5 ms·

Not sure about ChatGPT, but Midjourney et al have definitely transformed many markets already. Why would I get any illustrations from fiverr.com, when I can get

by nikanj 4y ago

Not sure about ChatGPT, but Midjourney et al have definitely transformed many markets already. Why would I get any illustrations from fiverr.com, when I can get better turnaround times for $0 from Midjourney?

Forgeties79 4y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t systems like Midjourney inadvertently stealing from the people who are paid to make it? Also, in some ways that’s like asking “why should I shop local when I can buy from Walmart and get the exact same product?“ Well obviously if it’s all down to simple dollar costs, you do you. But there are several motivations/considerations for choosing why we shop where we shop.
- NateEag 4y ago
  I suspect you're wrong that the stealing is inadvertent. I'm suspicious the makers of the art generator AI systems know exactly what they're doing and see no issues with it.
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    I guess I’m just trying to be a little generous. They probably know it’s a risk and either rationalize it away with something along the lines of “well, it’s such a tiny minuscule piece from so many different people that it’s not really stealing“ or just pretend they don’t know. At this point the ignorance does seem willful. Either way, I’m more just curious what other people have to say on the matter as I am not as knowledgeable of subject. I am on the creator side and it’s all bad news over here.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      > “well, it’s such a tiny minuscule piece from so many different people that it’s not really stealing“ RMS wrote 'the right to read' because issues like this, and if you've not read it, I recommend you do. "A bunch of little bits of different things" isn't stealing, it's society and culture. If you got your wish of everything I create if fully copyrighted, you'd find two things. One, that you're last in line and don't come up with original ideas often, even in original artwork. And two, that monied corporations would quickly buy up rights to everything and make life as an artist completely impossible.
      - Forgeties79 4y ago
        I'm not even sure that's what is happening to be honest, I'm just speculating as to how somehow could reason it away for themselves. I don't know what the line is for "too much inspiration" where it becomes stealing. I'll make sure to check that out though, appreciate it!
    - NateEag 4y ago
      Your choice to be generous is a kind and good one. I don't have great insight into copyright issues, but as one who loves music and used to play a lot of it, I'm right there with you on the "it's all bad news over here". It seems to me that the current crop of art generators ape styles but don't come up with their own. I worry that if they put most human artists out of work, the arts will stagnate badly. I guess we'll see.
      - Forgeties79 4y ago
        >I worry that if they put most human artists out of work, the arts will stagnate badly. Right there with you. And it's hard to even decide what qualifies as "adapt or die" you know? Do I just use AI-assisted tools? Do I "just" pivot my career and go somewhere else?
  - Xelynega 4y ago
    If a bunch of random people on the internet see the potential copyright infringement and need for clarification, then it's doubtful makers of art generator algorithmsbdidnt think of the same potential issues and choose to ignore them.
    - Tostino 4y ago
      There are a whole bunch of people who think copyrights have held back progress, and this is a technological solution to allowing the sharing of information more freely.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Even lawyers aren't sure, the arguments can go either way: https://youtu.be/G08hY8dSrUY https://youtu.be/G08hY8dSrUY Also note some new research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    So the legal thinking I have been reading is around the reproduction of copyrighted works. However to get to a point where you _can_ recreate copyrighted works implies copyright infringement in the dataset. Thats not really been tackled. Also, there is the GDPR angle here as well, collecting people's faces on the internet for something other than the person reasonably intended is also on grey legal ground I would argue.
runako 4y ago
I tried to use a couple of the AI image generators when building a landing page recently, so I can answer this. Look at the homepage for a popular site like Stripe, Figma, Digital Ocean, whatever, take your pick. Try to get Midjourney to generate high-quality art like you see on those homepages, in a format where it is ready to go directly into a site without further processing in an image tool. My experience was that I could have gotten better results at Fiver.
- plif 4y ago
  There's no way you're going to get top quality like those sites at a place like Fiverr either. They've spent millions on branding and marketing. I can see Midjourney already replacing the low end. The question is how good can it get, and then as the bar is raised what can be done to differentiate. Answer to the latter ironically may be going back to old school human interfaces.
  - runako 4y ago
    > There's no way you're going to get top quality like those sites at a place like Fiverr either. There is a grain of truth to this, but again just choose whatever lower-budget website you want. And then just try the exercise I suggested. Midjourney isn't producing work at a "bad Fiverr" quality level, it's not producing usable work at all yet (at least without a lot of hands-on prompt tuning, at which point why not just use Fiverr?). At least with Fiverr, I am likely to end up with something I can put on the site, which is not true of Midjourney yet.
    - fock 4y ago
      supposedly the Fiverr-contractor soon just will be a prompt-tuner with a large cache of "good" images.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      The language models are probably more actually useful today. I've played around with writing hypothetical articles using them. For topics I know where it's a fairly straightforward, e.g. Five qualities some job role needs, it does a "decent" job. Decent in this context doesn't mean something I could just hand to an editor. But it does mean a pretty good starting point that I could amend, flesh out, add some links, add a quote or two. I could certainly see using it to give me a sort of pre-draft on some fairly evergreen topic. I could also use it to generate some boilerplate definitions or historical background to include in an article. But, sadly, I think you'll see the LLMs being used to generate a lot of blog/article content with a minimum of human effort for even less than the small amount being paid for a lot of this today.
mnd999 4y ago
You’re definitely screwing the other person in the prisoners dilemma.

by nikanj 4y ago

Forgeties79 4y ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t systems like Midjourney inadvertently stealing from the people who are paid to make it? Also, in some ways that’s like asking “why should I shop local when I can buy from Walmart and get the exact same product?“ Well obviously if it’s all down to simple dollar costs, you do you. But there are several motivations/considerations for choosing why we shop where we shop.

