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This is a common misconception. AI is not copying anything. It is studying the images in a similar way that humans do. Entire size of the stable diffusion model

This is a common misconception. AI is not copying anything. It is studying the images in a similar way that humans do. Entire size of the stable diffusion model is around 6gb, with pruning it goes down to 3gb. Training set is in terabytes. So it is common sense that no copying is done. I think artists need to be fair about AI, is there any artist that created their style without ever studying other artists? That is high improbable because humans need to observe to create art. There is even a saying that "Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal".

habibur 4y ago
Trained on 5 billion images to create a 6 GB model. Every image contributed no more than a few bits of information.
- numpad0 4y ago
  Billion and Giga is both 10^9, so about 6/5 or 1.2 byte or 10 bits, and somehow enough to regurgitate examples from training set[0]. Oh how convincing “AI is just learning as humans do” arguments are. 0: https://twitter.com/kortizart/status/1588915427018559490 https://twitter.com/kortizart/status/1588915427018559490
  - jjcon 4y ago
    Well I TIL humans are incapable of copying another piece of art even when asked to do so
    - numpad0 4y ago
      It's never too late to learn to draw!
      - jjcon 4y ago
        I could learn to mine pigments and create paints too but we have better options now
        numpad0 4y ago
        Pick up a pencil, start from drawing a circle, a real circular circle... Caveman in front of a VT100 is still a caveman. Caveman with a charred willow branch in hand, is something a bit more than that.
  - Guillaume86 4y ago
    Maybe this incredibly famous photo from a National Geographic cover is overrepresented in the training set?
greysphere 4y ago
Your statement implies the source dataset's file sizes represent the amount of visual information in them. This is almost certainly not the case.
tester457 4y ago
Still, people did not consent to their art to be trained on. Just like how it is a bad idea to train github copilot on copyrighted code, or how the same company that made Stable Diffusion promised that they will not use copyrighted music for training (because they're scared of the music industry), copyrighted art should not be used on training sets without permission. This is going to cause a lawsuit somewhere down the line, even if images only contribute a few bits each, signatures are still seen and this could make an argument in a court case. It would be fair to everyone to only use public domain material for training sets.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Do people need to consent for other artists to use their work as references when painting? That seems pretty analogous to training an AI on a corpus of artwork.
  - flumpcakes 4y ago
    Why do we make analogies to people? Machines have no rights of expression or inherent freedoms. There is no "learning", we're not "teaching" the machine anything. It boils down to heuristics and statistics. Imagine we're in the 1930s with no computers: If I were to study every every Agatha Christie book and write my own based on statistical likelihoods of words, characters, plot elements etc. I would be seen as a copy-cat hack-fraud author or worse. If I were to take inspiration of the crime/thriller/detective genre and write my own story in my own universe then I would be simply an author within the same genre. ChatGPT/"ML" copy the fine details. We're getting artists signatures turn up in generated work... That's not inspiration, and I would argue not even transformative.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      If you want to get pendantic, the human brain ultimately functions off heuristics and inputs. Again, references are not copied, they are used to inspire and guide new artwork. Even artists producing totally original artwork use references.
    - 4y ago
danaris 4y ago
The current ML approaches are not "studying", and have no thought process whatsoever, let alone "in a similar way that humans do". They build models that allow them to reproduce existing works in whole or in part—usually in many parts, put together to form a new work formed wholly out of those elements. Humans learn actual techniques; they understand what the elements in their art actually mean; when they copy, they do so with intention (whether malicious or not). ML approaches to content creation are incapable of intention, because intention is the product of a conscious mind, and regardless of how similar some of the data structures involved in them are to certain models of the human brain, not one of the existing ML projects even remotely approaches anything we could term consciousness. (Nor is that even their purpose.)

habibur 4y ago

Trained on 5 billion images to create a 6 GB model. Every image contributed no more than a few bits of information.

numpad0 4y ago
Billion and Giga is both 10^9, so about 6/5 or 1.2 byte or 10 bits, and somehow enough to regurgitate examples from training set[0]. Oh how convincing “AI is just learning as humans do” arguments are. 0: https://twitter.com/kortizart/status/1588915427018559490 https://twitter.com/kortizart/status/1588915427018559490
- jjcon 4y ago
  Well I TIL humans are incapable of copying another piece of art even when asked to do so
  - numpad0 4y ago
    It's never too late to learn to draw!
    - jjcon 4y ago
      I could learn to mine pigments and create paints too but we have better options now
      - numpad0 4y ago
        Pick up a pencil, start from drawing a circle, a real circular circle... Caveman in front of a VT100 is still a caveman. Caveman with a charred willow branch in hand, is something a bit more than that.
- Guillaume86 4y ago
  Maybe this incredibly famous photo from a National Geographic cover is overrepresented in the training set?

greysphere 4y ago

Your statement implies the source dataset's file sizes represent the amount of visual information in them. This is almost certainly not the case.

tester457 4y ago

Still, people did not consent to their art to be trained on. Just like how it is a bad idea to train github copilot on copyrighted code, or how the same company that made Stable Diffusion promised that they will not use copyrighted music for training (because they're scared of the music industry), copyrighted art should not be used on training sets without permission. This is going to cause a lawsuit somewhere down the line, even if images only contribute a few bits each, signatures are still seen and this could make an argument in a court case. It would be fair to everyone to only use public domain material for training sets.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Do people need to consent for other artists to use their work as references when painting? That seems pretty analogous to training an AI on a corpus of artwork.
- flumpcakes 4y ago
  Why do we make analogies to people? Machines have no rights of expression or inherent freedoms. There is no "learning", we're not "teaching" the machine anything. It boils down to heuristics and statistics. Imagine we're in the 1930s with no computers: If I were to study every every Agatha Christie book and write my own based on statistical likelihoods of words, characters, plot elements etc. I would be seen as a copy-cat hack-fraud author or worse. If I were to take inspiration of the crime/thriller/detective genre and write my own story in my own universe then I would be simply an author within the same genre. ChatGPT/"ML" copy the fine details. We're getting artists signatures turn up in generated work... That's not inspiration, and I would argue not even transformative.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    If you want to get pendantic, the human brain ultimately functions off heuristics and inputs. Again, references are not copied, they are used to inspire and guide new artwork. Even artists producing totally original artwork use references.
  - 4y ago

danaris 4y ago

The current ML approaches are not "studying", and have no thought process whatsoever, let alone "in a similar way that humans do". They build models that allow them to reproduce existing works in whole or in part—usually in many parts, put together to form a new work formed wholly out of those elements. Humans learn actual techniques; they understand what the elements in their art actually mean; when they copy, they do so with intention (whether malicious or not). ML approaches to content creation are incapable of intention, because intention is the product of a conscious mind, and regardless of how similar some of the data structures involved in them are to certain models of the human brain, not one of the existing ML projects even remotely approaches anything we could term consciousness. (Nor is that even their purpose.)