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My problem with this is that artists learn by studying other artists, cutting that off because it's AI rather than focusing on whether the resulting work is der

by Natsu 3y ago

My problem with this is that artists learn by studying other artists, cutting that off because it's AI rather than focusing on whether the resulting work is derivative, seems more of a problem to me. It seems to me that an AI can be used for either original work or derivatives, proving that you can get derivatives out of it has always struck me as no different than commissioning a copy of someone's work from a human artist and being shocked that you got what you asked for.

skydhash 3y ago
You can ask someone to produce a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse, but good luck using it in any commercial activities. Most LLMs are just profiteering from people’s labor without their consent. And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works.
- chii 3y ago
  > a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse that's not because of copyright, but because of trademark. If you make the minnie mouse sufficiently different that it cannot be mistaken for not being Minnie to the average person, and don't call it minnie mouse (to get rid of trademark), disney will have a much harder time suing you. Of course, they will still try, and steam roll you with just money instead.
- JamesBarney 3y ago
  > And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works. I don't think you can define those terms such that what you say is true of AI but not true of people.
- Natsu 3y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding that, I don't expect it in either case, I'm saying you have to judge the output not the input. So even if it trained on a ton of copyrighted artwork, if the output isn't a ripoff of something in the training data, I don't think there should be any copyright issues.
- gwd 3y ago
  > You can ask someone to produce a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse, but good luck using it in any commercial activities. The same would automatically apply to LLM output -- there's no need to change the current laws to cover that case. The question is this. Suppose I ask a human artist and an LLM to create me a new female mouse cartoon character. And suppose both the artist and the LLM have been exposed to Minnie Mouse. It's not unlikely that the new character created in both cases will have aspects specifically similar to, or specifically opposite to Minnie Mouse. In the case of the human artist, the new character will not be covered by Disney's copyright, unless there was a lot of copying. Why should the result be different for LLMs? The logical conclusion of "any output of an LLM that's seen Minnie Mouse must be subject to Disney's copyright" is "any output of any human that's seen Minnie Mouse must be owned by Disney". Which I'm sure Disney would love, but would certainly make the world a worse place for everyone.
freejazz 3y ago
Can an AI express to you how van gogh affected it as an artist? I'm not sure that AI is "learning" the way we say humans are "learning," when humans learn and study art. Obviously there is no debate that you can input van gogh into a model and produce something van gogh-like as a result. But I've not seen anything that indicates that the AI is learning anything about van gogh at all. Perhaps it comes down to whether you think learning van gogh is just creating a mapping of all of his brush strokes ever, and only exactly what they look like. It's obvious the AI knows nothing more than that. If you think that's what humans do when they learn art, I'd be sad for you! As to your hypothetical, we don't give copyrights to people who make rote copies of things, human or otherwise. Is the implication of the shock, that there is sufficient difference with the work as to render it a derivative and not a copy? Okay, how so? And of what consequence? Making derivatives of a copyright without license is infringement.
- Natsu 3y ago
  I think it's learning styles in a way that's at least partially analogous, because it comes out with things that are reasonably original and not in the training data. I'm sure an LLM can write you an essay like that for any artist you want, but I'm not all that convinced those are meaningful even with humans. > As to your hypothetical That's the thing, it's not a hypothetical, it's a past story from here on HN. Someone did that, asking for copies of a famous painting (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and got highly derivative items out of the model and we had a debate over whether that even means anything, because that's both a simple description of the painting and the name of a famous work, so it makes it so it can be ambiguous whether you asked for "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or a girl with a pearl earring in the prompting. I agree that it looks like copyright infringement whether it's done by a human or AI, though. I guess a lot of people missed the prior discussion on HN.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    >I think it's learning styles in a way that's at least partially analogous, because it comes out with things that are reasonably original and not in the training data. I don't think that is evidence that what it is doing is "learning". >I'm sure an LLM can write you an essay like that for any artist you want, but I'm not all that convinced those are meaningful even with humans. Well, it wouldn't be reflective of what the LLM thinks, so what is your point? If you are of the belief that humans don't have thoughts, I guess it's not a surprise you view things this way. >That's the thing, it's not a hypothetical, it's a past story from here on HN. Someone did that, asking for copies of a famous painting (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and got highly derivative items out of the model and we had a debate over whether that even means anything, because that's both a simple description of the painting and the name of a famous work, so it makes it so it can be ambiguous whether you asked for "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or a girl with a pearl earring in the prompting. You say derivative but without any reference to what it actually means... what about is derivative - that's the analysis that's happening in court. The analysis isn't "what you asked the LLM" because that's not dispositive to whether or not something is a copy. >I agree that it looks like copyright infringement whether it's done by a human or AI, though. I guess a lot of people missed the prior discussion on HN. Sorry I don't read every single thread about copyright on HN? This is the second posting I've seen on the RFC today. Give me a break!

