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The thread author said Firefly was only trained on properly licensed photos which definitely supports the hypothesis that it sucks because it is doing things le

The thread author said Firefly was only trained on properly licensed photos which definitely supports the hypothesis that it sucks because it is doing things legally. Unfortunately that seems to make it suck even when the prompt does not reference any protected IP (e.g. the woman in red in a crowd example).

Robotbeat 4y ago
Learning off of works of other artists is not illegal.
- rondini 4y ago
  I think that the law is woefully unequipped to handle this situation, but there is definitely an ethical concern over training your models on copyrighted work. Adobe isn't going to scrape images off of social media to train their image generator and that will always put them behind companies that do. I can't say whether that's fair but I have very little faith that regulators will understand this issue enough to find a solution.
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  We don't know that yet, we may find out soon. https://vox.com/recode/23580554/generative-ai-chatgpt-openai-stable-diffusion-legal-battles-napster-copyright-peter-kafka-column https://vox.com/recode/23580554/generative-ai-chatgpt-openai...
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Exactly, so insisting on it being illegal now is inaccurate. You can bet that companies which have access to massive IP stockpiles, like Adobe, will absolutely be pushing things in a direction so that anything you see or hear cannot be used for inspiration without a hefty fee which is at their sole discretion.
    - _coveredInBees 4y ago
      The correct interpretation is that relying on tools like MidJourney can be a liability for the exact reason that this can go any which way and the legality issue is rather gray. So the point still stands that many companies would rather have a more clear-cut tool like Adobe Firefly without having to worry about potential liability.
    - sebzim4500 4y ago
      I doubt Adobe has a serious lobbying presence. It's Disney you've got to watch out for, but hopefully they are distracted arguing with Florida about whether gay people exist.
      - ftxbro 4y ago
        > I doubt Adobe has a serious lobbying It depends what you call "serious" but on their government relations page https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/government-relations.html https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/government-relations.html they say "Adobe discloses information on our federal and state lobbying activities. Our most recent federal lobbying disclosures are listed on the U.S. Senate lobbying disclosure database and U.S. House lobbying disclosure database." If you look at the forms on those databases you can see that Adobe has a "Policy, Government, and Ethical Innovation team in Washington, D.C." which I guess is what they call their lobbying crew. > It's Disney you've got to watch out for Probably most lobbying efforts would be considered 'not serious' if the standard is Disney!
    - waboremo 4y ago
      Yes, but leaning too hard in the other direction (that all these models do is "learn" therefore it's ok to duplicate) would negate a whole lot of protection artists (and in general individuals) get regarding their creative works in the digital space.
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        These models do not duplicate except in corner cases where the training set has massive persistent patterns (like a watermark) or if there's massive duplication in the data set (especially happens with famous artwork already in the public domain). This is not an intentional thing, and in every case is actually counter-productive to the functioning of the model. If you used a really cleverly and exhaustively and iteratively prompted midjourney image to recreate a copyrighted painting, that WOULD be duplication, just like a physical artist can paint a copy of a copyrighted painting by hand. Duplication is the end result, not the intermediary. That's why transformative collage is fine.
- blibble 4y ago
  it's not learning anything if you turn the temperature value down to zero it will produce the same thing every time given the same input (in the same way zlib or jpeg will) it's a lossy compression function that is implemented using a neural net copyright isn't removed if I take someone's existing image and re-save it as a jpg
  - alxhill 4y ago
    This is false and represents a poor understanding of how these models work - they do abstract concepts and no you can't trivially get training images out.
    - blibble 4y ago
      it's exactly the argument that the court cases against training on copyrighted works without permission are using if the courts agree and this is ruled to be infringement then we'll left with products with level of quality we see here meaning the technology will be an economic dead end here's to hoping
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        Copyright is about copying. It is not about observing. Reading a copyrighted book isn't infringement. Writing out copies of it is, even if you don't use a computer or anything.
    - DiscourseFan 4y ago
      >they do abstract concepts I don't think, given that we don't even have a particularly full understanding of how human conceptual logic functions, that we can claim that even AIs are using it as well. It's only "abstracting" in the sense that it has labeled one million objects in its training set with the word "tree," and fuses many of those images together to form a general picture dependent on specific parameters made to limit its set (oak tree, winter tree, etc.) But that is different from me or you using the word tree, which is just a signifier among signifiers, it stands for nothing but a negation of the very thing it points to in a certain set of symbolic relations. Humans communicate in the order of symbolic structures, our minds function much more like LLMs, creating multitudinous pattern relations. What you call "abstract concepts" are of a secondary order imposed to create rigorous exactitude overtop the riddled mess that we call the human psyche.
- mcv 4y ago
  No, but reproducing them is, and that's clearly what MidJourney is doing. MidJourney did a fantastic job on the Deadpool, Mario and Pikachu images, but those are clearly copyright violations. (Or maybe trademark violations?)
  - Terretta 4y ago
    Fictional character protection is complex, backed by franchise money generation machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_fictional_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_ficti... Arguably, however, (a) not all fictional characters are copyrightable in the first place, and (b) fair use still exists. Adobe Illustrator should not prevent an artist from drawing Mickey Mouse using the software. Nor should MidJourney. If Disney has a problem, they can go after the human using the tool.
    - mcv 4y ago
      Sure, you could argue the violation is in the publication, not the creation. So to what extent are these online tools publishing them? You can generally reproduce someone else's IP for your own use, but can you give it to one specific other person? Does it matter whether it's a computer or a person that's giving it? I'm sure this question will employ a lot of lawyers.

