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Setting aside questions of whether there is copyright infringement going on, I think this is an unprecedented case in the history of automation replacing human

Setting aside questions of whether there is copyright infringement going on, I think this is an unprecedented case in the history of automation replacing human labor. Jobs have been automated since the industrial revolution, but this usually takes the form of someone inventing a widget that makes human labor unnecessary. From a worker's perspective, the automation is coming from "the outside". What's novel with AI models is that the workers' own work is used to create the thing that replaces them. It's one thing to be automated away, it's another to have your own work used against you like this, and I'm sure it feels extra-shitty as a result.

wwweston 4y ago
Absolutely this -- and in many (maybe most cases), there was no consent for the use of the work in training the model, and quite possibly no notice or compensation at all. That's a huge ethical issue whether or not it's explicitly addressed in copyright/ip law.
- api 4y ago
  I really think there's likely to be gigantic class action lawsuits in the near future, and I support them. People did not consent for their data and work to be used in this way. In many cases people have already demonstrated using custom tailored prompts that these models have been trained on copyrighted works that are not public domain.
  - archontes 4y ago
    Consent isn't required if they're making their work available for public viewing.
    - granshaw 4y ago
      For VIEWING. This is like blatantly taking your gpl licensed code and using it for commercial purposes
      - archontes 4y ago
        A thing that can be viewed can be learned from. I can't copy your GPL code. I might be able to write my own code that does the same thing. I'm going to defend this statement in advance. A lot of software developers white knight more than they strictly have to; they claim that learning from GPL code unavoidably results in infringing reproduction of that code. Courts, however, apply a test [1], in an attempt to determine the degree to which the idea is separable from the expression of that idea. Copyright protects particular expression, not idea, and in the case that the idea cannot be separated from the expression, the expression cannot be copyrighted. So either I'm able to produce a non-infringing expression of the idea, or the expression cannot be copyrighted, and the GPL license is redundant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...
  - OctopusLupid 4y ago
    It's already explicitly legal to train AI using copyrighted data in many countries. You can ignore opt-outs too, especially if you're training AI for non-commercial purposes. Search up TDM exceptions.
- archontes 4y ago
  It is not a huge ethical issue. The artists have always been at risk of someone learning their style if they make their work available for public viewing. We've just made "learning style" easier, so a thing that was always a risk is now happening.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Let's shift your risk of immediate assault and death up by a few orders of magnitude. I'm sure that you'll see that as "just" something that was always a risk, pretty much status quo, right right? Oh, life & death is different? Don't be so sure; there's good reasons to believe that livelihood (not to mention social credit) and life are closely related -- and also, the fundamental point doesn't depend on the specific example: you can't point to an orders-of-magnitude change and then claim we're dealing with a situation that's qualitatively like it's "always" been. "Easier" doesn't begin to honestly represent what's happened here: we've crossed a threshold where we have technology for production by automated imitation at scale. And where that tech works primarily because of imitation, the work of those imitated has been a crucial part of that. Where that work has a reasonable claim of ownership, those who own it deserve to be recognized & compensated.
    - archontes 4y ago
      The 'reasonable claim of ownership' extends to restricting transmission, not use after transmission. Artists are poets, and they're railing against Trurl's electronic bard. [https://electricliterature.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Trurls-Electronic-Bard.pdf https://electricliterature.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Tr...]
      - wwweston 4y ago
        > The 'reasonable claim of ownership' extends to restricting transmission, not use after transmission. It's not even clear you're correct by the apparent (if limited) support of your own argument. "Transmission" of some sort is certainly occurring when the work is given as input. It's probably even tenable to argue that a copy is created in the representation of the model. You probably mean to argue something to the effect that dissemination by the model is the key threshold by which we'd recognize something like the current copyright law might fail to apply, the transformative nature of output being a key distinction. But some people have already shown that some outputs are much less transformative than others -- and even that's not the overall point, which is that this is a qualitative change much like those that gave birth to industrial-revolution copyright itself, and calls for a similar kind of renegotiation to protect the underlying ethics. People should have a say in how the fruits of their labor are bargained for and used. Including into how machines and models that drive them are used. That's part of intentionally creating a society that's built for humans, including artists and poets.
- myrryr 4y ago
  That is a hard fight to have, since it is the same for people. An artist will have watched some Disney movie, and that could influence their art in some small way. Does Disney have a right to take a small amount from every bit of art which they produce from then on? Obviously not. The real answer is AI are not people, and it is ok to have different rules for them, and that is where the fight would need to be.
