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Yes, of course I can justify applying a different standard to AI than to humans when it comes to the generation of art. Despite everything you said about human

by xeckr 3y ago

Yes, of course I can justify applying a different standard to AI than to humans when it comes to the generation of art. Despite everything you said about humans copying the work of other humans, the fact is that humans are capable of producing new art without reference to prior art. You can prove this by considering the emergence of the very first cave paintings. On the other hand, GenAI like Stable Diffusion is capable of outputting art only if the following two conditions are met: 1. there is a prompt (and perhaps special configuration) made by the artist using the GenAI 2. there is training data (i.e. art made by prior artists) that makes the AI capable of translating the prompt into an image. Of course it is possible to create programs that output something that may be considered art without reference to the work of other people. However, without (2) GenAI specifically cannot exist, and so the people that make (2) possible are right to demand credit if their work is used in this context. Note that this says nothing about technological progress. If you train GenAI on material you have a right to use (e.g. art that is in the public domain, or copyrighted art that you have a license to use), then it's all good. The problem arises when you use a copy of someone's work in a process without their permission, when the law clearly says that the creator of that work has the legal right to decide how copies of that work are used (with the exception of "fair use").

csallen 3y ago
Your point still doesn't make sense to me. Real humans today are creating art based on other artists' work. Their art would have absolutely zero chance of being created if not for the training, copying, and inspiration they're drawing from other works. Cavemen were not creating the art that we see people creating today, because people today rely on learning from and copying others' examples. None of the targeted artists are being compensated or credited. Nor are you demanding they be. Why not? If I train myself by copying your work, by your logic, shouldn't you be compensated or credited? The fact that my neurons could've theoretically created some other type of art from scratch even if I hadn't trained on your work, doesn't change the situation that I did in fact train on your work.
- xeckr 3y ago
  When you train a GenAI on an image, legally speaking you're training it on a COPY of that image. If you intend to train a GenAI on a copy of an image I own the rights to (perhaps because I created it), then you have to negotiate with me. If you don't, then you are violating my copyright.
  - csallen 3y ago
    That's not how copyright works. Copyright law limits creating copies of a work, not interacting with copies of a work lol. Which means it doesn't apply to training. What you're describing is some totally new law that doesn't exist anywhere on earth, because it would make no sense. Imagine if an aspiring artist who's training by studying a copy of another artist's drawing, or by listening to a copy of another artist's music, gets charged with violating that artist's copyright because they trained on a copy without permission. Again, think of the implications if the laws you're dreaming up actually applied to people today.
    - xeckr 3y ago
      >Copyright law limits creating copies of a work When you are downloading someone's copyrighted music to train your GenAI with, the act of downloading it creates a copy of the work that now exists on your computer. The essence of copyright law is to give the owner the right to decide how copies of their work are used, which you have violated if you did the above without their consent. Incidentally, this is why pirating music is a copyright violation. Your argument is based on falsely equating the process of a human getting inspired by prior art to training GenAI on the same. If a human goes to an art gallery and gets inspired by some copyrighted work, he did not have to create a copy of that work for the inspiration to take place. On the other hand, with GenAI training, the act of creating a copy is unavoidable (e.g by taking a picture of a painting, which is uploaded to your computer, which is piped into a training algorithm). The human's mental representation of the painting does not count as a copy, but painting_photo.png does and the owner's rights fully extend to it.
      - 3y ago

by xeckr 3y ago

csallen 3y ago

Your point still doesn't make sense to me. Real humans today are creating art based on other artists' work. Their art would have absolutely zero chance of being created if not for the training, copying, and inspiration they're drawing from other works. Cavemen were not creating the art that we see people creating today, because people today rely on learning from and copying others' examples. None of the targeted artists are being compensated or credited. Nor are you demanding they be. Why not? If I train myself by copying your work, by your logic, shouldn't you be compensated or credited? The fact that my neurons could've theoretically created some other type of art from scratch even if I hadn't trained on your work, doesn't change the situation that I did in fact train on your work.

xeckr 3y ago
When you train a GenAI on an image, legally speaking you're training it on a COPY of that image. If you intend to train a GenAI on a copy of an image I own the rights to (perhaps because I created it), then you have to negotiate with me. If you don't, then you are violating my copyright.
- csallen 3y ago
  That's not how copyright works. Copyright law limits creating copies of a work, not interacting with copies of a work lol. Which means it doesn't apply to training. What you're describing is some totally new law that doesn't exist anywhere on earth, because it would make no sense. Imagine if an aspiring artist who's training by studying a copy of another artist's drawing, or by listening to a copy of another artist's music, gets charged with violating that artist's copyright because they trained on a copy without permission. Again, think of the implications if the laws you're dreaming up actually applied to people today.
  - xeckr 3y ago
    >Copyright law limits creating copies of a work When you are downloading someone's copyrighted music to train your GenAI with, the act of downloading it creates a copy of the work that now exists on your computer. The essence of copyright law is to give the owner the right to decide how copies of their work are used, which you have violated if you did the above without their consent. Incidentally, this is why pirating music is a copyright violation. Your argument is based on falsely equating the process of a human getting inspired by prior art to training GenAI on the same. If a human goes to an art gallery and gets inspired by some copyrighted work, he did not have to create a copy of that work for the inspiration to take place. On the other hand, with GenAI training, the act of creating a copy is unavoidable (e.g by taking a picture of a painting, which is uploaded to your computer, which is piped into a training algorithm). The human's mental representation of the painting does not count as a copy, but painting_photo.png does and the owner's rights fully extend to it.
    - 3y ago