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It's interesting to think about all the controversy surrounding machine-generated images in contrast with a scenario where the same images were generated/drawn/

It's interesting to think about all the controversy surrounding machine-generated images in contrast with a scenario where the same images were generated/drawn/created directly by a human. In this specific scenario, what would the artist think if 1000 people started drawing in her style and released those images?

burkaman 4y ago
It's ok to have different standards for humans and computers. Even if you think that a machine learning model is conceptually doing the same thing as a human artist, just a trillion times faster and infinitely replicable, there's no reason we can't say that it's ok for humans to do this, but not for computers. Computers are not people. It's not unfair or unethical to put an artificial limitation on an artificial object.
- dymk 4y ago
  Seems like putting a limitation on what someone can do with their own computer on their own time with their own money.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Yes, sort of like disallowing someone to DDoS a server using their own computer on their own time with their own money. This is not about one person playing around in private, it's about thousands of people (potentially millions) instantaneously generating art expressly intended to copy someone's specific style and publicly releasing the results.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      If you're ddosing someone's server you necessarily aren't playing around in private.
      - burkaman 4y ago
        If people were only playing around with Stable Diffusion in private then this article wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
        googlryas 4y ago
        Saying "here's an image I generated" is exactly the use case of reddit. DDoSing reddit is not the use case of reddit. And "private" has more meanings than "secret/only personally known". Posting something you generated on Reddit for fun is private use.
        burkaman 4y ago
        Tough to argue with that, all I can say is that your usage of the word "private" does not agree with either the dictionary definition or common usage.
        googlryas 4y ago
        Look up the term with relation to copyright law. See also: personal use, fair use. e.g. (pdf) https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1019&context=computersci_fac https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?r...
        burkaman 4y ago
        That link does not define the term, and I haven't been able to find a legal definition of "private use". The paper seems to be using the normal definition, though. > It sounds controversial that a defense of private use exists at all; after all, one usually buys a book for her private use. This use may mean that one can make photocopies of a legally possessed book, in order to read it, for example, not only in the office, but also at home. One may also loan the book to a friend. I would be pretty surprised to find a legal definition that says if you put something online just for fun it doesn't count as copyright infringement. I don't know why we're talking about this though, I'm not a big fan of copyright but that's not what this is about. It's not "you put my drawing on Reddit without my permission", it's "you publicly released a tool on Reddit that allows anyone to effortlessly create infinite variations of my work in my name, please don't do that". I don't care whether or not it's legal, I think it's immoral to create a tool that could not exist without ingesting someone's life's work and then ignore them when they ask you not to do that.
  - WaxProlix 4y ago
    There are plenty of those limitations already, some even having to do with things like IP and copyright.
    - cthalupa 4y ago
      I don't see any evidence that things being generated with SD or similar somehow remove those same limitations around IP and copyright. I am just as much hoping Disney looks the other way when I make fanart of their IP regardless of how it is made.