andrepew 4y ago
I wouldn't say saying it came from the inside is unique to AI art. You very much need a welder's understanding of welding in order to be able to automate it for example. I'd just say the scale is different. Old school automation just required one expert to guide the development of an automation. AI art requires the expertise of thousands.
Archelaos 4y ago
> From a worker's perspective, the automation is coming from "the outside". Not, if the worker is an engineer or similar. Some engineers built tools that improved building tools. And this started even earlier than the industrial revolution. Think for example of Johannes Gutenberg. His real important invention was not the printing press (this already existed) and not even moveable types, but a process by which a printer could mold his own set of identical moveable types. I see a certain analogy between what Gutenberg's invention meant for scribes then and what Stable Diffusion means for artists today. Another thought: In engineering we do not have extremly long lasting copyright, but a lot shorter protection periods via patents. I have never understood why software has to be protected for such long copyright periods and not for much shorter patent-like periods. Perhaps we should look for something similar for AI and artists: An artist as copyright as usual for close reproductions, but after 20 years after publication it may be used without her or his consent for training AI models.
- Rioghasarig 4y ago
  >Not, if the worker is an engineer or similar. Some engineers built tools that improved building tools Those engineers consented to creating the new tools so that's different
  - Archelaos 4y ago
    That was not what was at issue in my comment. It referred to a sentence where the Parent was not talking about Stable Diffusion in particular, but about what he claimed was a general difference from the usual conditions since the industrial revolution. My comment merely referred to the fact that this is not generally true everywhere (in most specific cases, of course, it may very well be true). In this context, the real difference, however, with regard to Stable Diffusion is not the involuntary nature of the artists' "contributions", but the fact that the artists are not usually the developers of the AI software. In this respect, the Parent is right that for them all this comes from "the outside". It is just that I wanted to point out that this does not apply equally to all professional groups.
  - int_19h 4y ago
MSFT_Edging 4y ago
I don't know why we keep framing artists like they're textile workers or machinists. The whole point of art is human expression. The idea that artists can be "automated away" is just sad and disgusting and the amount of people who want art but don't want to pay the artist is astounding. Why are we so eager to rid ourselves of what makes us human to save a buck? This isn't innovation, its self destruction.
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  > The whole point of art is human expression. For someone seeking sound/imagery/etc. resulting from human expression (i.e., art), it makes sense that it can't be automated away. For someone seeking sound/imagery/etc. without caring whether it's the result of human expression (e.g., AI artifacts that aren't art), it can be automated away.
- BoiledCabbage 4y ago
  Because when people discuss "art" they are really discussing two things. Static 2D images that usually serve a commercial purpose. Ex logos, clip art, game sprites, web page design and the like. And the second is pure art whose purpose is more for the enjoyment of the creator or the viewer. Business wants to fully automate the first case and must people view it has nothing to do with the essence of humanity. It's simply dollars for products - but it's also one of the very few ways that artists can actually have paying careers for their skills. The second will still exist, although almost nobody in the world can pay bills off of it. And I wouldn't be shocked it ML models start encroaching there as well. So a lot of what's being referred to is more like textile workers. And anyone who can type a few sentences can now make "art" significantly lowering barriers to entry. Maybe a designer comes and touches it up. The short sighted part, is people thinking that this will somehow stay specific to Art and that their cherished field is immune. Programming will soon follow. Any PM "soon enough" will be able to write text to generate a fully working app. And maybe a coder comes in to touch it up.
- lolinder 4y ago
  Most art consumed today isn't about human expression, and it hasn't been for a very long time. Most art is produced for commercial reasons with the intent of making as much profit as possible. Art-as-human-expression isn't going anywhere because it's intrinsically motivated. It's what people do because they love doing it. Just like people still do woodworking even though it's cheaper to buy a chair from Walmart, people will still paint and draw. What is going to go away is design work for low-end advertising agencies or for publishers of cheap novels or any of the other dozens of jobs that were never bastions of human creativity to begin with.
gottebp 4y ago
We need a better way to reward the contributing artists making the diffusion models possible. Might we be able to come up with a royalty model, where the artist that made the original source content used in training the diffusion model, gets a fractional royalty based on how heavily it is used when generating the prompted art piece? We want to incentivize artists to feed their works, and original styles, into future AI models.
- Rioghasarig 4y ago
  This doesn't seem very helpful at all. First it seems impossibly difficult to execute and probably won't benefit the artists much.

