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The Getty website claims that this system will somehow compensate the original authors of the work that went into the training model. Have they discussed the sp

The Getty website claims that this system will somehow compensate the original authors of the work that went into the training model. Have they discussed the specifics anywhere? i.e. is it a blanket fee of some fraction of a cent per image to every Getty contributor whose images went into the training set? Statistical analysis of prompts users submitted in the last month and assign more of the money to contributors whose images had matching keywords? I'm pretty firmly on the side of "large-scale analysis of content that's accessible to the public should be entirely outside the scope of copyright, regardless of what one does with the output", even though I also sympathize with artists that see generative AI as a potentially existential threat to their careers. But I'm curious if Getty is actually going to make meaningful payments to the creators of the images that went into the training set, or if this is more of a "we could continue to pay our existing royalties to content creators, or we could keep most of the money for ourselves by selling access to a model trained on that content" type of situation. [1] "We’ve created a model that compensates our world‑class content creators for the use of their work in our AI model, allowing them to continue to create more of the high‑quality pre‑shot imagery you depend on." (https://www.gettyimages.com/ai/generation/about https://www.gettyimages.com/ai/generation/about)

JacobThreeThree 3y ago
>"But I'm curious if Getty is actually going to make meaningful payments to the creators of the images that went into the training set, or if this is more of a "we could continue to pay our existing royalties to content creators, or we could keep most of the money for ourselves by selling access to a model trained on that content" type of situation. Adobe is also dealing with this question with Firefly. So far they plan to pay creators annually, but how much each artists gets and how the amount is calculated is yet to be determined. Since a model is only as good as its training data, hopefully this can be a new revenue stream for artists? https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/13/adobe-starts-paying-bonuses-to-stock-contributors-whose-content-is-being-used-to-train-firefly/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/13/adobe-starts-paying-bonuse...
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  obvious approach for corporations is to simplify the math. the model is made from X images, from Y artists, each artist has a percent contribution to the total. between 0 and 100 percent. so each time money is generated by the model, the contributors get their share. as a bonus, it is easy to understand how that share was derived. so it is implicitly fair. (please keep in mind that this “artist’s share” will be a percentage of the net revenue generated, and that this percentage will probably be a trade secret or some such.) (any works from artists unable to be paid, meaning public domain or otherwise, will be handled by the corporation for the continuous and never-ending improvement of the platform that makes it all possible.)
  - ChadNauseam 3y ago
    > as a bonus, it is easy to understand how that share was derived. so it is implicitly fair. I don't think I understand this. How does something being simple to understand make it fair?
    - catchnear4321 3y ago
      because the corporation made the math simple. simple is fair, and honest, an honesty we can all understand.
      - araes 3y ago
        And of course simple math is fair, which is why I have submitted millions of images to Getty Images in massive waves, because of course such a fair algorithm will find your image among my stack of millions. And when we grind out compensation, I get 1,000,000/1,000,001 and you get 1/1,000,001. Because of course I would never game your fair algorithm.
        Aerroon 3y ago
        But then your images contributed 99.9999% of the training data. Getty has a vested interest in removing "polluting" images from the dataset. The model would be almost entirely, if not entirely, on your images.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> is it a blanket fee of some fraction of a cent per image to every Getty contributor whose images went into the training set? Statistical analysis of prompts users submitted in the last month and assign more of the money to contributors whose images had matching keywords? If this isn't already a scam it's about to be. Paying copyright holders money for this will cause people to produce mountains of low effort images, which then get the same payment as things people put actual work into, ensuring that the payments are negligible because they're diluted by such volume. And will reduce the quality of the model so nobody wants to use it. And we know what the cheapest way to generate a large volume of low effort images is, which is probably not going to bode well for the purity of the system either.
- beretguy 3y ago
  > And we know what the cheapest way to generate a large volume of low effort images is AI. I’m ok with closing the loop and AI folding on itself.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  Paying copyright holders money for this will cause people to produce mountains of low effort images At the same time though, Getty and Adobe have a vested interest in not allowing that content into their training sets. They are obviously curating here, so that their generator outputs better stuff than the generators of competitors. I'm sure they are wargaming out the possibility of MS/OpenAI and Google coming in. Or maybe even worse, Disney or the video game makers, entering this market. So you would need to generate a mountain of low effort content, and then hope that some of it is good enough to make it through the curation process. It's not a guaranteed thing.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Getty Images is not exactly high art. It's already a collection of low effort images. The threshold for getting accepted has to be much lower than the threshold for making much money, because the company needs the long tail (and so does the AI model), but a photographer previously only made money if their photos were popular. Now as long as you can meet the minimum bar for inclusion, you get the same payment as anyone else, so the quantity of photos at that minimum level of quality goes way up.
4death4 3y ago
It seems like embeddings could help with this. Generate an image. Embed it. Find the top-N closest training images. Pay those creators.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
All those type of business tend to shave money out of the deal, it's true in affiliation, licencing, sub contracting, and so on. More obfuscation will mean more shaving.

