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I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Its disheartening that artists can opt-out of having a computer algorithm make derivative versions of their c

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Its disheartening that artists can opt-out of having a computer algorithm make derivative versions of their creations? I'm probably on the opposite side of the fence. I do find it disheartening that it's opt-out instead of opt-in. The training set should be limited to public domain and CC-0 until such a time it can comply with attribution; then other CC works could be incorporated.

t433 4y ago
All art is derivative.
- haswell 4y ago
  The definition of “derivative” and its historical context look nothing like the new reality created by generative AI. To continue blindly applying historical understanding to fundamentally new technologies creates huge blind spots, and I’d argue similar to pretending that the creation of ever more destructive weaponry requires no changes to the rules of engagement in warfare. The game has changed.
scotty79 4y ago
It's disheartening because it's a great loss to everybody. Almost none of the people that were generating images in a style of some artist will contact this artist and pay to have an image created. So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. Now barely anyone will ever have any contact with their art (relatively speaking vs scenario of virality). Basically the only people who win are the lawyers and handful of artists that were mislead by lawyers primitive argumentation. Everybody else looses. First and foremost artists and art lovers but also AI researchers and hardware manufacturers.
- Avicebron 4y ago
  They could have gone viral because an AI recreated their art style to the degree that they could? And therefore people would abandon the AI to pay the artist individually? I'm not sure I follow, wouldn't those people just us the AI to continue creating what they want unless you think that driving the artist to compete monetarily with an AI will somehow work in the artist's favor?
  - scotty79 4y ago
    > They could have gone viral because an AI recreated their art style to the degree that they could? I didn't know of any artist (except for long dead ones) that I saw the names of in prompts. > And therefore people would abandon the AI to pay the artist individually? If you have particular commercial needs you discovered through the use of AI you might want to go to the source, not for everything, but for some things. It might be easier to explain some of the stuff you need to a live human than to AI. AI images are still very imperfect and prompts are not easy to create.
  - l33tman 4y ago
    I had absolute zero interest in digital art before, now I have some and would at least react to the artists often mentioned in prompts. They didn't get any money from me before, but the chance is > 0.0 now at least, I might at some point commission some original digital art and now I would checkout both the AI and the humans. Before this I might instead have opted for a stock photo for $5. But who knows how the numbers turn out in the long run. I don't think the artists is the group that's going to get the most annoyed in the next couple of years - copy writers and programmers, 3D artists, basically anybody who's doing grunt work.. I think the main problem with all of this is that it has entered our lives so fast, compared to other revolutions.
- HelloMcFly 4y ago
  > So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. I think it's quite presumptuous to unequivocally state that artists lose with this. Is it a complicated situation? Yes, of course, too complicated for such certainty. That's a wonderful thing to believe, but it's just as plausible (I'd argue far, far more plausible as the tech improves) that clients who would formerly pay for their work no longer have to.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    It's absolute and total loss for every artist for nearly any artist that won't voluntarily opt-in. When you consider laws regarding organ donors you might appreciate how socially harmful might be wrong defaults.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    > but it's just as plausible (I'd argue far, far more plausible as the tech improves) that clients who would formerly pay for their work no longer have to. With the volume of AI art generated was an even single actual case of that?
- haswell 4y ago
  This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. > So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work I’ve seen this sentiment, but it does not match the reality we see play out on the web every day. The amount of literal content stealing and “creative reposting” that happens with absolutely zero attribution to the actual artist is quite extensive. It makes no sense to me that the introduction of an AI tool would suddenly solve the problem of attribution instead of just make it far easier to steal content while making it harder to detect or take action against such theft.
  - hooverd 4y ago
    On top of that, deliberately training models to copy an artists work and antagonizing the artist about it.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    > This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. I think I know that little better than lawyers do. Even if only because I had zero financial incentive when I formed my opinions. > As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. I know it doesn't feel great. But your art has already been commoditized. There are hundreds photographers perfectly capable of replicating your style and many of them do it completely accidentally. The value of your art is a personal element not the content itself. What's valuable is your service and the name you made for yourself. AI gives an artist a ticket to a lottery that can strongly boost their name without doing any additional service. > The amount of literal content stealing and “creative reposting” that happens with absolutely zero attribution to the actual artist is quite extensive. I wonder how much money you've lost due to that. Besides, attribution is naturally built into those "plagiarist" prompts for AI. As for prompts that don't mention specific authors ... you shouldn't kid yourself that AI won't be able to completely naturally recreate your style from styles similar to yours even it it never seen yours. After all that's what you did to create your style. You created a variation on similar styles you saw during your education as an artist. > ... just make it far easier to steal content while making it harder to detect or take action against such theft. steal, theft ... what do artists actually loose in those brazen robberies? Copyright conglomerates created language that doesn't reflect reality. But it reflects most primitive human instincts evolved in the world of scarcity not abundance.