wwweston 4y ago

Absolutely this -- and in many (maybe most cases), there was no consent for the use of the work in training the model, and quite possibly no notice or compensation at all. That's a huge ethical issue whether or not it's explicitly addressed in copyright/ip law.

api 4y ago
I really think there's likely to be gigantic class action lawsuits in the near future, and I support them. People did not consent for their data and work to be used in this way. In many cases people have already demonstrated using custom tailored prompts that these models have been trained on copyrighted works that are not public domain.
- archontes 4y ago
  Consent isn't required if they're making their work available for public viewing.
  - granshaw 4y ago
    For VIEWING. This is like blatantly taking your gpl licensed code and using it for commercial purposes
    - archontes 4y ago
      A thing that can be viewed can be learned from. I can't copy your GPL code. I might be able to write my own code that does the same thing. I'm going to defend this statement in advance. A lot of software developers white knight more than they strictly have to; they claim that learning from GPL code unavoidably results in infringing reproduction of that code. Courts, however, apply a test [1], in an attempt to determine the degree to which the idea is separable from the expression of that idea. Copyright protects particular expression, not idea, and in the case that the idea cannot be separated from the expression, the expression cannot be copyrighted. So either I'm able to produce a non-infringing expression of the idea, or the expression cannot be copyrighted, and the GPL license is redundant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...
- OctopusLupid 4y ago
  It's already explicitly legal to train AI using copyrighted data in many countries. You can ignore opt-outs too, especially if you're training AI for non-commercial purposes. Search up TDM exceptions.
archontes 4y ago
It is not a huge ethical issue. The artists have always been at risk of someone learning their style if they make their work available for public viewing. We've just made "learning style" easier, so a thing that was always a risk is now happening.
- wwweston 4y ago
  Let's shift your risk of immediate assault and death up by a few orders of magnitude. I'm sure that you'll see that as "just" something that was always a risk, pretty much status quo, right right? Oh, life & death is different? Don't be so sure; there's good reasons to believe that livelihood (not to mention social credit) and life are closely related -- and also, the fundamental point doesn't depend on the specific example: you can't point to an orders-of-magnitude change and then claim we're dealing with a situation that's qualitatively like it's "always" been. "Easier" doesn't begin to honestly represent what's happened here: we've crossed a threshold where we have technology for production by automated imitation at scale. And where that tech works primarily because of imitation, the work of those imitated has been a crucial part of that. Where that work has a reasonable claim of ownership, those who own it deserve to be recognized & compensated.
  - archontes 4y ago
    The 'reasonable claim of ownership' extends to restricting transmission, not use after transmission. Artists are poets, and they're railing against Trurl's electronic bard. [https://electricliterature.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Trurls-Electronic-Bard.pdf https://electricliterature.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Tr...]
    - wwweston 4y ago
      > The 'reasonable claim of ownership' extends to restricting transmission, not use after transmission. It's not even clear you're correct by the apparent (if limited) support of your own argument. "Transmission" of some sort is certainly occurring when the work is given as input. It's probably even tenable to argue that a copy is created in the representation of the model. You probably mean to argue something to the effect that dissemination by the model is the key threshold by which we'd recognize something like the current copyright law might fail to apply, the transformative nature of output being a key distinction. But some people have already shown that some outputs are much less transformative than others -- and even that's not the overall point, which is that this is a qualitative change much like those that gave birth to industrial-revolution copyright itself, and calls for a similar kind of renegotiation to protect the underlying ethics. People should have a say in how the fruits of their labor are bargained for and used. Including into how machines and models that drive them are used. That's part of intentionally creating a society that's built for humans, including artists and poets.
myrryr 4y ago
That is a hard fight to have, since it is the same for people. An artist will have watched some Disney movie, and that could influence their art in some small way. Does Disney have a right to take a small amount from every bit of art which they produce from then on? Obviously not. The real answer is AI are not people, and it is ok to have different rules for them, and that is where the fight would need to be.

andrepew 4y ago

I wouldn't say saying it came from the inside is unique to AI art. You very much need a welder's understanding of welding in order to be able to automate it for example. I'd just say the scale is different. Old school automation just required one expert to guide the development of an automation. AI art requires the expertise of thousands.

