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So this effectively destroys any concept of AI digital art for sale. If there’s no way to protect it then there’s really nothing to own. It would be like trying

by JCM9 4y ago

So this effectively destroys any concept of AI digital art for sale. If there’s no way to protect it then there’s really nothing to own. It would be like trying to sell someone public domain content.

el_nahual 4y ago
There's plenty of copies of public domain works available for purchase on Amazon. It does mean that AI digital art will fetch commodity prices, but not that it won't be sold. Sort of like hotel art.
danuker 4y ago
Not quite; having it exist is something that may be worth paying for, even if it's equivalent to public domain.
lxe 4y ago
As an AI artist who's been selling digital art, it really depends on whether you really care about "protecting" your work. I've seen my stuff stolen all over the place, NFTs minted, etc. Most sites will take the copycats down. Lack of copyright protection doesn't necessarily supersede individual marketplace policies.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "I've seen my stuff stolen all over the place, NFTs minted, etc" The overwhelming majority of artist do not have the resources, time, or inclination to constantly chase down copycats and copyright infringers. Copyright law is just ineffective at stopping or even penalizing most of the infringement that goes on in the digital era. It's a relic of a past when making copies was hard.
antibasilisk 4y ago
Digital art as a whole has already been made worthless by the creation of diffusion models, whether there is copyright on them really doesn't matter at that point, because pretty much any image that can be imagined is now trivial to produce in under a minute.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "pretty much any image that can be imagined is now trivial to produce in under a minute" That's overstating it a bit.. but it is likely we'll get there within the next decade or so. Currently there's still a lot of art that's hard for AI to mimic effectively, and only certain types of art can be created quickly and without much effort using AI. The above is based on my experience of creating well over 5000 images in Midjourney, and keeping a close eye on AI generated art created by others. It's amazing tech that's close to magic, but it still can't do everything.
  - antibasilisk 4y ago
    You're neglecting the fact that the types of art that can be created quickly are the ones that make up the bulk of the training data, which are also the types of art most people will want to make.
- exodust 4y ago
  > pretty much any image that can be imagined is now trivial to produce What? That's not true at all! If you're talking about "art", most artists are fussy and want things exactly right. They will spend a long time tweaking the image, or combining different images, painting, processing, pixel-pushing to get the thing they imagined. If you're talking about some random need for an image of a "horse with metal legs", and settle for whatever the AI spits out, and then call that "my valuable art", that's different.
  - antibasilisk 4y ago
    There is plenty of ability to tweak AI images, I don't understand this objection.
    - exodust 4y ago
      You claim "all digital art is worthless because it can all be tweaked into existence in under a minute". If that were true, I could show you any piece of digital art, be it 2D or 3D rendered, and you should have no trouble making an identical copy in under a minute using only diffusion models and tweaking! That is an impossible task, I promise. I'm enjoying stable diffusion as a fun playground and rendering engine. But it can't magically produce the exact picture in my mind. Even simple things like "hero tree in dark misty forest, old swing hanging from large twisted branch, path extending into gloom". The AI will produce a nice image, but not the one in my mind. The image in my mind is important for style or composition reasons relative to the whole work. Artists rarely think in terms of isolated one-hit-wonders, they are producing work with important and meaningful connected threads and detailed elements.

by JCM9 4y ago

el_nahual 4y ago

There's plenty of copies of public domain works available for purchase on Amazon. It does mean that AI digital art will fetch commodity prices, but not that it won't be sold. Sort of like hotel art.

danuker 4y ago

Not quite; having it exist is something that may be worth paying for, even if it's equivalent to public domain.

lxe 4y ago

As an AI artist who's been selling digital art, it really depends on whether you really care about "protecting" your work. I've seen my stuff stolen all over the place, NFTs minted, etc. Most sites will take the copycats down. Lack of copyright protection doesn't necessarily supersede individual marketplace policies.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"I've seen my stuff stolen all over the place, NFTs minted, etc" The overwhelming majority of artist do not have the resources, time, or inclination to constantly chase down copycats and copyright infringers. Copyright law is just ineffective at stopping or even penalizing most of the infringement that goes on in the digital era. It's a relic of a past when making copies was hard.

antibasilisk 4y ago

Digital art as a whole has already been made worthless by the creation of diffusion models, whether there is copyright on them really doesn't matter at that point, because pretty much any image that can be imagined is now trivial to produce in under a minute.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"pretty much any image that can be imagined is now trivial to produce in under a minute" That's overstating it a bit.. but it is likely we'll get there within the next decade or so. Currently there's still a lot of art that's hard for AI to mimic effectively, and only certain types of art can be created quickly and without much effort using AI. The above is based on my experience of creating well over 5000 images in Midjourney, and keeping a close eye on AI generated art created by others. It's amazing tech that's close to magic, but it still can't do everything.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  You're neglecting the fact that the types of art that can be created quickly are the ones that make up the bulk of the training data, which are also the types of art most people will want to make.
exodust 4y ago
> pretty much any image that can be imagined is now trivial to produce What? That's not true at all! If you're talking about "art", most artists are fussy and want things exactly right. They will spend a long time tweaking the image, or combining different images, painting, processing, pixel-pushing to get the thing they imagined. If you're talking about some random need for an image of a "horse with metal legs", and settle for whatever the AI spits out, and then call that "my valuable art", that's different.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  There is plenty of ability to tweak AI images, I don't understand this objection.
  - exodust 4y ago
    You claim "all digital art is worthless because it can all be tweaked into existence in under a minute". If that were true, I could show you any piece of digital art, be it 2D or 3D rendered, and you should have no trouble making an identical copy in under a minute using only diffusion models and tweaking! That is an impossible task, I promise. I'm enjoying stable diffusion as a fun playground and rendering engine. But it can't magically produce the exact picture in my mind. Even simple things like "hero tree in dark misty forest, old swing hanging from large twisted branch, path extending into gloom". The AI will produce a nice image, but not the one in my mind. The image in my mind is important for style or composition reasons relative to the whole work. Artists rarely think in terms of isolated one-hit-wonders, they are producing work with important and meaningful connected threads and detailed elements.