- likeclockwork 4y ago
  People keep trying to compensate artists with exposure.
smoldesu 4y ago
Unfortunately, a lot of these artists opted-in the moment they uploaded their art to the internet. Once you do that, much like uploading your source code or compiled binary, it's hard to reverse the consequences. All that really happened is that the consequences changed, and a lot of people weren't prepared for it. Yeah, it's disheartening. There's also no good way to fix it; the cost of storing copies of their art is negligible, and AI trains the same whether the material is copyright or creative commons. If you get Stability AI to omit your art, then Unstable Diffusion will be trained on your likeness. Opt-out of that one, and some guy in Nevada personally sponsors a bespoke model for making copies of your art. So, I agree with the parent. The most tragic part is not the short-term fight, it's the long-term consequences. Artists will have to internalize what software developers realized decades ago; creating takes work, and copying is free.
- dns_snek 4y ago
  > Artists will have to internalize what software developers realized decades ago; creating takes work, and copying is free. This is very dismissive, the scale is what makes the difference. You can get away with pirating all types of content for personal use. AI companies are essentially trying to legalize that, but in reverse - taking from small creators to enrich the shareholders of their billion dollar corporations. If you try to play by these rules and create a million dollar business that distributes various copyrighted content from the internet (e.g. AAA games, movies or music) you'll very quickly realize how much their stance on copyright changes.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Distinguishing between personal use and commercial use doesn't really work though. It lets you sue certain parties into the ground, for all the good it does you, but it doesn't stop people from deriving and profiting from your work. Probably more than half the Fortune 500 companies are in brazen violation of the GPL, does that stop them from abusing it and profiting from it? Not in the slightest. Power ultimately belongs to whoever can wield it with the least friction. It's not fair or right, but it's the way they play in the business world.
- 4y ago
horsawlarway 4y ago
Personally - I tend to think along the lines that we should be applying roughly the same rule of thumb here as we do for people. People are allowed to view private art, draw inspiration and ideas from it, and execute on those to create new things. Why should we limit AI any differently? If the end result is too close to the original - apply the same guidelines you would for any other artist who copied your work. Otherwise... you're not allowed copyright over a particular style (for damn good reason). While I would like to see artists retain some form of revenue, I don't think this is really the most pressing issue on that front.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
Yes, it is disheartening. Technology shouldn't be held back by this copyright nonsense. Public domain? Come on. Public domain barely exists anymore with the modern multicentury copyrights. What we need is enough computation power to run these models on our own computers, on our phones even. Then we'll be able to do whatever we want and there's nothing they can do about it.
- philipwhiuk 4y ago
  > Technology shouldn't be held back by this copyright nonsense. The technology isn't. The content is.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    Technology too. Copyright is trying to close one way to monetize AI research (software and hardware).
- belter 4y ago
  Are you trolling? Because I can't guess...
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    No.
dns_snek 4y ago
> I do find it disheartening that it's opt-out instead of opt-in This is the crux of the issue for me. It's a different set of rules for AI companies than everyone else. If I started selling pirated copies of Nintendo games they would send an army of lawyers after me and this "opt-out" reasoning would not be a valid defense in court. These AI companies are trying to get away with stealing art and other content with a simple "whoopsie, we promise we won't do it again" when people demand that their own rights be respected.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  It is a different set of rules, just not in the way you're depicting it. This is not piracy. The whole point is that the AI is using this work in a way that is transformative, just like a person would. It's not copying, it's breaking down work to it's foundational features and recombining those features with others to make new things. Literally exactly what humans do when they make art. If a person was doing what these models are doing it not only wouldn't be illegal, it would be laughable if we even had the discussion.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > transformative, just like a person would. No, it is transformative just like a computer would. A person would be inspired and create some kind of unique work. A prompt would - given identical start-up conditions - result in the exact same image over and over again no matter who entered the prompt. Even a trained monkey giving the prompt would result in the same output, as would 'thumper' or the closest local equivalent.
  - angst_ridden 4y ago
    I was sued back in the Palm Pilot days for writing a game that involved moving blocks. The company that owned Palm Pilot rights to Tetris® claimed I was violating their trademark, which was clearly frivolous and incorrect. But I was just a dumb guy who had coded an original game, and they were a company with lawyers on retainer. It doesn't matter what the law says or what is "right." It comes down to who has the power and who doesn't. (The other difference between what humans do and what AIs do is a matter of scale. A human imitates by spending many hours to duplicate a work of art. An AI can churn out millions in a second. That's a separate issue, though.)

