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I don’t understand how this isn’t infringing some copyright. Anyone do any research on this? If we accept that a model trained on copyright material does not i

I don’t understand how this isn’t infringing some copyright. Anyone do any research on this? If we accept that a model trained on copyright material does not infringe on the materials rights, then circumventing all copyright can be as simple as creating a sufficiently close derivative and giving it away. Not to say that copyright is good to begin with.

jovial_cavalier 4y ago
>circumventing all copyright can be as simple as creating a sufficiently close derivative and giving it away. That's correct. People do this all the time, sans the giving it away part. Also, there is no way that you can argue these images are not transformative.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Also, there is no way that you can argue these images are not transformative. Exactly. Kermit has been very much transformed, and "in the style of" is not copyright infringement AFAIK.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  I shouldn’t clarify - I’m not talking about the Kermit images, I’m talking about Dalle2 itself. If you had it render Neo from the Matrix, albeit imperfectly, would that be transformative use?
  - mcphage 4y ago
    It probably depends on how close it looks to the original.
  - zaphar 4y ago
    If I draw "Neo from the Matrix" does it matter how accurate I get Neo?
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      If you drew it yourself there’s precedent under fair use. If you made something that drew it when prompted for “The Matrix” presumably it knows what that is and therefore is more ambiguous
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        For copyright purposes, the tweeter "made it themselves."
        simiones 4y ago
        That remains to be seen. If I take a photograph of a still from the Matrix and print it, that's not the same as me photo-realistically drawing the same still from memory, which is itself not the same as me photo-realistically drawing it while looking at the still itself. Copyright law is way more nuanced than you think, especially around fair use.
        FeepingCreature 4y ago
        I think this is already established. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-office-rules-ai-art-cant-be-copyrighted-180979808/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-offic...
        simiones 4y ago
        It's established that you can't assert copyright over a picture generated by an ML algorithm. I don't think it's established whether a picture generated by an ML algorithm can infringe someone else's copyright (e.g. if you ask DALL-E to produce a picture of Mickey Mouse, and it does a perfect rendition of him, is this picture in the public domain, or does it infringe Disney's copyright?).
        FeepingCreature 4y ago
ceejayoz 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use
akersten 4y ago
Everything that you, a person with a paintbrush, could paint "in the style of" something else is informed by what your model (your brain) has been exposed to. There's no getting around that, and commissioning you to paint something "in the style of postwar authoritarian England" does not infringe the copyright of V for Vendetta (even if I told you "make it look just like the movie"); it's an original painting. Stylistic inspiration is not an infringement of copyright, in either that case or the "do it on a computer" case here. The Kermit the Frog aspect though is interesting - it applies equally for both the human and machine made works - if an argument could be made that the subject of the work sufficiently resembles the character, maybe there's a trademark issue at hand? But in any scenario, nothing legally novel about the work being created by machine.
- bogwog 4y ago
  > But in any scenario, nothing legally novel about the work being created by machine. …except for the fact that it was created by a machine. Just like copyright law had to be revised to deal with software and the internet, it will need to be revised to deal with AI.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > …except for the fact that it was created by a machine. We've already had this for years. The photos you take on any modern smart phone are partially the invention of AI (doubly so if you use something like portrait or night mode). It's not just raw CCD output, and yet, the photographer retains the copyright. DALL-E's terms could require users to assign copyright. If not, I don't see any reason it wouldn't go to the person who came up with the prompt and picked one particular generation. If I take a picture of a mountain with a camera, neither the mountain nor the camera hold copyright. DALL-E's just another tool in the toolbox.
    - bogwog 4y ago
      That’s obviously very different. The contributions of the AI processing my phone camera does is not significant, and can be substituted relatively easily with Photoshop or similar software. It’s just a convenience feature. Dall-E is the complete opposite. My contribution is insignificant (a prompt), whereas Dall-Es is 99% of the work. > If I take a picture of a mountain with a camera, neither the mountain nor the camera hold copyright. DALL-E's just another tool in the toolbox. Not sure how this contradicts my point. Nobody “owns” that mountain, so nobody could call your photo of it a derivative work. If you take a photo of a frame of a movie, then who owns the rights to that photo? It’s not a raw frame, it’s a photo of a screen. Does that mean you didn’t just steal someone’s IP? These questions need answers, and copyright laws try to answer them in as fair a way as possible. Dall E raises new questions, and thus we need to update copyright laws with new answers. My personal view is that obtaining licensing for every single work used to train the model is impossible. So instead of simply making this type of AI research illegal, the fairest solution is to put that model into the public domain. There are still financial incentives to perform this research, as the discoveries could be used later to train a commercial model with proper licensing.