NateEag 4y ago
I suspect you're wrong that the stealing is inadvertent. I'm suspicious the makers of the art generator AI systems know exactly what they're doing and see no issues with it.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  I guess I’m just trying to be a little generous. They probably know it’s a risk and either rationalize it away with something along the lines of “well, it’s such a tiny minuscule piece from so many different people that it’s not really stealing“ or just pretend they don’t know. At this point the ignorance does seem willful. Either way, I’m more just curious what other people have to say on the matter as I am not as knowledgeable of subject. I am on the creator side and it’s all bad news over here.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    > “well, it’s such a tiny minuscule piece from so many different people that it’s not really stealing“ RMS wrote 'the right to read' because issues like this, and if you've not read it, I recommend you do. "A bunch of little bits of different things" isn't stealing, it's society and culture. If you got your wish of everything I create if fully copyrighted, you'd find two things. One, that you're last in line and don't come up with original ideas often, even in original artwork. And two, that monied corporations would quickly buy up rights to everything and make life as an artist completely impossible.
    - Forgeties79 4y ago
      I'm not even sure that's what is happening to be honest, I'm just speculating as to how somehow could reason it away for themselves. I don't know what the line is for "too much inspiration" where it becomes stealing. I'll make sure to check that out though, appreciate it!
  - NateEag 4y ago
    Your choice to be generous is a kind and good one. I don't have great insight into copyright issues, but as one who loves music and used to play a lot of it, I'm right there with you on the "it's all bad news over here". It seems to me that the current crop of art generators ape styles but don't come up with their own. I worry that if they put most human artists out of work, the arts will stagnate badly. I guess we'll see.
    - Forgeties79 4y ago
      >I worry that if they put most human artists out of work, the arts will stagnate badly. Right there with you. And it's hard to even decide what qualifies as "adapt or die" you know? Do I just use AI-assisted tools? Do I "just" pivot my career and go somewhere else?
- Xelynega 4y ago
  If a bunch of random people on the internet see the potential copyright infringement and need for clarification, then it's doubtful makers of art generator algorithmsbdidnt think of the same potential issues and choose to ignore them.
  - Tostino 4y ago
    There are a whole bunch of people who think copyrights have held back progress, and this is a technological solution to allowing the sharing of information more freely.
ben_w 4y ago
Even lawyers aren't sure, the arguments can go either way: https://youtu.be/G08hY8dSrUY https://youtu.be/G08hY8dSrUY Also note some new research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  So the legal thinking I have been reading is around the reproduction of copyrighted works. However to get to a point where you _can_ recreate copyrighted works implies copyright infringement in the dataset. Thats not really been tackled. Also, there is the GDPR angle here as well, collecting people's faces on the internet for something other than the person reasonably intended is also on grey legal ground I would argue.

runako 4y ago

I tried to use a couple of the AI image generators when building a landing page recently, so I can answer this. Look at the homepage for a popular site like Stripe, Figma, Digital Ocean, whatever, take your pick. Try to get Midjourney to generate high-quality art like you see on those homepages, in a format where it is ready to go directly into a site without further processing in an image tool. My experience was that I could have gotten better results at Fiver.

plif 4y ago
There's no way you're going to get top quality like those sites at a place like Fiverr either. They've spent millions on branding and marketing. I can see Midjourney already replacing the low end. The question is how good can it get, and then as the bar is raised what can be done to differentiate. Answer to the latter ironically may be going back to old school human interfaces.
- runako 4y ago
  > There's no way you're going to get top quality like those sites at a place like Fiverr either. There is a grain of truth to this, but again just choose whatever lower-budget website you want. And then just try the exercise I suggested. Midjourney isn't producing work at a "bad Fiverr" quality level, it's not producing usable work at all yet (at least without a lot of hands-on prompt tuning, at which point why not just use Fiverr?). At least with Fiverr, I am likely to end up with something I can put on the site, which is not true of Midjourney yet.
  - fock 4y ago
    supposedly the Fiverr-contractor soon just will be a prompt-tuner with a large cache of "good" images.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    The language models are probably more actually useful today. I've played around with writing hypothetical articles using them. For topics I know where it's a fairly straightforward, e.g. Five qualities some job role needs, it does a "decent" job. Decent in this context doesn't mean something I could just hand to an editor. But it does mean a pretty good starting point that I could amend, flesh out, add some links, add a quote or two. I could certainly see using it to give me a sort of pre-draft on some fairly evergreen topic. I could also use it to generate some boilerplate definitions or historical background to include in an article. But, sadly, I think you'll see the LLMs being used to generate a lot of blog/article content with a minimum of human effort for even less than the small amount being paid for a lot of this today.

mnd999 4y ago

You’re definitely screwing the other person in the prisoners dilemma.