t433 4y ago

All art is derivative.

haswell 4y ago
The definition of “derivative” and its historical context look nothing like the new reality created by generative AI. To continue blindly applying historical understanding to fundamentally new technologies creates huge blind spots, and I’d argue similar to pretending that the creation of ever more destructive weaponry requires no changes to the rules of engagement in warfare. The game has changed.

scotty79 4y ago

It's disheartening because it's a great loss to everybody. Almost none of the people that were generating images in a style of some artist will contact this artist and pay to have an image created. So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. Now barely anyone will ever have any contact with their art (relatively speaking vs scenario of virality). Basically the only people who win are the lawyers and handful of artists that were mislead by lawyers primitive argumentation. Everybody else looses. First and foremost artists and art lovers but also AI researchers and hardware manufacturers.

Avicebron 4y ago
They could have gone viral because an AI recreated their art style to the degree that they could? And therefore people would abandon the AI to pay the artist individually? I'm not sure I follow, wouldn't those people just us the AI to continue creating what they want unless you think that driving the artist to compete monetarily with an AI will somehow work in the artist's favor?
- scotty79 4y ago
  > They could have gone viral because an AI recreated their art style to the degree that they could? I didn't know of any artist (except for long dead ones) that I saw the names of in prompts. > And therefore people would abandon the AI to pay the artist individually? If you have particular commercial needs you discovered through the use of AI you might want to go to the source, not for everything, but for some things. It might be easier to explain some of the stuff you need to a live human than to AI. AI images are still very imperfect and prompts are not easy to create.
- l33tman 4y ago
  I had absolute zero interest in digital art before, now I have some and would at least react to the artists often mentioned in prompts. They didn't get any money from me before, but the chance is > 0.0 now at least, I might at some point commission some original digital art and now I would checkout both the AI and the humans. Before this I might instead have opted for a stock photo for $5. But who knows how the numbers turn out in the long run. I don't think the artists is the group that's going to get the most annoyed in the next couple of years - copy writers and programmers, 3D artists, basically anybody who's doing grunt work.. I think the main problem with all of this is that it has entered our lives so fast, compared to other revolutions.
HelloMcFly 4y ago
> So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. I think it's quite presumptuous to unequivocally state that artists lose with this. Is it a complicated situation? Yes, of course, too complicated for such certainty. That's a wonderful thing to believe, but it's just as plausible (I'd argue far, far more plausible as the tech improves) that clients who would formerly pay for their work no longer have to.
- scotty79 4y ago
  It's absolute and total loss for every artist for nearly any artist that won't voluntarily opt-in. When you consider laws regarding organ donors you might appreciate how socially harmful might be wrong defaults.
- scotty79 4y ago
  > but it's just as plausible (I'd argue far, far more plausible as the tech improves) that clients who would formerly pay for their work no longer have to. With the volume of AI art generated was an even single actual case of that?
haswell 4y ago
This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. > So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work I’ve seen this sentiment, but it does not match the reality we see play out on the web every day. The amount of literal content stealing and “creative reposting” that happens with absolutely zero attribution to the actual artist is quite extensive. It makes no sense to me that the introduction of an AI tool would suddenly solve the problem of attribution instead of just make it far easier to steal content while making it harder to detect or take action against such theft.
- hooverd 4y ago
  On top of that, deliberately training models to copy an artists work and antagonizing the artist about it.
- scotty79 4y ago
  > This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. I think I know that little better than lawyers do. Even if only because I had zero financial incentive when I formed my opinions. > As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. I know it doesn't feel great. But your art has already been commoditized. There are hundreds photographers perfectly capable of replicating your style and many of them do it completely accidentally. The value of your art is a personal element not the content itself. What's valuable is your service and the name you made for yourself. AI gives an artist a ticket to a lottery that can strongly boost their name without doing any additional service. > The amount of literal content stealing and “creative reposting” that happens with absolutely zero attribution to the actual artist is quite extensive. I wonder how much money you've lost due to that. Besides, attribution is naturally built into those "plagiarist" prompts for AI. As for prompts that don't mention specific authors ... you shouldn't kid yourself that AI won't be able to completely naturally recreate your style from styles similar to yours even it it never seen yours. After all that's what you did to create your style. You created a variation on similar styles you saw during your education as an artist. > ... just make it far easier to steal content while making it harder to detect or take action against such theft. steal, theft ... what do artists actually loose in those brazen robberies? Copyright conglomerates created language that doesn't reflect reality. But it reflects most primitive human instincts evolved in the world of scarcity not abundance.
likeclockwork 4y ago
People keep trying to compensate artists with exposure.

