5 ms·

I think Meta is already assuming that there will be no liability for training with copyrighted material. I find it very unlikely that image owners will win the

I think Meta is already assuming that there will be no liability for training with copyrighted material. I find it very unlikely that image owners will win the AI training battle.

lxgr 3y ago
I'd be extremely surprised if the "Mickey Mouse standing on the moon" example image was a legitimate way to "launder copyright". The interesting question is just who will be liable for the copyright violation: The party that hosts the AI service? The party that trained it on copyrighted images? The user entering a prompt? The (possibly different) user publishing the resulting image?
- darkwraithcov 3y ago
  MM will be public domain in Jan.
  - liotier 3y ago
    Some early versions will.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Unless Disney can engineer yet another oppressive extension to copyright durations.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      Not going to happen. When Disney did their copyright extension last time, they had bipartisan influence. Now Disney is in the middle of the culture war, and there is no Republican that will risk being primaried to support Disney. Given that you de facto need 60 votes in the Senate, it is not happening.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        I guess that's some sort of silver lining to the state of things today!
  - alphabettsy 3y ago
    Still protected by trademark depending on how it’s used.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      the author of a novel has a copyright to the contents, but can't trademark the contents of the novel. the same is true for artwork.
  - _w1tm 3y ago
    Only the first movie, the trademark is not expiring.
- ryoshu 3y ago
  I can draw as many Disney characters as I want to and Disney has no recourse as long as I'm not publishing them somewhere.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Posting them on IG, Facebook, etc. is publishing them.
    - airstrike 3y ago
      Yes, but importantly, generating them with the AI trained on Mickey is not.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        True. This is why I think it's pointless to try to use copyright law to defend yourself against AI companies. Right now, anyway, I don't see any law (or any other mechanism) that provides any protection. If I did, I wouldn't have had to remove all of my websites from the public web.
      - slaymaker1907 3y ago
        But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation? It's definitely a violation if the model is overfitted to the extent that you can, perhaps lossily, extract the original images.
        airstrike 3y ago
        > But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation? Is selling colored pencils that can draw images of Mickey a copyright violation? The way I see it, the tool can't ever be at fault for its use, unless its sole use (or something close enough to its sole use) is to infringe in copyright. Besides, the safeguarding of copyright isn't the single variable we as a society should be solving for. General global productivity is way more valuable than guaranteeing Disney's bottom line.
- glimshe 3y ago
  Here the problem isn't that the AI was trained on Mickey, but that it generated Mickey. The generated images can still violate copyright if too similar to copyrighted artwork - if published. I think AI companies are working hard on preventing generated images from being similar to training images unless the user very explicitly asks the result to look like some well known image/character.
  - alphabettsy 3y ago
    It can violate copyright, but as or equally important, companies have trademark protection on their characters and symbols.
    - JAlexoid 3y ago
      You can violate copyright by intentionally drawing Mickey Mouse, the medium of drawing is not relevant (AI can be considered a medium, as much as a digital camera is a medium)
- ska 3y ago
  > The interesting question is just who will be liable for the copyright violation I don't think this is going to be hard for courts. If you borrow your friends copy of a copyright text, got to kinkos and duplicate it, then distribute the results - you are the one violating copyright, not your friend or kinkos. The same will hold here I think, mutatis mutandis. This is all completely separable from the training issue.
- __loam 3y ago
  The person getting sued there would be the user of the model, not meta, as much as I wish that wasn't how it is. If you use photoshop to infringe on copyright, you're at fault, not Adobe.
codingdave 3y ago
It is in big bold letters right in instagram's terms of service: "We do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant us a license to use it." This isn't about copyright, it is about the fact that most people don't realize that by posting photos, they are licensing those photos.
- glimshe 3y ago
  A lot of the content posted there isn't owned by the people who post it, that's a big part of the problem.
__loam 3y ago
Ultra shitty corporate interests win again...
- gumby 3y ago
  I don’t agree in this case. Well, maybe I agree on the ultra shitty corporate part. But these are public photos, and if I’d looked at one it could have some influence, probably tiny, on my own drawings. Seems reasonable that the same would be true of my tools. If they were scanning my private messages, things would be different.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    So you think a model trained on only a single copyrighted image would be a violation but one trained on many copyrighted images isn't?
    - gumby 3y ago
      No. I mean two things: 1 - human experience ends up informing human ingenuity. A sketch of Wile E. Coyote comes from someone’s (Chuck Jones?) experience of dogs and seeing coyotes, plus innumerable experience with things that are funny, constraints from experience of certain features that do or don’t work well on animation cels etc. Perhaps a stray tweak in his ears come from a Rembrandt seen as a child or from a glance at a sketch in progress by the person sitting at the next easel in a drawing class long ago. In todays’s jargon our experiences are all parts of our training set (though today’s massive RNN models are infinitesimal by comparison). And I think of my tools the same: a ton of inputs stirred together is fine by me. 2 - a difference is that fb’s model is made from public posts: posts offered for anyone to see. In the human case even my private experiences are part of my “training set.”
      - __loam 3y ago
        I don't think any argument in favor of these models that includes reasoning about how humans learn is any good. That's a completely separate process that has very little to do with how these systems work. The issue here is Facebook is creating a commercial system based on data their users have uploaded to their system. If artists had known their work would be used this way, I think they'd rethink using this platform. Facebook's monopoly power over internet content also makes it impractical for you not to have a social media presence if you're trying to make a living as an artist. So you either submit to bullshit like this or damn yourself to obscurity. The fact that it's only training on public content is irrelevant.

