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Headline is quite a bit more definitive than the actual ruling: > The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into pr

Headline is quite a bit more definitive than the actual ruling: > The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into problems as two of them — McKernan and Ortiz — did not register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office. Two of them got bounced, Anderson remains. > Judge Orrick writes that it is “unclear” as to whether Stable Diffusion holds “compressed copies” of the images and points to the defense’s argument that the training dataset, which contains five billion images, can “not possibly be compressed into an active program.” Once again, regulation that's needed is complicated by the fact that people in power do not understand how this shit works. However: > The judge has offered the plaintiffs an opportunity to amend and clarify their theory as to how Stable Diffusion operates its training data. And: > However, the judge allowed Andersen’s complaint that her 16 copyrighted works were used without her authorization to move forward. So the case is still developing. However, this is frustrating: > The problem for the artists is that the training data for these programs is a black box. Outside of LAION, very little is known about what exactly went into training AI image generators but it is widely assumed that the companies did an almighty scrape of images on the internet which included taking copyrighted and copyrightable pictures. I'm not sure if the publication stated "widely assumed" here because of legal reasons or because the author doesn't understand this either, but the entire crux of Anderson's case here is that if you include the proper prompts, you get comics out of these generators that strongly resemble hers, in both style and content, which are copywritten. That an generator can do that basically requires that a good amount, and I mean a LOT of her comics were pushed into the training data, and not only that, but were tagged explicitly as her work. Given how much of LAION is scraped from social media, this is not surprising. In order for the generator to know what Sarah Anderson's style looks like, her comics must be in the data set. Period, paragraph.

spywaregorilla 3y ago
It does not contain compressed "copies" of the image. It contains a synthesis of the image.
- tiledjinn 3y ago
  reconcile your view with the case law on john carmack non-literally copying code
  - spywaregorilla 3y ago
    This case involved a guy under NDA working with a competitor to build similar product and included testimony from oculus that they used ZeniMax's code, literally, including copy pasted segments. My read on the case is that it happened, John made a big public outrage post, and then gradually after news interest died down, more facts were revealed that made it much more obvious that oculus was in the wrong but nobody cared anymore. It's also not relevant to making an ai model. That is at best relevant to producing a similar output using an ai model
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      Nothing is analogous to making an ML model because making an ML model and training it are fundamentally different processes than both copying something (which is what copyright is built on which is why it probably isn't going to work to handle these issues) and from a person learning, because the most brilliant person on the planet cannot in timely matter digest and learn from over five thousand images and then reliably reproduce works based upon them. This an entirely new schema and the endless slap fights between people trying to say "well the computer is just learning like a person does" is just, bafflingly, wildly wrong headed. No it's not. A person learns so they can accomplish a goal, and an ML algorithm by it's nature wants nothing, it is incapable of want, versus the people who are saying "well ML lets people copy other people" which is also wrong headed, because it isn't copies, it's remixes and re-imaginings of similar material are just not productive. On the one side people trivialize the act of learning how to art being just looking at shit and reproducing it, which is just wrong, completely wrong, and on the other side people think it lets the ML model copy artists, which it dooooooes, kind of? But that test also fails because they aren't strict copies and them being copies isn't the goddamn problem. The problem is the style, the vibe, the unique look of a given creative is trivialized into something you can get from stable diffusion after a few tries with the right prompt. This isn't a problem because Sarah Anderson lost a sale or whatever the fuck. It's a problem because it completely undermines the notion of the output of paid creatives having value, which is already a shaky proposition for most people and why tons and tons of prominent creatives cannot earn a living via their creations. This is going to make that situation even worse and no matter how many times this is explained to people, they just run back to this "well I wasn't going to buy things from them anyway" and the entire thing makes me want to fucking scream. All that to say: AI is not AI, it's ML. ML is not learning like a person does, it's fundamentally different, stop equivocating. If you're so determined to cheer on as silicon valley knocks already struggling creative professions down a hill with systems that COULD NOT POSSIBLY EXIST without their pre-existing output to exploit, without permission, fundamentally unethically, if you just don't give a shit about that and are going to gleefully cheer that process on, then all I really ask is you be honest about that. Just say "I know this is fundamentally corrosive, unethical, and undermines an entire segment of the economy, but now I can get as many over-tuned generic shitty pieces of art as I want, and that's just more important to me." Just say it, and stand by it.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
> in both style and content, which are copywritten The "style" certainly isn't copywritten because you can't copyright a style. Someone creating doodles in her style is absolutely allowed.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  SomeONE, not someTHING, and "creating" isn't the issue, "monetizing" is.
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    Doesn’t matter. She still can’t copyright a doodle style. She doesn’t own black and white scribbles and striped clothes. Especially when really she’s just deriving from Tim Burton and other similar styles.