smoldesu 4y ago

Unfortunately, a lot of these artists opted-in the moment they uploaded their art to the internet. Once you do that, much like uploading your source code or compiled binary, it's hard to reverse the consequences. All that really happened is that the consequences changed, and a lot of people weren't prepared for it. Yeah, it's disheartening. There's also no good way to fix it; the cost of storing copies of their art is negligible, and AI trains the same whether the material is copyright or creative commons. If you get Stability AI to omit your art, then Unstable Diffusion will be trained on your likeness. Opt-out of that one, and some guy in Nevada personally sponsors a bespoke model for making copies of your art. So, I agree with the parent. The most tragic part is not the short-term fight, it's the long-term consequences. Artists will have to internalize what software developers realized decades ago; creating takes work, and copying is free.

dns_snek 4y ago
> Artists will have to internalize what software developers realized decades ago; creating takes work, and copying is free. This is very dismissive, the scale is what makes the difference. You can get away with pirating all types of content for personal use. AI companies are essentially trying to legalize that, but in reverse - taking from small creators to enrich the shareholders of their billion dollar corporations. If you try to play by these rules and create a million dollar business that distributes various copyrighted content from the internet (e.g. AAA games, movies or music) you'll very quickly realize how much their stance on copyright changes.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Distinguishing between personal use and commercial use doesn't really work though. It lets you sue certain parties into the ground, for all the good it does you, but it doesn't stop people from deriving and profiting from your work. Probably more than half the Fortune 500 companies are in brazen violation of the GPL, does that stop them from abusing it and profiting from it? Not in the slightest. Power ultimately belongs to whoever can wield it with the least friction. It's not fair or right, but it's the way they play in the business world.
4y ago

horsawlarway 4y ago

Personally - I tend to think along the lines that we should be applying roughly the same rule of thumb here as we do for people. People are allowed to view private art, draw inspiration and ideas from it, and execute on those to create new things. Why should we limit AI any differently? If the end result is too close to the original - apply the same guidelines you would for any other artist who copied your work. Otherwise... you're not allowed copyright over a particular style (for damn good reason). While I would like to see artists retain some form of revenue, I don't think this is really the most pressing issue on that front.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

Yes, it is disheartening. Technology shouldn't be held back by this copyright nonsense. Public domain? Come on. Public domain barely exists anymore with the modern multicentury copyrights. What we need is enough computation power to run these models on our own computers, on our phones even. Then we'll be able to do whatever we want and there's nothing they can do about it.

philipwhiuk 4y ago
> Technology shouldn't be held back by this copyright nonsense. The technology isn't. The content is.
- scotty79 4y ago
  Technology too. Copyright is trying to close one way to monetize AI research (software and hardware).
belter 4y ago
Are you trolling? Because I can't guess...
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  No.

dns_snek 4y ago

> I do find it disheartening that it's opt-out instead of opt-in This is the crux of the issue for me. It's a different set of rules for AI companies than everyone else. If I started selling pirated copies of Nintendo games they would send an army of lawyers after me and this "opt-out" reasoning would not be a valid defense in court. These AI companies are trying to get away with stealing art and other content with a simple "whoopsie, we promise we won't do it again" when people demand that their own rights be respected.

idiotsecant 4y ago
It is a different set of rules, just not in the way you're depicting it. This is not piracy. The whole point is that the AI is using this work in a way that is transformative, just like a person would. It's not copying, it's breaking down work to it's foundational features and recombining those features with others to make new things. Literally exactly what humans do when they make art. If a person was doing what these models are doing it not only wouldn't be illegal, it would be laughable if we even had the discussion.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > transformative, just like a person would. No, it is transformative just like a computer would. A person would be inspired and create some kind of unique work. A prompt would - given identical start-up conditions - result in the exact same image over and over again no matter who entered the prompt. Even a trained monkey giving the prompt would result in the same output, as would 'thumper' or the closest local equivalent.
- angst_ridden 4y ago
  I was sued back in the Palm Pilot days for writing a game that involved moving blocks. The company that owned Palm Pilot rights to Tetris® claimed I was violating their trademark, which was clearly frivolous and incorrect. But I was just a dumb guy who had coded an original game, and they were a company with lawyers on retainer. It doesn't matter what the law says or what is "right." It comes down to who has the power and who doesn't. (The other difference between what humans do and what AIs do is a matter of scale. A human imitates by spending many hours to duplicate a work of art. An AI can churn out millions in a second. That's a separate issue, though.)