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> as they continue to extract their pound of flesh Be compensated for the use of their content is maybe a more accurate and friendlier way to phrase this, but

> as they continue to extract their pound of flesh Be compensated for the use of their content is maybe a more accurate and friendlier way to phrase this, but I guess not as edgy.

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Aeolun 4y ago
Is it truly their content? It’s private people uploading these pictures to these sites right?
- notahacker 4y ago
  Private people who agreed that Getty would manage their distribution and compensate them when their image was used by one of Getty's clients, yes. So yeah, not only is it very much Getty's content to distribute, but Stability AI is absolutely screwing over thousands of little guys by not paying royalties too...
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Some of that, but Getty also repackages images with licenses that allow it. And sometimes then acts like it "owns" those images by harassing others that use the same original source, including the original copyright owner. That's not especially relevant to the article, but helpful to understand a lot of what's there isn't their IP to manage.
    - VanTheBrand 4y ago
      That’s the minority of their images and also if it’s the version from their server with their watermark on it, it actually is their IP to manage. So as you said it’s not especially relevant and it’s very clear stability didn’t limit its scraping of Getty to these kinds of images. Getty in other instances being jerks doesn’t make them wrong here.
      - tyingq 4y ago
        >That’s the minority of their images It's difficult to find any source that would prove or disprove that. I can find references that they changed 35 million images to "royalty free" in 2014. The examples I can find of those are things like this: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/mcs/media/images/73409000/jpg/_73409443_1e3b6fe6-c85b-4b52-96a9-3b7d6e547ef5.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/mcs/media/images/73409000/... Which appears to be a public domain image. Or this $499 image from Getty: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/floyd-burroughs-sharecropper-by-walker-evans-news-photo/544162314 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/floyd-burrough... Free from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/00651772/ https://www.loc.gov/item/00651772/ (including the 50MB tiff that appears to be the highest resolution avaialable)
  - judge2020 4y ago
    The crux of the issue is whether Stable Diffusion is 'learning' like a human would be if they just scrolled through Getty Images or someone's DeviantArt to learn to draw and copy their style (a style is not copyrightable). This is why Getty Images' claim is that Stable Diffusion is a "collage tool", while SD will most likely argue on the basis of the AI being capable of exhibiting the same level of creativity as a human.
    - TillE 4y ago
      It's best understood as an extremely sophisticated collage tool. We can make vague analogies about how training ML models is sort of like human learning, but ultimately it's not actually that. It will still spit out stuff like watermarks and product photos unprompted, because its "learning" is still fundamentally mindless. It works strictly in the realm of pixels, it has no mechanism for understanding context.
      - andybak 4y ago
        So "extremely sophisticated" that the word "collage" takes on an almost entirely new meaning. So, not really.
      - gpderetta 4y ago
        My understanding is that it doesn't in fact work in the domain of pixels, but I'm far from an expert.
      - bioemerl 4y ago
        It's really really not best understood as a sophisticated collage tool. You can't take a person and turn them into a cartoon if you're just pasting existing parts of images together. Stable diffusion understands what is a cartoon and it understands what is you (assuming you train it on your face). It spits out watermarks because it understands that watermarks appear in images and it's going to try to reproduce the watermarks if you ask for something that tends to have a watermark in it.
    - martynr 4y ago
      This seems totally irrelevant to the case in my view, which is whether Stability Ai had the right to use Getty’s content for training in the manner that they allegedly did.
- markdown 4y ago
  A lot of it is public domain photos that they pretend they own the copyright for.
  - martynr 4y ago
    Not sure if you are asserting this but Just because an image is in the public domain, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Stability has a right to use it for training. I have online content that is licensed as Creative Commons attribution, non commercial, share alike- it seems to me that using this for training would breach at least the non commercial terms of that license.
    - markdown 4y ago
      I'm talking about millions of old photos and art that have had their copyright expire. Getty sells them for $500 a pop. Eg: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/people-and-traditions-of-the-world-king-of-royalty-free-illustration/487145752 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/people-and-t... This isn't a photo, but there are millions of pics as well.
      - martynr 4y ago
        Fair enough. I agree that $500 is a big ask for public domain content, however there is still a service provided by Getty in surfacing this content. It seems fair to charge a fee for that convenience- after all, the consumer has an option to do that work and find it themselves if they value their time less than the cost and have the necessary knowledge. Kevin Kelly identifies this in his excellent article “better than free“ (https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/) Getty asserts a related point in the claim- that the work done to build extensive metadata for the content (which Stability apparently used for training their models) is a valuable service in and of itself. Edit: just clicked through your link above and should have done so before. While the points above still stand (imho), the presentation on the Getty site borders on misrepresentation in the implication that they are copyright holders. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
      - 4y ago
- bottled_poe 4y ago
  Unless they have explicitly transferred ownership, then yes. IP generally vests with the creator and is licensed to the recipient unless they have explicitly agreed otherwise.
hobobaggins 4y ago
It's actually a fairly common idiom in English, dating prior to Shakespeare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_of_Flesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_of_Flesh
- rosywoozlechan 4y ago
  totally unnecessary explanation, don't know what in my comment led you to think I needed it. Do you regularly define words and etymology for people in comments?
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> as they continue to extract their pound of flesh Be compensated for the use of their content is maybe a more accurate and friendlier way to phrase this, but I guess not as edgy.