Archelaos 4y ago

> From a worker's perspective, the automation is coming from "the outside". Not, if the worker is an engineer or similar. Some engineers built tools that improved building tools. And this started even earlier than the industrial revolution. Think for example of Johannes Gutenberg. His real important invention was not the printing press (this already existed) and not even moveable types, but a process by which a printer could mold his own set of identical moveable types. I see a certain analogy between what Gutenberg's invention meant for scribes then and what Stable Diffusion means for artists today. Another thought: In engineering we do not have extremly long lasting copyright, but a lot shorter protection periods via patents. I have never understood why software has to be protected for such long copyright periods and not for much shorter patent-like periods. Perhaps we should look for something similar for AI and artists: An artist as copyright as usual for close reproductions, but after 20 years after publication it may be used without her or his consent for training AI models.

Rioghasarig 4y ago
>Not, if the worker is an engineer or similar. Some engineers built tools that improved building tools Those engineers consented to creating the new tools so that's different
- Archelaos 4y ago
  That was not what was at issue in my comment. It referred to a sentence where the Parent was not talking about Stable Diffusion in particular, but about what he claimed was a general difference from the usual conditions since the industrial revolution. My comment merely referred to the fact that this is not generally true everywhere (in most specific cases, of course, it may very well be true). In this context, the real difference, however, with regard to Stable Diffusion is not the involuntary nature of the artists' "contributions", but the fact that the artists are not usually the developers of the AI software. In this respect, the Parent is right that for them all this comes from "the outside". It is just that I wanted to point out that this does not apply equally to all professional groups.
- int_19h 4y ago

MSFT_Edging 4y ago

I don't know why we keep framing artists like they're textile workers or machinists. The whole point of art is human expression. The idea that artists can be "automated away" is just sad and disgusting and the amount of people who want art but don't want to pay the artist is astounding. Why are we so eager to rid ourselves of what makes us human to save a buck? This isn't innovation, its self destruction.

hunter2_ 4y ago
> The whole point of art is human expression. For someone seeking sound/imagery/etc. resulting from human expression (i.e., art), it makes sense that it can't be automated away. For someone seeking sound/imagery/etc. without caring whether it's the result of human expression (e.g., AI artifacts that aren't art), it can be automated away.
BoiledCabbage 4y ago
Because when people discuss "art" they are really discussing two things. Static 2D images that usually serve a commercial purpose. Ex logos, clip art, game sprites, web page design and the like. And the second is pure art whose purpose is more for the enjoyment of the creator or the viewer. Business wants to fully automate the first case and must people view it has nothing to do with the essence of humanity. It's simply dollars for products - but it's also one of the very few ways that artists can actually have paying careers for their skills. The second will still exist, although almost nobody in the world can pay bills off of it. And I wouldn't be shocked it ML models start encroaching there as well. So a lot of what's being referred to is more like textile workers. And anyone who can type a few sentences can now make "art" significantly lowering barriers to entry. Maybe a designer comes and touches it up. The short sighted part, is people thinking that this will somehow stay specific to Art and that their cherished field is immune. Programming will soon follow. Any PM "soon enough" will be able to write text to generate a fully working app. And maybe a coder comes in to touch it up.
lolinder 4y ago
Most art consumed today isn't about human expression, and it hasn't been for a very long time. Most art is produced for commercial reasons with the intent of making as much profit as possible. Art-as-human-expression isn't going anywhere because it's intrinsically motivated. It's what people do because they love doing it. Just like people still do woodworking even though it's cheaper to buy a chair from Walmart, people will still paint and draw. What is going to go away is design work for low-end advertising agencies or for publishers of cheap novels or any of the other dozens of jobs that were never bastions of human creativity to begin with.

gottebp 4y ago

We need a better way to reward the contributing artists making the diffusion models possible. Might we be able to come up with a royalty model, where the artist that made the original source content used in training the diffusion model, gets a fractional royalty based on how heavily it is used when generating the prompted art piece? We want to incentivize artists to feed their works, and original styles, into future AI models.

Rioghasarig 4y ago
This doesn't seem very helpful at all. First it seems impossibly difficult to execute and probably won't benefit the artists much.