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I don't see the point. There is a copyright (and in that regard most of these images are fine) and then there is trademark which they might violate. Regardless

I don't see the point. There is a copyright (and in that regard most of these images are fine) and then there is trademark which they might violate. Regardless, the human generating and publishing these images is obviously responsible to ensure they are not violating any IP property. So they might get sued by Disney. I don't get why the AI companies would be effected in any way. Disney is not suing Blender if I render an image of Mickey Mouse with it. Though I am sure that artists might find an likely ally in Disney against the "AI"'s when they tell them about their idea of making art-styles copyright-able Being able to monopolize art styles would be indeed a dream come true for those huge corporations.

palata 4y ago
Well Disney would probably sue Blender if there was a "generate Mickey Mouse model" button in it. It's not a totally fair comparison.
- subw00f 4y ago
  I'm sure it's easy to write an addon for that.
  - gl-prod 4y ago
    Then the author of that addon would be liable. Not blender.
  - SiempreViernes 4y ago
    Try it and see if it is blender or you as the addon creator that gets sued.
- idlehand 4y ago
  These AI models are closer to Google in that regard, yes, you can instruct them to generate a Mickey Mouse image, but you can instruct them to generate any kind of image, just like you can search for anything on Google, including Mickey Mouse. When using these models you are essentially performing a search in the model weights.
  - thih9 4y ago
    Google Image results have a note that says: “Images may be subject to copyright”.
- poulpy123 4y ago
  But you can already make mickey mouse models, and people do it all the time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqVXoGCTfuk&ab_channel=AshleyMiller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqVXoGCTfuk&ab_channel=Ashle...
Tepix 4y ago
It boils down to this: Do you need permission if you train your AI model with copyrighted things or not?
- gt565k 4y ago
  Ehhh that’s like saying an artist who studies other art pieces and then creates something using combined techniques and styles from those set pieces is what ???? Now liable ???
  - Tepix 4y ago
    That's like saying creating a thing that looks at one artists artwork and then copies her unique style ad infinitum may need permission first.
    - pigsty 4y ago
      Copying an artist’s style is very much not considered copyright infringement and is how artists learn. Copying a work itself can be copyright infringement if it’s very close to the original to the point people may think they’re the same work.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      You don’t need permission. Style is not an owned thing.
  - Taywee 4y ago
    An AI is not a person. Automated transformation does not remove the original copyright, otherwise decompilers would as well. That the process is similar to a real person is not actually important, because it's still an automated transformation by a computer program. We might be able to argue that the computer program taking art as input and automatically generating art as output is the exact same as an artist some time after general intelligence is reached, until then, it's still a machine transformation and should be treated as such. AI shouldn't be a legal avenue for copyright laundering.
wokwokwok 4y ago
Are you being deliberately obtuse? It’s blatantly obvious that regardless of if it will work or not, they’re trying to get companies with enough money to file law suits to make a move and do so. > I don’t see the point. …or you don’t agree with the intent? I’m fine with that, if so, but you’d to be deliberately trying very hard not to understand what they’re trying to do. Quite obviously they’re hoping, similar to software that lets you download videos from YouTube, that tools that enable things are bad, not neutral. Agree / disagree? Who cares. I can’t believe anyone who “doesn’t get it” is being earnest in their response. Will it make any difference? Well, it may or may not, but there’s a fair precedent of it happening, and bluntly, no one is immune to law suits.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
xg15 4y ago
If thouse mouse images are generated, that implies that Disney content is already part of the training data and models. So in effect, they are pitting Disney's understanding of copyright (maximally strict) against that of the AI companies (maximally loose). Even if it's technically the responsibility of the user not to publish generated images that contain copyrighted content, I can't imagine that Disney is very happy with a situation where everyone can download Stable Diffusion and generate their own arbitrary artwork of Disney characters in a few minutes. So that strategy might actually work. I wish them good luck and will restock my popcorn reserves just in case :) The problem I see though is that both sides are billion dollar companies - and there is probably a lot of interest in AI tech within Disney themselves. So it might just as well happen that both sides find some kind of agreement that's beneficial for both of them and leaves the artists holding the bag.
- astrange 4y ago
  > If thouse mouse images are generated, that implies that Disney content is already part of the training data and models. It doesn't mean that. You could "find" Mickey in the latent space of any model using textual inversion and an hour of GPU time. He's just a few shapes. (Main example: the most popular artist StableDiffusion 1 users like to imitate is not in the StableDiffusion training images. His name just happens to work in prompts by coincidence.)
  - Taywee 4y ago
    If you can find a copyrighted work in that model that wasn't put there with permission, then why would that model and its output not violate the copyright?
    - astrange 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel A latent space that contains every image contains every copyrighted image. But the concept of sRGB is not copyrighted by Disney just yet.
yellow_lead 4y ago
> I don't get why the AI companies would be effected in any way. It doesn't necessarily matter if they're affected. My thought when seeing this is that they want some legal precedent to be set which determines that this is not fair use.
dredmorbius 4y ago
Among the goals seems to be a bit of well-poisoning. Artists have done this previously by creating art saying, say, "This site sells STOLEN artwork, do NOT by from them", and encouraging followers to reply with "I want this on a t-shirt", which had previously been used by rip-off sites to pirate artwork. See: <https://waxy.org/2019/12/how-artists-on-twitter-tricked-spammy-t-shirt-stores-into-admitting-their-automated-art-theft/ https://waxy.org/2019/12/how-artists-on-twitter-tricked-spam...> If art streams are tree-spiked with copyrighted or trademarked works, then AI generators might be a bit more gun-shy about training with abandon on such threads. It's a form of monkeywrenching. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#As_environmental_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#As_environmental_acti...>
- gwd 4y ago
  Not sure about Stable Diffusion / Metawhatsit, but OpenAI's training set is already curated to make sure it avoids violence and pornography; and in any case, the whole thing relies on humans to come up with descriptions. Not clear how this sort of thing would "spike the well" in that sense.