Robotbeat 4y ago

Learning off of works of other artists is not illegal.

rondini 4y ago
I think that the law is woefully unequipped to handle this situation, but there is definitely an ethical concern over training your models on copyrighted work. Adobe isn't going to scrape images off of social media to train their image generator and that will always put them behind companies that do. I can't say whether that's fair but I have very little faith that regulators will understand this issue enough to find a solution.
jonny_eh 4y ago
We don't know that yet, we may find out soon. https://vox.com/recode/23580554/generative-ai-chatgpt-openai-stable-diffusion-legal-battles-napster-copyright-peter-kafka-column https://vox.com/recode/23580554/generative-ai-chatgpt-openai...
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Exactly, so insisting on it being illegal now is inaccurate. You can bet that companies which have access to massive IP stockpiles, like Adobe, will absolutely be pushing things in a direction so that anything you see or hear cannot be used for inspiration without a hefty fee which is at their sole discretion.
  - _coveredInBees 4y ago
    The correct interpretation is that relying on tools like MidJourney can be a liability for the exact reason that this can go any which way and the legality issue is rather gray. So the point still stands that many companies would rather have a more clear-cut tool like Adobe Firefly without having to worry about potential liability.
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    I doubt Adobe has a serious lobbying presence. It's Disney you've got to watch out for, but hopefully they are distracted arguing with Florida about whether gay people exist.
    - ftxbro 4y ago
      > I doubt Adobe has a serious lobbying It depends what you call "serious" but on their government relations page https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/government-relations.html https://www.adobe.com/about-adobe/government-relations.html they say "Adobe discloses information on our federal and state lobbying activities. Our most recent federal lobbying disclosures are listed on the U.S. Senate lobbying disclosure database and U.S. House lobbying disclosure database." If you look at the forms on those databases you can see that Adobe has a "Policy, Government, and Ethical Innovation team in Washington, D.C." which I guess is what they call their lobbying crew. > It's Disney you've got to watch out for Probably most lobbying efforts would be considered 'not serious' if the standard is Disney!
  - waboremo 4y ago
    Yes, but leaning too hard in the other direction (that all these models do is "learn" therefore it's ok to duplicate) would negate a whole lot of protection artists (and in general individuals) get regarding their creative works in the digital space.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      These models do not duplicate except in corner cases where the training set has massive persistent patterns (like a watermark) or if there's massive duplication in the data set (especially happens with famous artwork already in the public domain). This is not an intentional thing, and in every case is actually counter-productive to the functioning of the model. If you used a really cleverly and exhaustively and iteratively prompted midjourney image to recreate a copyrighted painting, that WOULD be duplication, just like a physical artist can paint a copy of a copyrighted painting by hand. Duplication is the end result, not the intermediary. That's why transformative collage is fine.
blibble 4y ago
it's not learning anything if you turn the temperature value down to zero it will produce the same thing every time given the same input (in the same way zlib or jpeg will) it's a lossy compression function that is implemented using a neural net copyright isn't removed if I take someone's existing image and re-save it as a jpg
- alxhill 4y ago
  This is false and represents a poor understanding of how these models work - they do abstract concepts and no you can't trivially get training images out.
  - blibble 4y ago
    it's exactly the argument that the court cases against training on copyrighted works without permission are using if the courts agree and this is ruled to be infringement then we'll left with products with level of quality we see here meaning the technology will be an economic dead end here's to hoping
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      Copyright is about copying. It is not about observing. Reading a copyrighted book isn't infringement. Writing out copies of it is, even if you don't use a computer or anything.
  - DiscourseFan 4y ago
    >they do abstract concepts I don't think, given that we don't even have a particularly full understanding of how human conceptual logic functions, that we can claim that even AIs are using it as well. It's only "abstracting" in the sense that it has labeled one million objects in its training set with the word "tree," and fuses many of those images together to form a general picture dependent on specific parameters made to limit its set (oak tree, winter tree, etc.) But that is different from me or you using the word tree, which is just a signifier among signifiers, it stands for nothing but a negation of the very thing it points to in a certain set of symbolic relations. Humans communicate in the order of symbolic structures, our minds function much more like LLMs, creating multitudinous pattern relations. What you call "abstract concepts" are of a secondary order imposed to create rigorous exactitude overtop the riddled mess that we call the human psyche.
mcv 4y ago
No, but reproducing them is, and that's clearly what MidJourney is doing. MidJourney did a fantastic job on the Deadpool, Mario and Pikachu images, but those are clearly copyright violations. (Or maybe trademark violations?)
- Terretta 4y ago
  Fictional character protection is complex, backed by franchise money generation machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_fictional_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_ficti... Arguably, however, (a) not all fictional characters are copyrightable in the first place, and (b) fair use still exists. Adobe Illustrator should not prevent an artist from drawing Mickey Mouse using the software. Nor should MidJourney. If Disney has a problem, they can go after the human using the tool.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Sure, you could argue the violation is in the publication, not the creation. So to what extent are these online tools publishing them? You can generally reproduce someone else's IP for your own use, but can you give it to one specific other person? Does it matter whether it's a computer or a person that's giving it? I'm sure this question will employ a lot of lawyers.