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> If you don't want your image looked at, don't put it online. The only problem here is the lack of a reference. This is an incredibly toxic take. If I as an a

> If you don't want your image looked at, don't put it online. The only problem here is the lack of a reference. This is an incredibly toxic take. If I as an artist, want to share something I made with the world, but don't want others to take something I care about and claim it as something that they created, so they using their popularity can sell my work. My only option is to not share it with anyone? It's the artists fault that midjourney is duplicating their work! They should never have created anything if they didn't want some one else to do <bad thing>! I'm of the strong opinion that all information should be free (secrets excluded). I also agree with you that there's nothing wrong with using public information for training data, but the only problem isn't lack of attribution. And victim blaming isn't the answer to the question.

prepend 3y ago
> If I as an artist, want to share something I made with the world, but don't want others to take something I care about and claim it as something that they created, so they using their popularity can sell my work. My only option is to not share it with anyone? Don’t share it publicly with no viewing restrictions, yes. If you want to limit who can view it, then limit who can view it. It’s like driving around with a banner on your car and then complaining because a certain subset of the population looked at it. There are many ways to restrict access to content. The simplest is to create a login and TOS that restricts usage. Just do that and it won’t be used for any training. But putting it on a server with anonymous http access means that the whole world (including robots) can see it. It’s not victim blaming, it’s just reason. If you don’t want people to see something, don’t show it to them.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  The issue isn't models viewing it, it is reproducing and selling it, Imo. >Don’t share it publicly with no viewing restrictions, yes. They did share it with legal restrictions (copyright) and everyone is already bound by the TOS (law) so there is no need to sign. Viewing is fine, resale is not. Do you think there is something special about the internet that changes this? Dont let anyone read read copies of your book if you wont want them to sell copies of it? Dont let people listen to your music if you dont want them to be able to resell it?
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    The model is a tool, like photoshop. You as the author of the prompt produced the image by explicit intent. If you then take it and distribute it, you are violating the copyright with criminal intent that’s demonstrable by the prompt itself. According to some friends that are professors of law, that’s likely the most clear violation. The consumption of copyright material to produce a commercial product without license is likely a civil copyright violation, but it’s unclear that’s true. Browser caches for instance were litigated as copyright violations, and CDNs. Obviously they were not found to violate copyright because while they handle and copy and manipulate copyright material they do so incidentally, without intention, and it functions without the copyright material. A lot of the argument on the AI side, which is likely legitimate legally, is these images are incidentally ingested, the models function fine without the copyright material, and don’t produce the copyright material without explicit intent by the user. The case that are the strongest are where the training data is known to have pirated or large copyright libraries inside them and are used regardless. Finally by posting publicly samples of your work you implicitly grant limited fair use rights to your work. You do not retain full rights prohibiting reproduction of those samples. That’s why artists usually will not post full portfolios. Obviously there are limits but they’re much more egregious than what you see in models where the imagery is consumed into a lossy model that mathematically aggregates it with every other image it ingests.
    - enterprise_cog 3y ago
      How is ingesting an image, laundering it via a prompt, and then spitting it back out without attribution fair use?
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
        One major test used by the Supreme Court is if the work is an economic competitor to the original. Similarly, infringement depends on the use, not object. An image coming out of mid journey may or may not be used in an infringing way. I can download movie stills from Google or midjourney without breaking copyright. If I print and sell posters of them, that is different.
JCharante 3y ago
If you put your image on a web server that serves it to anybody then it's public information as far as my morals are concerned. I don't see what's wrong with training on it.
- chatmasta 3y ago
  Generally speaking, I agree. But it's often more nuanced than that. For example, what if I upload my photo to Facebook such that only my friends can see it, but then one of my friends posts it to a publicly accessible URL? The argument that "if it's accessible to me, then I have the moral right to read it" assumes that the person who made it accessible to you had the moral right to publish it. It also implies you can bypass moral responsibility by deputizing your moral transgressions to someone less scrupulous.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Is there anything besides 'training' you think would be wrong? What about resale?
hn_acker 3y ago
> If I as an artist, want to share something I made with the world, but don't want others to take something I care about and claim it as something that they created, so they using their popularity can sell my work. Nitpick: Claiming authorship over an output from an AI model is as infringing as falsely claiming authorship over a work produced by a human (or group of humans), but fraudulent claims of authorship have only minimal relation to the question of whether the model itself infringes on copyright.