I think Meta is already assuming that there will be no liability for training with copyrighted material. I find it very unlikely that image owners will win the AI training battle.

lxgr 3y ago

I'd be extremely surprised if the "Mickey Mouse standing on the moon" example image was a legitimate way to "launder copyright". The interesting question is just who will be liable for the copyright violation: The party that hosts the AI service? The party that trained it on copyrighted images? The user entering a prompt? The (possibly different) user publishing the resulting image?

darkwraithcov 3y ago
MM will be public domain in Jan.
- liotier 3y ago
  Some early versions will.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Unless Disney can engineer yet another oppressive extension to copyright durations.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    Not going to happen. When Disney did their copyright extension last time, they had bipartisan influence. Now Disney is in the middle of the culture war, and there is no Republican that will risk being primaried to support Disney. Given that you de facto need 60 votes in the Senate, it is not happening.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I guess that's some sort of silver lining to the state of things today!
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  Still protected by trademark depending on how it’s used.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    the author of a novel has a copyright to the contents, but can't trademark the contents of the novel. the same is true for artwork.
- _w1tm 3y ago
  Only the first movie, the trademark is not expiring.
ryoshu 3y ago
I can draw as many Disney characters as I want to and Disney has no recourse as long as I'm not publishing them somewhere.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Posting them on IG, Facebook, etc. is publishing them.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    Yes, but importantly, generating them with the AI trained on Mickey is not.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      True. This is why I think it's pointless to try to use copyright law to defend yourself against AI companies. Right now, anyway, I don't see any law (or any other mechanism) that provides any protection. If I did, I wouldn't have had to remove all of my websites from the public web.
    - slaymaker1907 3y ago
      But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation? It's definitely a violation if the model is overfitted to the extent that you can, perhaps lossily, extract the original images.
      - airstrike 3y ago
        > But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation? Is selling colored pencils that can draw images of Mickey a copyright violation? The way I see it, the tool can't ever be at fault for its use, unless its sole use (or something close enough to its sole use) is to infringe in copyright. Besides, the safeguarding of copyright isn't the single variable we as a society should be solving for. General global productivity is way more valuable than guaranteeing Disney's bottom line.
glimshe 3y ago
Here the problem isn't that the AI was trained on Mickey, but that it generated Mickey. The generated images can still violate copyright if too similar to copyrighted artwork - if published. I think AI companies are working hard on preventing generated images from being similar to training images unless the user very explicitly asks the result to look like some well known image/character.
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  It can violate copyright, but as or equally important, companies have trademark protection on their characters and symbols.
  - JAlexoid 3y ago
    You can violate copyright by intentionally drawing Mickey Mouse, the medium of drawing is not relevant (AI can be considered a medium, as much as a digital camera is a medium)
ska 3y ago
> The interesting question is just who will be liable for the copyright violation I don't think this is going to be hard for courts. If you borrow your friends copy of a copyright text, got to kinkos and duplicate it, then distribute the results - you are the one violating copyright, not your friend or kinkos. The same will hold here I think, mutatis mutandis. This is all completely separable from the training issue.
__loam 3y ago
The person getting sued there would be the user of the model, not meta, as much as I wish that wasn't how it is. If you use photoshop to infringe on copyright, you're at fault, not Adobe.

codingdave 3y ago

It is in big bold letters right in instagram's terms of service: "We do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant us a license to use it." This isn't about copyright, it is about the fact that most people don't realize that by posting photos, they are licensing those photos.

glimshe 3y ago
A lot of the content posted there isn't owned by the people who post it, that's a big part of the problem.

__loam 3y ago

Ultra shitty corporate interests win again...

gumby 3y ago
I don’t agree in this case. Well, maybe I agree on the ultra shitty corporate part. But these are public photos, and if I’d looked at one it could have some influence, probably tiny, on my own drawings. Seems reasonable that the same would be true of my tools. If they were scanning my private messages, things would be different.
- thfuran 3y ago
  So you think a model trained on only a single copyrighted image would be a violation but one trained on many copyrighted images isn't?
  - gumby 3y ago
    No. I mean two things: 1 - human experience ends up informing human ingenuity. A sketch of Wile E. Coyote comes from someone’s (Chuck Jones?) experience of dogs and seeing coyotes, plus innumerable experience with things that are funny, constraints from experience of certain features that do or don’t work well on animation cels etc. Perhaps a stray tweak in his ears come from a Rembrandt seen as a child or from a glance at a sketch in progress by the person sitting at the next easel in a drawing class long ago. In todays’s jargon our experiences are all parts of our training set (though today’s massive RNN models are infinitesimal by comparison). And I think of my tools the same: a ton of inputs stirred together is fine by me. 2 - a difference is that fb’s model is made from public posts: posts offered for anyone to see. In the human case even my private experiences are part of my “training set.”
    - __loam 3y ago
      I don't think any argument in favor of these models that includes reasoning about how humans learn is any good. That's a completely separate process that has very little to do with how these systems work. The issue here is Facebook is creating a commercial system based on data their users have uploaded to their system. If artists had known their work would be used this way, I think they'd rethink using this platform. Facebook's monopoly power over internet content also makes it impractical for you not to have a social media presence if you're trying to make a living as an artist. So you either submit to bullshit like this or damn yourself to obscurity. The fact that it's only training on public content is irrelevant.