- SkyBelow 4y ago
  >It's ok to have different standards for humans and computers. Is it? The computer is a tool doing it on behalf of a human, so different rules for computers ends up being different rules for using different tools. Should the efficiency of a tool be a factor in the limits we put on a human? Given that humans can use the same tool with different levels of efficiency, this also seems to open up to the question if different levels of skill using a tool have different rules.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    > Should the efficiency of a tool be a factor in the limits we put on a human? Yes, for example hitting someone with a real sword is punished more harshly than hitting them with a plastic one. Tweeting out blatant lies to your 100 million followers is worse than tweeting out blatant lies to 2 followers. Shining a laser pointer at a plane is only illegal if it's strong enough to blind the pilot.
    - SkyBelow 4y ago
      >Yes, for example hitting someone with a real sword is punished more harshly than hitting them with a plastic one. Intent will be a factor. If you thought you had a real sword and intended to kill someone, your penalty will be the same even if the sword was plastic. Look at federal stings where people attempt to commit a horrible act but are given inert tools to do it with and fail. There are some edge cases, like the difference between attempted murder and murder, and there are laws specifically around guns that make using them to murder a worse crime, but in general the tool used doesn't matter and in the few cases it does, I question if those laws should exist and think they were put in place for reasons other than just stopping murder. >Shining a laser pointer at a plane is only illegal if it's strong enough to blind the pilot. Is it? Less resources will be spent to capture someone using a laser too weak to be noticed, but if caught would it really be legal?
    - LastTrain 4y ago
      The question is should we have different standards for computers and human doing the exact same thing - not different things. Your examples all have different outcomes based on the tool.
- kurtreed 4y ago
  Computers do it more efficiently, yes, but you're not giving an argument as to why being more efficient means there should be different rules.
dagmx 4y ago
You’re missing the big qualifier: what if those other artists started drawing in her style AND marketed it as her style?
- randyrand 4y ago
  There's nothing atypical about that in the graphic design world. An artist does not own "their" style, and can even be one of thousands of people drawing in that same style. Art styles are not something people can own. Imagine trying to own a genre of music...
  - dagmx 4y ago
    You’re ignoring what I said. It’s one thing to draw in a similar style, it’s another to market it as a style using someone else’s name and portfolio to get clout.
michaelt 4y ago
Sometimes society established norms when doing a thing was very rare and expensive, and honestly barely needed any control because it was so unusual. If that thing becomes a lot cheaper and easier, and it starts being done a lot more - perhaps we realise we actually need different rules even though the difference is purely quantitative. One guy juggling chainsaws on main street - how entertaining! No need to ban that. Dozens of chainsaw jugglers on every street, 24/7, the issues are easy to imagine. To say that "Oh, you were OK with one chainsaw-juggler therefore you would be OK with 100,000" is IMHO a line of argument that obscures more than it clarifies.
mdaEyebot 4y ago
trention 4y ago
>It's interesting to think about all the controversy surrounding machine-generated images in contrast with a scenario where the same images were generated/drawn/created directly by a human. It actually isn't interesting. Or, I should rather say, it's only interesting for singularitarians who anthropomorphize algorithms as part of their idiotic (pseudo)religion.

