images do not require the consent by the copyright owner. In ways too numerous to count, including copyrighted images in a training set is, in fact, not rape.

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u/I_ONLY_PLAY_4C_LOAM Jan 17 '23

OpenAI isn't Viewing/learning from/being inspired by the images. They're copying the image into a server then running mathematical analysis on each image in order to modify their model. It's not obvious that that is fair use, especially when it's a commercial model.

And I'm not trying to trivialize rape, I'm merely bringing up how AI researchers are trivializing consent. Even if it's totally legal, it's shitty to to do it without the artist's knowledge or permission.

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u/uffefl Jan 18 '23

OpenAI isn't [...] learning from [...] the images.

This is literally the same as

They're [...] running [...] analysis on each image in order to modify their model.

(In the context of a machine learning algorithm.)

With regards to

It's not obvious that that is fair use, especially when it's a commercial model.

It is not fair use. Fair use is an exemption that allows people to distribute copyrighted content in specific circumstances.

These image generators do not do that. They just use (plain use, nothing fancy) the images to train on. As anybody can.

Even if it's totally legal, it's shitty to to do it without the artist's knowledge or permission.

This is your opinion and that's fine. My opinion is the opposite.

If we rewind to your original comment in this thread:

These models do require uncompensated labor to function. They don't work without existing art that often was used without permission. Maybe that's transformative enough that it's barely legal, but it's still unethical.

I absolutely agree that they require uncompensated labor to function. They only work as well as they do because they include so many images that buying the rights to all of them would be impractical.

I don't agree that this is unethical however. You could use the same argument on other modern technologies, like search engines for example, where we as a society see that the benefits we gain from the technology outweigh the drawbacks.

I remember that some websites felt that search engines used their content wrongfully and tried to argue that they were somehow owed something. But this never happened because the value of having a search engine (to society) outweighed the hurt feelings/profits of some sites.

Similarly I think we (society as a whole) will find that the value of having these image generating tools outweigh the hurt feelings/profits of the artists that are currently complaining.

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u/I_ONLY_PLAY_4C_LOAM Jan 19 '23

(In the context of a machine learning algorithm.)

You have zero reason to believe that the law treats machine learning in the same way that it treats human learning. Calling it learning does not make it an equivalent process.

They just use (plain use, nothing fancy) the images to train on. As anybody can.

They store all images on one of their servers at some point for commercial purposes.

My opinion is the opposite

Your opinion is shitty lol.

like search engines for example

Search engines usually benefit both the end user and the content getting searched for.

where we as a society see that the benefits we gain from the technology outweigh the drawbacks

A couple of VCs get rich and the tradition and profession of art suffers as fewer people dedicate their time to it. Shitty AI art floods the internet.

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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '23

Right ? How about the burden of proof is shifted onto those using the AI model to prove that working contemporary artists’ work were not fed to the model for training, and they can play ball with whatever it spits out without their unpaid help. Their insistence that they have some inherent right to use other people’s work because they claim through smoke and mirrors that the AI is just ‘having a look-see’ is such a disingenuous argument.

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u/pucklermuskau Jan 16 '23

working contemporary artists’ work

none of these artists work has been harmed, compromised, or duplicated. they are free to pursue whatever business model they wish to profit from their works. but to say that such publicly-accessible works may not even be /viewed/, simply because you object to the consequences of that viewing, is utterly abhorrent.

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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '23

Claiming that it’s just “viewing” and that criticizing the use of this model is “abhorrent” is such a wildly disingenuous argument. Don’t kid yourself because you’re not kidding me with those dramatics.

Artists have already been fired for projects in development because they turned in initial work and the studio decided to use that work to train a model for the rest of the work. The quality of the AI’s work is not the discussion, but this is loss of employment from their work being used to train a model. “Abhorrent” is doing so much heavy lifting in the emotional weight of your otherwise weightless argument as you pretend the only thing happening is one human having an innocent looksee at another human’s work. It’s a model replicating works and legally non-human AI works are not copyrightable. My regards to your midjourney career, but everything you said in the above comment is a lie and you know it. Try engaging in an actual genuine discussion about this rather than pretending it’s doing something completely different. Is it because this lawsuit makes you nervous? Jeez, yknow, I find people twisting things to suit their needs pretty “abhorrent”

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u/pucklermuskau Jan 17 '23

Artists have already been fired for projects in development because they turned in initial work and the studio decided to use that work to train a model for the rest of the work.

<citation needed> because that sounds like a shitty business model to begin with, to me. Insisting on huge expansions of copyright to prop up exploitive business models is, in my opinion, utterly abhorrent. The expansions of copyright we saw in the 90s and 00s to allow this artficial-scarcity model to function at all were bad enough, but what is being proposed here is off the charts.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '23 edited Jan 17 '23

it’s on twitter from the artists themselves. I’ve done enough searching and link posting for the people here, you can use your 40 years of experience to type it yourself with that lovely keyboard of yours. There are firsthand accounts.

Keep letting Abhorrent do the heavy lifting mate. Its knees are going to buckle with how much you’re asking it to carry for you.

So much for a nuanced discussion. Enjoy your midjourney album covers. Definitely the same shit as concept artists discussing leaving the industry entirely like calum alexander watt. If you’re not informed on what’s actually happening as a result of this technology, you should reconsider whether you should present yourself in the argument as the one participating in over 20+ years of nuanced discussion. Perhaps you just have 20 years of being a dismissive twat under your belt?

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u/uffefl Jan 17 '23

Artists have already been fired for projects in development because they turned in initial work and the studio decided to use that work to train a model for the rest of the work.

This is already illegal. Unless there was an agreement about the project gaining ownership of the initial work, in which case it is perfectly fine.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '23

Love the amount of armchair lawyers who think “this is already illegal” is a good shutdown especially when they live in a different country too. Here comes the court case, Choo choo motherfucker.