spywaregorilla 3y ago

It does not contain compressed "copies" of the image. It contains a synthesis of the image.

tiledjinn 3y ago
reconcile your view with the case law on john carmack non-literally copying code
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  This case involved a guy under NDA working with a competitor to build similar product and included testimony from oculus that they used ZeniMax's code, literally, including copy pasted segments. My read on the case is that it happened, John made a big public outrage post, and then gradually after news interest died down, more facts were revealed that made it much more obvious that oculus was in the wrong but nobody cared anymore. It's also not relevant to making an ai model. That is at best relevant to producing a similar output using an ai model
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    Nothing is analogous to making an ML model because making an ML model and training it are fundamentally different processes than both copying something (which is what copyright is built on which is why it probably isn't going to work to handle these issues) and from a person learning, because the most brilliant person on the planet cannot in timely matter digest and learn from over five thousand images and then reliably reproduce works based upon them. This an entirely new schema and the endless slap fights between people trying to say "well the computer is just learning like a person does" is just, bafflingly, wildly wrong headed. No it's not. A person learns so they can accomplish a goal, and an ML algorithm by it's nature wants nothing, it is incapable of want, versus the people who are saying "well ML lets people copy other people" which is also wrong headed, because it isn't copies, it's remixes and re-imaginings of similar material are just not productive. On the one side people trivialize the act of learning how to art being just looking at shit and reproducing it, which is just wrong, completely wrong, and on the other side people think it lets the ML model copy artists, which it dooooooes, kind of? But that test also fails because they aren't strict copies and them being copies isn't the goddamn problem. The problem is the style, the vibe, the unique look of a given creative is trivialized into something you can get from stable diffusion after a few tries with the right prompt. This isn't a problem because Sarah Anderson lost a sale or whatever the fuck. It's a problem because it completely undermines the notion of the output of paid creatives having value, which is already a shaky proposition for most people and why tons and tons of prominent creatives cannot earn a living via their creations. This is going to make that situation even worse and no matter how many times this is explained to people, they just run back to this "well I wasn't going to buy things from them anyway" and the entire thing makes me want to fucking scream. All that to say: AI is not AI, it's ML. ML is not learning like a person does, it's fundamentally different, stop equivocating. If you're so determined to cheer on as silicon valley knocks already struggling creative professions down a hill with systems that COULD NOT POSSIBLY EXIST without their pre-existing output to exploit, without permission, fundamentally unethically, if you just don't give a shit about that and are going to gleefully cheer that process on, then all I really ask is you be honest about that. Just say "I know this is fundamentally corrosive, unethical, and undermines an entire segment of the economy, but now I can get as many over-tuned generic shitty pieces of art as I want, and that's just more important to me." Just say it, and stand by it.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

> in both style and content, which are copywritten The "style" certainly isn't copywritten because you can't copyright a style. Someone creating doodles in her style is absolutely allowed.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
SomeONE, not someTHING, and "creating" isn't the issue, "monetizing" is.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Doesn’t matter. She still can’t copyright a doodle style. She doesn’t own black and white scribbles and striped clothes. Especially when really she’s just deriving from Tim Burton and other similar styles.