burkaman 4y ago

It's ok to have different standards for humans and computers. Even if you think that a machine learning model is conceptually doing the same thing as a human artist, just a trillion times faster and infinitely replicable, there's no reason we can't say that it's ok for humans to do this, but not for computers. Computers are not people. It's not unfair or unethical to put an artificial limitation on an artificial object.

dymk 4y ago
Seems like putting a limitation on what someone can do with their own computer on their own time with their own money.
- burkaman 4y ago
  Yes, sort of like disallowing someone to DDoS a server using their own computer on their own time with their own money. This is not about one person playing around in private, it's about thousands of people (potentially millions) instantaneously generating art expressly intended to copy someone's specific style and publicly releasing the results.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    If you're ddosing someone's server you necessarily aren't playing around in private.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      If people were only playing around with Stable Diffusion in private then this article wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
      - googlryas 4y ago
        Saying "here's an image I generated" is exactly the use case of reddit. DDoSing reddit is not the use case of reddit. And "private" has more meanings than "secret/only personally known". Posting something you generated on Reddit for fun is private use.
        burkaman 4y ago
        Tough to argue with that, all I can say is that your usage of the word "private" does not agree with either the dictionary definition or common usage.
        googlryas 4y ago
        Look up the term with relation to copyright law. See also: personal use, fair use. e.g. (pdf) https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1019&context=computersci_fac https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?r...
        burkaman 4y ago
        That link does not define the term, and I haven't been able to find a legal definition of "private use". The paper seems to be using the normal definition, though. > It sounds controversial that a defense of private use exists at all; after all, one usually buys a book for her private use. This use may mean that one can make photocopies of a legally possessed book, in order to read it, for example, not only in the office, but also at home. One may also loan the book to a friend. I would be pretty surprised to find a legal definition that says if you put something online just for fun it doesn't count as copyright infringement. I don't know why we're talking about this though, I'm not a big fan of copyright but that's not what this is about. It's not "you put my drawing on Reddit without my permission", it's "you publicly released a tool on Reddit that allows anyone to effortlessly create infinite variations of my work in my name, please don't do that". I don't care whether or not it's legal, I think it's immoral to create a tool that could not exist without ingesting someone's life's work and then ignore them when they ask you not to do that.
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  There are plenty of those limitations already, some even having to do with things like IP and copyright.
  - cthalupa 4y ago
    I don't see any evidence that things being generated with SD or similar somehow remove those same limitations around IP and copyright. I am just as much hoping Disney looks the other way when I make fanart of their IP regardless of how it is made.
SkyBelow 4y ago
>It's ok to have different standards for humans and computers. Is it? The computer is a tool doing it on behalf of a human, so different rules for computers ends up being different rules for using different tools. Should the efficiency of a tool be a factor in the limits we put on a human? Given that humans can use the same tool with different levels of efficiency, this also seems to open up to the question if different levels of skill using a tool have different rules.
- burkaman 4y ago
  > Should the efficiency of a tool be a factor in the limits we put on a human? Yes, for example hitting someone with a real sword is punished more harshly than hitting them with a plastic one. Tweeting out blatant lies to your 100 million followers is worse than tweeting out blatant lies to 2 followers. Shining a laser pointer at a plane is only illegal if it's strong enough to blind the pilot.
  - SkyBelow 4y ago
    >Yes, for example hitting someone with a real sword is punished more harshly than hitting them with a plastic one. Intent will be a factor. If you thought you had a real sword and intended to kill someone, your penalty will be the same even if the sword was plastic. Look at federal stings where people attempt to commit a horrible act but are given inert tools to do it with and fail. There are some edge cases, like the difference between attempted murder and murder, and there are laws specifically around guns that make using them to murder a worse crime, but in general the tool used doesn't matter and in the few cases it does, I question if those laws should exist and think they were put in place for reasons other than just stopping murder. >Shining a laser pointer at a plane is only illegal if it's strong enough to blind the pilot. Is it? Less resources will be spent to capture someone using a laser too weak to be noticed, but if caught would it really be legal?
  - LastTrain 4y ago
    The question is should we have different standards for computers and human doing the exact same thing - not different things. Your examples all have different outcomes based on the tool.
kurtreed 4y ago
Computers do it more efficiently, yes, but you're not giving an argument as to why being more efficient means there should be different rules.

dagmx 4y ago

You’re missing the big qualifier: what if those other artists started drawing in her style AND marketed it as her style?

randyrand 4y ago
There's nothing atypical about that in the graphic design world. An artist does not own "their" style, and can even be one of thousands of people drawing in that same style. Art styles are not something people can own. Imagine trying to own a genre of music...
- dagmx 4y ago
  You’re ignoring what I said. It’s one thing to draw in a similar style, it’s another to market it as a style using someone else’s name and portfolio to get clout.

michaelt 4y ago

Sometimes society established norms when doing a thing was very rare and expensive, and honestly barely needed any control because it was so unusual. If that thing becomes a lot cheaper and easier, and it starts being done a lot more - perhaps we realise we actually need different rules even though the difference is purely quantitative. One guy juggling chainsaws on main street - how entertaining! No need to ban that. Dozens of chainsaw jugglers on every street, 24/7, the issues are easy to imagine. To say that "Oh, you were OK with one chainsaw-juggler therefore you would be OK with 100,000" is IMHO a line of argument that obscures more than it clarifies.

mdaEyebot 4y ago

trention 4y ago

>It's interesting to think about all the controversy surrounding machine-generated images in contrast with a scenario where the same images were generated/drawn/created directly by a human. It actually isn't interesting. Or, I should rather say, it's only interesting for singularitarians who anthropomorphize algorithms as part of their idiotic (pseudo)religion.