deleted 4y ago

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Aeolun 4y ago

Is it truly their content? It’s private people uploading these pictures to these sites right?

notahacker 4y ago
Private people who agreed that Getty would manage their distribution and compensate them when their image was used by one of Getty's clients, yes. So yeah, not only is it very much Getty's content to distribute, but Stability AI is absolutely screwing over thousands of little guys by not paying royalties too...
- tyingq 4y ago
  Some of that, but Getty also repackages images with licenses that allow it. And sometimes then acts like it "owns" those images by harassing others that use the same original source, including the original copyright owner. That's not especially relevant to the article, but helpful to understand a lot of what's there isn't their IP to manage.
  - VanTheBrand 4y ago
    That’s the minority of their images and also if it’s the version from their server with their watermark on it, it actually is their IP to manage. So as you said it’s not especially relevant and it’s very clear stability didn’t limit its scraping of Getty to these kinds of images. Getty in other instances being jerks doesn’t make them wrong here.
    - tyingq 4y ago
      >That’s the minority of their images It's difficult to find any source that would prove or disprove that. I can find references that they changed 35 million images to "royalty free" in 2014. The examples I can find of those are things like this: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/mcs/media/images/73409000/jpg/_73409443_1e3b6fe6-c85b-4b52-96a9-3b7d6e547ef5.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/mcs/media/images/73409000/... Which appears to be a public domain image. Or this $499 image from Getty: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/floyd-burroughs-sharecropper-by-walker-evans-news-photo/544162314 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/floyd-burrough... Free from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/item/00651772/ https://www.loc.gov/item/00651772/ (including the 50MB tiff that appears to be the highest resolution avaialable)
- judge2020 4y ago
  The crux of the issue is whether Stable Diffusion is 'learning' like a human would be if they just scrolled through Getty Images or someone's DeviantArt to learn to draw and copy their style (a style is not copyrightable). This is why Getty Images' claim is that Stable Diffusion is a "collage tool", while SD will most likely argue on the basis of the AI being capable of exhibiting the same level of creativity as a human.
  - TillE 4y ago
    It's best understood as an extremely sophisticated collage tool. We can make vague analogies about how training ML models is sort of like human learning, but ultimately it's not actually that. It will still spit out stuff like watermarks and product photos unprompted, because its "learning" is still fundamentally mindless. It works strictly in the realm of pixels, it has no mechanism for understanding context.
    - andybak 4y ago
      So "extremely sophisticated" that the word "collage" takes on an almost entirely new meaning. So, not really.
    - gpderetta 4y ago
      My understanding is that it doesn't in fact work in the domain of pixels, but I'm far from an expert.
    - bioemerl 4y ago
      It's really really not best understood as a sophisticated collage tool. You can't take a person and turn them into a cartoon if you're just pasting existing parts of images together. Stable diffusion understands what is a cartoon and it understands what is you (assuming you train it on your face). It spits out watermarks because it understands that watermarks appear in images and it's going to try to reproduce the watermarks if you ask for something that tends to have a watermark in it.
  - martynr 4y ago
    This seems totally irrelevant to the case in my view, which is whether Stability Ai had the right to use Getty’s content for training in the manner that they allegedly did.
markdown 4y ago
A lot of it is public domain photos that they pretend they own the copyright for.
- martynr 4y ago
  Not sure if you are asserting this but Just because an image is in the public domain, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Stability has a right to use it for training. I have online content that is licensed as Creative Commons attribution, non commercial, share alike- it seems to me that using this for training would breach at least the non commercial terms of that license.
  - markdown 4y ago
    I'm talking about millions of old photos and art that have had their copyright expire. Getty sells them for $500 a pop. Eg: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/people-and-traditions-of-the-world-king-of-royalty-free-illustration/487145752 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/people-and-t... This isn't a photo, but there are millions of pics as well.
    - martynr 4y ago
      Fair enough. I agree that $500 is a big ask for public domain content, however there is still a service provided by Getty in surfacing this content. It seems fair to charge a fee for that convenience- after all, the consumer has an option to do that work and find it themselves if they value their time less than the cost and have the necessary knowledge. Kevin Kelly identifies this in his excellent article “better than free“ (https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/ https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/) Getty asserts a related point in the claim- that the work done to build extensive metadata for the content (which Stability apparently used for training their models) is a valuable service in and of itself. Edit: just clicked through your link above and should have done so before. While the points above still stand (imho), the presentation on the Getty site borders on misrepresentation in the implication that they are copyright holders. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
    - 4y ago
bottled_poe 4y ago
Unless they have explicitly transferred ownership, then yes. IP generally vests with the creator and is licensed to the recipient unless they have explicitly agreed otherwise.

hobobaggins 4y ago

It's actually a fairly common idiom in English, dating prior to Shakespeare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_of_Flesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_of_Flesh

rosywoozlechan 4y ago
totally unnecessary explanation, don't know what in my comment led you to think I needed it. Do you regularly define words and etymology for people in comments?

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