JacobThreeThree 3y ago

>"But I'm curious if Getty is actually going to make meaningful payments to the creators of the images that went into the training set, or if this is more of a "we could continue to pay our existing royalties to content creators, or we could keep most of the money for ourselves by selling access to a model trained on that content" type of situation. Adobe is also dealing with this question with Firefly. So far they plan to pay creators annually, but how much each artists gets and how the amount is calculated is yet to be determined. Since a model is only as good as its training data, hopefully this can be a new revenue stream for artists? https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/13/adobe-starts-paying-bonuses-to-stock-contributors-whose-content-is-being-used-to-train-firefly/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/13/adobe-starts-paying-bonuse...

catchnear4321 3y ago
obvious approach for corporations is to simplify the math. the model is made from X images, from Y artists, each artist has a percent contribution to the total. between 0 and 100 percent. so each time money is generated by the model, the contributors get their share. as a bonus, it is easy to understand how that share was derived. so it is implicitly fair. (please keep in mind that this “artist’s share” will be a percentage of the net revenue generated, and that this percentage will probably be a trade secret or some such.) (any works from artists unable to be paid, meaning public domain or otherwise, will be handled by the corporation for the continuous and never-ending improvement of the platform that makes it all possible.)
- ChadNauseam 3y ago
  > as a bonus, it is easy to understand how that share was derived. so it is implicitly fair. I don't think I understand this. How does something being simple to understand make it fair?
  - catchnear4321 3y ago
    because the corporation made the math simple. simple is fair, and honest, an honesty we can all understand.
    - araes 3y ago
      And of course simple math is fair, which is why I have submitted millions of images to Getty Images in massive waves, because of course such a fair algorithm will find your image among my stack of millions. And when we grind out compensation, I get 1,000,000/1,000,001 and you get 1/1,000,001. Because of course I would never game your fair algorithm.
      - Aerroon 3y ago
        But then your images contributed 99.9999% of the training data. Getty has a vested interest in removing "polluting" images from the dataset. The model would be almost entirely, if not entirely, on your images.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> is it a blanket fee of some fraction of a cent per image to every Getty contributor whose images went into the training set? Statistical analysis of prompts users submitted in the last month and assign more of the money to contributors whose images had matching keywords? If this isn't already a scam it's about to be. Paying copyright holders money for this will cause people to produce mountains of low effort images, which then get the same payment as things people put actual work into, ensuring that the payments are negligible because they're diluted by such volume. And will reduce the quality of the model so nobody wants to use it. And we know what the cheapest way to generate a large volume of low effort images is, which is probably not going to bode well for the purity of the system either.

beretguy 3y ago
> And we know what the cheapest way to generate a large volume of low effort images is AI. I’m ok with closing the loop and AI folding on itself.
bilbo0s 3y ago
Paying copyright holders money for this will cause people to produce mountains of low effort images At the same time though, Getty and Adobe have a vested interest in not allowing that content into their training sets. They are obviously curating here, so that their generator outputs better stuff than the generators of competitors. I'm sure they are wargaming out the possibility of MS/OpenAI and Google coming in. Or maybe even worse, Disney or the video game makers, entering this market. So you would need to generate a mountain of low effort content, and then hope that some of it is good enough to make it through the curation process. It's not a guaranteed thing.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Getty Images is not exactly high art. It's already a collection of low effort images. The threshold for getting accepted has to be much lower than the threshold for making much money, because the company needs the long tail (and so does the AI model), but a photographer previously only made money if their photos were popular. Now as long as you can meet the minimum bar for inclusion, you get the same payment as anyone else, so the quantity of photos at that minimum level of quality goes way up.

4death4 3y ago

It seems like embeddings could help with this. Generate an image. Embed it. Find the top-N closest training images. Pay those creators.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

All those type of business tend to shave money out of the deal, it's true in affiliation, licencing, sub contracting, and so on. More obfuscation will mean more shaving.