palata 4y ago

Well Disney would probably sue Blender if there was a "generate Mickey Mouse model" button in it. It's not a totally fair comparison.

subw00f 4y ago
I'm sure it's easy to write an addon for that.
- gl-prod 4y ago
  Then the author of that addon would be liable. Not blender.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  Try it and see if it is blender or you as the addon creator that gets sued.
idlehand 4y ago
These AI models are closer to Google in that regard, yes, you can instruct them to generate a Mickey Mouse image, but you can instruct them to generate any kind of image, just like you can search for anything on Google, including Mickey Mouse. When using these models you are essentially performing a search in the model weights.
- thih9 4y ago
  Google Image results have a note that says: “Images may be subject to copyright”.
poulpy123 4y ago
But you can already make mickey mouse models, and people do it all the time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqVXoGCTfuk&ab_channel=AshleyMiller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqVXoGCTfuk&ab_channel=Ashle...

Tepix 4y ago

It boils down to this: Do you need permission if you train your AI model with copyrighted things or not?

gt565k 4y ago
Ehhh that’s like saying an artist who studies other art pieces and then creates something using combined techniques and styles from those set pieces is what ???? Now liable ???
- Tepix 4y ago
  That's like saying creating a thing that looks at one artists artwork and then copies her unique style ad infinitum may need permission first.
  - pigsty 4y ago
    Copying an artist’s style is very much not considered copyright infringement and is how artists learn. Copying a work itself can be copyright infringement if it’s very close to the original to the point people may think they’re the same work.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    You don’t need permission. Style is not an owned thing.
- Taywee 4y ago
  An AI is not a person. Automated transformation does not remove the original copyright, otherwise decompilers would as well. That the process is similar to a real person is not actually important, because it's still an automated transformation by a computer program. We might be able to argue that the computer program taking art as input and automatically generating art as output is the exact same as an artist some time after general intelligence is reached, until then, it's still a machine transformation and should be treated as such. AI shouldn't be a legal avenue for copyright laundering.

wokwokwok 4y ago

Are you being deliberately obtuse? It’s blatantly obvious that regardless of if it will work or not, they’re trying to get companies with enough money to file law suits to make a move and do so. > I don’t see the point. …or you don’t agree with the intent? I’m fine with that, if so, but you’d to be deliberately trying very hard not to understand what they’re trying to do. Quite obviously they’re hoping, similar to software that lets you download videos from YouTube, that tools that enable things are bad, not neutral. Agree / disagree? Who cares. I can’t believe anyone who “doesn’t get it” is being earnest in their response. Will it make any difference? Well, it may or may not, but there’s a fair precedent of it happening, and bluntly, no one is immune to law suits.

dredmorbius 4y ago
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

xg15 4y ago

If thouse mouse images are generated, that implies that Disney content is already part of the training data and models. So in effect, they are pitting Disney's understanding of copyright (maximally strict) against that of the AI companies (maximally loose). Even if it's technically the responsibility of the user not to publish generated images that contain copyrighted content, I can't imagine that Disney is very happy with a situation where everyone can download Stable Diffusion and generate their own arbitrary artwork of Disney characters in a few minutes. So that strategy might actually work. I wish them good luck and will restock my popcorn reserves just in case :) The problem I see though is that both sides are billion dollar companies - and there is probably a lot of interest in AI tech within Disney themselves. So it might just as well happen that both sides find some kind of agreement that's beneficial for both of them and leaves the artists holding the bag.

astrange 4y ago
> If thouse mouse images are generated, that implies that Disney content is already part of the training data and models. It doesn't mean that. You could "find" Mickey in the latent space of any model using textual inversion and an hour of GPU time. He's just a few shapes. (Main example: the most popular artist StableDiffusion 1 users like to imitate is not in the StableDiffusion training images. His name just happens to work in prompts by coincidence.)
- Taywee 4y ago
  If you can find a copyrighted work in that model that wasn't put there with permission, then why would that model and its output not violate the copyright?
  - astrange 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel A latent space that contains every image contains every copyrighted image. But the concept of sRGB is not copyrighted by Disney just yet.

yellow_lead 4y ago

> I don't get why the AI companies would be effected in any way. It doesn't necessarily matter if they're affected. My thought when seeing this is that they want some legal precedent to be set which determines that this is not fair use.

dredmorbius 4y ago

Among the goals seems to be a bit of well-poisoning. Artists have done this previously by creating art saying, say, "This site sells STOLEN artwork, do NOT by from them", and encouraging followers to reply with "I want this on a t-shirt", which had previously been used by rip-off sites to pirate artwork. See: <https://waxy.org/2019/12/how-artists-on-twitter-tricked-spammy-t-shirt-stores-into-admitting-their-automated-art-theft/ https://waxy.org/2019/12/how-artists-on-twitter-tricked-spam...> If art streams are tree-spiked with copyrighted or trademarked works, then AI generators might be a bit more gun-shy about training with abandon on such threads. It's a form of monkeywrenching. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#As_environmental_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#As_environmental_acti...>

gwd 4y ago
Not sure about Stable Diffusion / Metawhatsit, but OpenAI's training set is already curated to make sure it avoids violence and pornography; and in any case, the whole thing relies on humans to come up with descriptions. Not clear how this sort of thing would "spike the well" in that sense.