jovial_cavalier 4y ago

>circumventing all copyright can be as simple as creating a sufficiently close derivative and giving it away. That's correct. People do this all the time, sans the giving it away part. Also, there is no way that you can argue these images are not transformative.

phkahler 4y ago
>> Also, there is no way that you can argue these images are not transformative. Exactly. Kermit has been very much transformed, and "in the style of" is not copyright infringement AFAIK.
endisneigh 4y ago
I shouldn’t clarify - I’m not talking about the Kermit images, I’m talking about Dalle2 itself. If you had it render Neo from the Matrix, albeit imperfectly, would that be transformative use?
- mcphage 4y ago
  It probably depends on how close it looks to the original.
- zaphar 4y ago
  If I draw "Neo from the Matrix" does it matter how accurate I get Neo?
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    If you drew it yourself there’s precedent under fair use. If you made something that drew it when prompted for “The Matrix” presumably it knows what that is and therefore is more ambiguous
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      For copyright purposes, the tweeter "made it themselves."
      - simiones 4y ago
        That remains to be seen. If I take a photograph of a still from the Matrix and print it, that's not the same as me photo-realistically drawing the same still from memory, which is itself not the same as me photo-realistically drawing it while looking at the still itself. Copyright law is way more nuanced than you think, especially around fair use.
        FeepingCreature 4y ago
        I think this is already established. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-office-rules-ai-art-cant-be-copyrighted-180979808/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-offic...
        simiones 4y ago
        It's established that you can't assert copyright over a picture generated by an ML algorithm. I don't think it's established whether a picture generated by an ML algorithm can infringe someone else's copyright (e.g. if you ask DALL-E to produce a picture of Mickey Mouse, and it does a perfect rendition of him, is this picture in the public domain, or does it infringe Disney's copyright?).
        FeepingCreature 4y ago

ceejayoz 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use

akersten 4y ago

Everything that you, a person with a paintbrush, could paint "in the style of" something else is informed by what your model (your brain) has been exposed to. There's no getting around that, and commissioning you to paint something "in the style of postwar authoritarian England" does not infringe the copyright of V for Vendetta (even if I told you "make it look just like the movie"); it's an original painting. Stylistic inspiration is not an infringement of copyright, in either that case or the "do it on a computer" case here. The Kermit the Frog aspect though is interesting - it applies equally for both the human and machine made works - if an argument could be made that the subject of the work sufficiently resembles the character, maybe there's a trademark issue at hand? But in any scenario, nothing legally novel about the work being created by machine.

bogwog 4y ago
> But in any scenario, nothing legally novel about the work being created by machine. …except for the fact that it was created by a machine. Just like copyright law had to be revised to deal with software and the internet, it will need to be revised to deal with AI.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > …except for the fact that it was created by a machine. We've already had this for years. The photos you take on any modern smart phone are partially the invention of AI (doubly so if you use something like portrait or night mode). It's not just raw CCD output, and yet, the photographer retains the copyright. DALL-E's terms could require users to assign copyright. If not, I don't see any reason it wouldn't go to the person who came up with the prompt and picked one particular generation. If I take a picture of a mountain with a camera, neither the mountain nor the camera hold copyright. DALL-E's just another tool in the toolbox.
  - bogwog 4y ago
    That’s obviously very different. The contributions of the AI processing my phone camera does is not significant, and can be substituted relatively easily with Photoshop or similar software. It’s just a convenience feature. Dall-E is the complete opposite. My contribution is insignificant (a prompt), whereas Dall-Es is 99% of the work. > If I take a picture of a mountain with a camera, neither the mountain nor the camera hold copyright. DALL-E's just another tool in the toolbox. Not sure how this contradicts my point. Nobody “owns” that mountain, so nobody could call your photo of it a derivative work. If you take a photo of a frame of a movie, then who owns the rights to that photo? It’s not a raw frame, it’s a photo of a screen. Does that mean you didn’t just steal someone’s IP? These questions need answers, and copyright laws try to answer them in as fair a way as possible. Dall E raises new questions, and thus we need to update copyright laws with new answers. My personal view is that obtaining licensing for every single work used to train the model is impossible. So instead of simply making this type of AI research illegal, the fairest solution is to put that model into the public domain. There are still financial incentives to perform this research, as the discoveries could be used later to train a commercial model with proper licensing.