by Natsu 3y ago

skydhash 3y ago

You can ask someone to produce a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse, but good luck using it in any commercial activities. Most LLMs are just profiteering from people’s labor without their consent. And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works.

chii 3y ago
> a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse that's not because of copyright, but because of trademark. If you make the minnie mouse sufficiently different that it cannot be mistaken for not being Minnie to the average person, and don't call it minnie mouse (to get rid of trademark), disney will have a much harder time suing you. Of course, they will still try, and steam roll you with just money instead.
JamesBarney 3y ago
> And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works. I don't think you can define those terms such that what you say is true of AI but not true of people.
Natsu 3y ago
I think you're misunderstanding that, I don't expect it in either case, I'm saying you have to judge the output not the input. So even if it trained on a ton of copyrighted artwork, if the output isn't a ripoff of something in the training data, I don't think there should be any copyright issues.
gwd 3y ago
> You can ask someone to produce a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse, but good luck using it in any commercial activities. The same would automatically apply to LLM output -- there's no need to change the current laws to cover that case. The question is this. Suppose I ask a human artist and an LLM to create me a new female mouse cartoon character. And suppose both the artist and the LLM have been exposed to Minnie Mouse. It's not unlikely that the new character created in both cases will have aspects specifically similar to, or specifically opposite to Minnie Mouse. In the case of the human artist, the new character will not be covered by Disney's copyright, unless there was a lot of copying. Why should the result be different for LLMs? The logical conclusion of "any output of an LLM that's seen Minnie Mouse must be subject to Disney's copyright" is "any output of any human that's seen Minnie Mouse must be owned by Disney". Which I'm sure Disney would love, but would certainly make the world a worse place for everyone.

freejazz 3y ago

Can an AI express to you how van gogh affected it as an artist? I'm not sure that AI is "learning" the way we say humans are "learning," when humans learn and study art. Obviously there is no debate that you can input van gogh into a model and produce something van gogh-like as a result. But I've not seen anything that indicates that the AI is learning anything about van gogh at all. Perhaps it comes down to whether you think learning van gogh is just creating a mapping of all of his brush strokes ever, and only exactly what they look like. It's obvious the AI knows nothing more than that. If you think that's what humans do when they learn art, I'd be sad for you! As to your hypothetical, we don't give copyrights to people who make rote copies of things, human or otherwise. Is the implication of the shock, that there is sufficient difference with the work as to render it a derivative and not a copy? Okay, how so? And of what consequence? Making derivatives of a copyright without license is infringement.

Natsu 3y ago
I think it's learning styles in a way that's at least partially analogous, because it comes out with things that are reasonably original and not in the training data. I'm sure an LLM can write you an essay like that for any artist you want, but I'm not all that convinced those are meaningful even with humans. > As to your hypothetical That's the thing, it's not a hypothetical, it's a past story from here on HN. Someone did that, asking for copies of a famous painting (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and got highly derivative items out of the model and we had a debate over whether that even means anything, because that's both a simple description of the painting and the name of a famous work, so it makes it so it can be ambiguous whether you asked for "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or a girl with a pearl earring in the prompting. I agree that it looks like copyright infringement whether it's done by a human or AI, though. I guess a lot of people missed the prior discussion on HN.
- freejazz 3y ago
  >I think it's learning styles in a way that's at least partially analogous, because it comes out with things that are reasonably original and not in the training data. I don't think that is evidence that what it is doing is "learning". >I'm sure an LLM can write you an essay like that for any artist you want, but I'm not all that convinced those are meaningful even with humans. Well, it wouldn't be reflective of what the LLM thinks, so what is your point? If you are of the belief that humans don't have thoughts, I guess it's not a surprise you view things this way. >That's the thing, it's not a hypothetical, it's a past story from here on HN. Someone did that, asking for copies of a famous painting (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and got highly derivative items out of the model and we had a debate over whether that even means anything, because that's both a simple description of the painting and the name of a famous work, so it makes it so it can be ambiguous whether you asked for "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or a girl with a pearl earring in the prompting. You say derivative but without any reference to what it actually means... what about is derivative - that's the analysis that's happening in court. The analysis isn't "what you asked the LLM" because that's not dispositive to whether or not something is a copy. >I agree that it looks like copyright infringement whether it's done by a human or AI, though. I guess a lot of people missed the prior discussion on HN. Sorry I don't read every single thread about copyright on HN? This is the second posting I've seen on the RFC today. Give me a break!