4 ms·

By way of OpenAI, Microsoft is attempting the biggest triple-E bait-and-switch in its history—this time not against open-source developers but anyone who was si

By way of OpenAI, Microsoft is attempting the biggest triple-E bait-and-switch in its history—this time not against open-source developers but anyone who was silly enough to share creative work in the open. Worst of all, the majority here seems to be hailing them for this. My take as to what exactly has gone wrong here is that it’s loss of attribution. I think this is quite intentional: given relevant metadata, the network could obviously be instrumented to reflect and credit the artists whose works contributed to the final derivative in excess of some threshold. However, Microsoft would rather the public thought it is impossible—since otherwise they’d be on the hook to pay those artists-turned-unwilling-ghost-content-creators on whose work they are now capitalizing.

jimbokun 4y ago
I’m not sure how you track attribution through a billion or so floating point values.
- tanseydavid 4y ago
  If it were ChatGPT it would trivially attribute Jonas Salk as the inventor of the Polio vaccine, right? That attribution would be a product of the floating point values (weights) of the model, right?
- toss1 4y ago
  With another billion or n^x pointers and floating point values...?
toss1 4y ago
Yes, it would be all good if they just tracked attribution and organized micro-payments and opt-out for the artists they are leveraging. "Here's the list of artists contributing to your work not already in compensated libraries such as Getty. Your bill is $X.XX and 70% of your payment will go to these artists in this proportion [list]". Instead MS is just pocketing it. It isn't like they lack the funds and hardware/software resources to also implement backtracing... Perhaps what should be advocated is use this for idea generation then present it as part of the design brief to get local designers and artists to do a genuine creative work. And give them credit on the published result.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  This is just the way of capitalism, and it's how the entire economy works. I mean, you're so concerned with the artists work being stolen, but what of the scientists? Yes, the art produced by Stable Diffusion isn't possible without the artists, but it's also not possible without the countless scientists who have worked over decades to get this technology to where it is. I didn't hear artists complaining when they were happily using technologies developed by people who were not compensated when their work was productized by corporations. Where is their attribution? Should we expect Microsoft and OpenAI et al. to list the authors of the papers they used to work through the technical aspects of their product? Should all of the open source projects they leveraged be attributed and compensated? If we are going to ask Microsoft to share profits with artists, shouldn't we also ask them to share profits with scientists and open source devs? Arguably, yes! But if so, then the focus on the poor artists being robbed is misplaced. If artists are being robbed by corporations, then they can get in line if they want a payout, because the rest of us are being robbed too. It's a much larger problem than just artists -- it's that corporations capture all of the downstream benefits of upstream content/science/technology developments, and then refuse to reinvest at a proportional rate back into the system that allowed them to profit so handsomely. This applies to the scientists and the artists. So yes, be mad at what Microsoft is doing. But the solution isn't to get them to pay artists, that doesn't fix anything. If we want actual change, we need to fundamentally reimagine the relationship between corporations and the rest of us. If the only way to get there is for corporations to screw over more people until enough wake up, then so be it.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Why are you conflating scientific research (something that is paid), with art that was freely uploaded to social media sites and message boards? Microsoft Designer is not spitting out composites of stolen research, it is creating composites of art that can't be matched back to the original. > If artists are being robbed by corporations, then they can get in line if they want a payout, because the rest of us are being robbed too. Perhaps you should disclose what AI is stealing from you. For me, nothing, because my career is in an area where I don't have to publicly share my work.

jimbokun 4y ago

I’m not sure how you track attribution through a billion or so floating point values.

tanseydavid 4y ago
If it were ChatGPT it would trivially attribute Jonas Salk as the inventor of the Polio vaccine, right? That attribution would be a product of the floating point values (weights) of the model, right?
toss1 4y ago
With another billion or n^x pointers and floating point values...?

toss1 4y ago

Yes, it would be all good if they just tracked attribution and organized micro-payments and opt-out for the artists they are leveraging. "Here's the list of artists contributing to your work not already in compensated libraries such as Getty. Your bill is $X.XX and 70% of your payment will go to these artists in this proportion [list]". Instead MS is just pocketing it. It isn't like they lack the funds and hardware/software resources to also implement backtracing... Perhaps what should be advocated is use this for idea generation then present it as part of the design brief to get local designers and artists to do a genuine creative work. And give them credit on the published result.

ModernMech 4y ago
This is just the way of capitalism, and it's how the entire economy works. I mean, you're so concerned with the artists work being stolen, but what of the scientists? Yes, the art produced by Stable Diffusion isn't possible without the artists, but it's also not possible without the countless scientists who have worked over decades to get this technology to where it is. I didn't hear artists complaining when they were happily using technologies developed by people who were not compensated when their work was productized by corporations. Where is their attribution? Should we expect Microsoft and OpenAI et al. to list the authors of the papers they used to work through the technical aspects of their product? Should all of the open source projects they leveraged be attributed and compensated? If we are going to ask Microsoft to share profits with artists, shouldn't we also ask them to share profits with scientists and open source devs? Arguably, yes! But if so, then the focus on the poor artists being robbed is misplaced. If artists are being robbed by corporations, then they can get in line if they want a payout, because the rest of us are being robbed too. It's a much larger problem than just artists -- it's that corporations capture all of the downstream benefits of upstream content/science/technology developments, and then refuse to reinvest at a proportional rate back into the system that allowed them to profit so handsomely. This applies to the scientists and the artists. So yes, be mad at what Microsoft is doing. But the solution isn't to get them to pay artists, that doesn't fix anything. If we want actual change, we need to fundamentally reimagine the relationship between corporations and the rest of us. If the only way to get there is for corporations to screw over more people until enough wake up, then so be it.
- rchaud 4y ago
  Why are you conflating scientific research (something that is paid), with art that was freely uploaded to social media sites and message boards? Microsoft Designer is not spitting out composites of stolen research, it is creating composites of art that can't be matched back to the original. > If artists are being robbed by corporations, then they can get in line if they want a payout, because the rest of us are being robbed too. Perhaps you should disclose what AI is stealing from you. For me, nothing, because my career is in an area where I don't have to publicly share my work.