prepend 3y ago

> If I as an artist, want to share something I made with the world, but don't want others to take something I care about and claim it as something that they created, so they using their popularity can sell my work. My only option is to not share it with anyone? Don’t share it publicly with no viewing restrictions, yes. If you want to limit who can view it, then limit who can view it. It’s like driving around with a banner on your car and then complaining because a certain subset of the population looked at it. There are many ways to restrict access to content. The simplest is to create a login and TOS that restricts usage. Just do that and it won’t be used for any training. But putting it on a server with anonymous http access means that the whole world (including robots) can see it. It’s not victim blaming, it’s just reason. If you don’t want people to see something, don’t show it to them.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
The issue isn't models viewing it, it is reproducing and selling it, Imo. >Don’t share it publicly with no viewing restrictions, yes. They did share it with legal restrictions (copyright) and everyone is already bound by the TOS (law) so there is no need to sign. Viewing is fine, resale is not. Do you think there is something special about the internet that changes this? Dont let anyone read read copies of your book if you wont want them to sell copies of it? Dont let people listen to your music if you dont want them to be able to resell it?
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  The model is a tool, like photoshop. You as the author of the prompt produced the image by explicit intent. If you then take it and distribute it, you are violating the copyright with criminal intent that’s demonstrable by the prompt itself. According to some friends that are professors of law, that’s likely the most clear violation. The consumption of copyright material to produce a commercial product without license is likely a civil copyright violation, but it’s unclear that’s true. Browser caches for instance were litigated as copyright violations, and CDNs. Obviously they were not found to violate copyright because while they handle and copy and manipulate copyright material they do so incidentally, without intention, and it functions without the copyright material. A lot of the argument on the AI side, which is likely legitimate legally, is these images are incidentally ingested, the models function fine without the copyright material, and don’t produce the copyright material without explicit intent by the user. The case that are the strongest are where the training data is known to have pirated or large copyright libraries inside them and are used regardless. Finally by posting publicly samples of your work you implicitly grant limited fair use rights to your work. You do not retain full rights prohibiting reproduction of those samples. That’s why artists usually will not post full portfolios. Obviously there are limits but they’re much more egregious than what you see in models where the imagery is consumed into a lossy model that mathematically aggregates it with every other image it ingests.
  - enterprise_cog 3y ago
    How is ingesting an image, laundering it via a prompt, and then spitting it back out without attribution fair use?
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      One major test used by the Supreme Court is if the work is an economic competitor to the original. Similarly, infringement depends on the use, not object. An image coming out of mid journey may or may not be used in an infringing way. I can download movie stills from Google or midjourney without breaking copyright. If I print and sell posters of them, that is different.

JCharante 3y ago

If you put your image on a web server that serves it to anybody then it's public information as far as my morals are concerned. I don't see what's wrong with training on it.

chatmasta 3y ago
Generally speaking, I agree. But it's often more nuanced than that. For example, what if I upload my photo to Facebook such that only my friends can see it, but then one of my friends posts it to a publicly accessible URL? The argument that "if it's accessible to me, then I have the moral right to read it" assumes that the person who made it accessible to you had the moral right to publish it. It also implies you can bypass moral responsibility by deputizing your moral transgressions to someone less scrupulous.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
Is there anything besides 'training' you think would be wrong? What about resale?

hn_acker 3y ago

> If I as an artist, want to share something I made with the world, but don't want others to take something I care about and claim it as something that they created, so they using their popularity can sell my work. Nitpick: Claiming authorship over an output from an AI model is as infringing as falsely claiming authorship over a work produced by a human (or group of humans), but fraudulent claims of authorship have only minimal relation to the question of whether the model itself infringes on copyright.