6 ms·

Midjourney developers caught discussing laundering, creating database of Artists

65 points by wahnfrieden 3y ago

Khelavaster 3y ago
Creating a database of artists by city, to localize styles off of. Seems totally fine honestly..
- justinl33 3y ago
  I agree with that aspect of it, the democratization of individual artist's styles is okay and probably good for art. I think it's more the stuff said like: > all you have to do is just use those scraped datasets and then conveniently forget what you used to train the model. Boom legal problems solved forever showing that they plan to do this without any intention of attributing or fairly reimbursing the artists who's 'styles' (IP) they are localizing (and profiting off)
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    > the democratization of individual artist's styles is okay and probably good for art. Is it? "The democratization of individual artist's styles" sure sounds like "automated ripping off" to me.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      "Democratization of individual artist's" without attribution or compensation or consent is a euphemism for copyright laundering
    - justinl33 3y ago
      It’s good for art, conditional on the fact that artists get paid. Obviously, more recognition is always better as long as it is compensated appropriately. Maybe democratisation was the wrong word; makes it seem like it should be ‘free’
      - pavel_lishin 3y ago
        Yeah, it sure is free, in the sense that shoplifting is also free.
    - __loam 3y ago
      Imagine thinking we need to democratize a skill that takes a pencil and some paper to start learning.
      - dorkwood 3y ago
        Many people in the world don't have access to a pencil and paper, and may not possess the will or motivation to spend many hours studying a difficult skill.
        __loam 3y ago
        But they have a computer with a high end gpu to run stable diffusion right? Laughable.
        throwaway5959 3y ago
        You can run stable diffusion on a $600 M2 Mac Mini.
        sussmannbaka 3y ago
        I knew the Apple Pencil was expensive, but every M2 user should be able to afford paper and pencil.
        __loam 3y ago
        A ream of printer paper and a pencil is less than $10.
        jrflowers 3y ago
        > may not possess the will or motivation to spend many hours studying a difficult skill. The cruel tyranny of “not doing a thing because I don’t want to do it” rears its ugly head once again. Why isn’t everyone more concerned about all of the things I could do but don’t want to?? It is the ultimate disadvantage!
artninja1988 3y ago
Art styles aren't copyrighted. Who cares?
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  For instance, Nintendo has entries in the artist DB - those affected by Japanese law may care: > Japan’s new guidelines also sketch out pathways to protect artists’ work, but the legalities can quickly get dense. An aggrieved artist will have to prove that a commercially sold, AI-generated piece of art has “similarity” with their own work. > “If a company isn’t careful, artists can sue or demand compensation if their work is used to create parts of commercial products.” They can show the work’s “reliance on an existing image,” according to Taichi Kakinuma, an AI-focused partner at the law firm Storia. The fastest way to prove this is with evidence that the work was used as training data. But since training data sets are not publicly disclosed, they may have no knowledge of its use, let alone be able to secure evidence
  - artninja1988 3y ago
    Sounds like propoyed laws crafted by those in power clinging desperately to their control in fear of becoming opsolete. At the end of the day, there is no theft, no matter the pearl clutching moral outrage by those who want to keep some false artificial scarcity for their benefit.
    - iterateoften 3y ago
      Governments around the world have enforced artificial scarcity for centuries. Continuing to do so would be nothing new. It takes resources and time to produce something unique that people want. For centuries governments have offered patents, licenses and protections for individuals so that people would continue to innovate, create something new and move the world forward. Will people continue to do so knowing that at a moments notice someone will rip you off? Time will tell but for me personally I stopped publishing my side projects because why should I work hard for hundreds of hours just so Microsoft and AI companies can make more money using my work without giving me an ounce of credit? Copyright came into being because of the printing press making things to easy to replicate. If the current laws don’t protect works sufficiently history says more laws will be written that do rather than things will be a free for all.
Imnimo 3y ago
I'm not clear on what the "laundering" is supposed to be here. I feel like that screenshot doesn't give me any context for what the user is saying. Given that Codex is a code model, it seems unlikely it's directly related to artists. The artist list looks to me like a list of names to try in a prompt - my guess is they were creating something like this: https://remidurant.com/artists/ https://remidurant.com/artists/, a reference for how different styles and names affect the model's outputs. I don't think an artist's name being on the list implies that Midjourney was specifically trained to mimic that artist. At least that's not my reading of the little snippets we have here. I feel like if you're going to be upset about Midjourney, you'd be upset about the training data. Not a compilation of names to try in prompts. That list of names doesn't change the model (assuming I've understood what it is, of course - and I could very well be wrong, given how little context we're given).
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  People's lack of understanding of statistics seems to grow everyday, even moreso no that they started calling statistics, "AI". The attacks will keep coming as people get dumber and dumber.
__loam 3y ago
The entitlement of AI developers towards the collective labor of millions of artists will never cease to disgust me.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Why put shit on the internet if you don’t want people to see and use it? The collective naivete of artists continues to astound me. If a human can look at your art and learn from it, replicate it, and sell it, then so can an AI. If the human doesn’t pay for it, then neither should the AI. Of course you are not allowed to use the exact same (or close enough) piece of art, but that’s no different for a human.
  - LightFog 3y ago
    There are many reasons artists make their work available for others - enriching hustlers who crap on the artist’s work while making a buck is probably low on the list though.
  - __loam 3y ago
    It's astounding to me that people still don't seem to understand the difference between chopping down a tree and clear cutting a forest. Your callous disrespect for the people who made these ai systems possible proves my point, so thanks I guess.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      Pray tell who loses out here? A cut forest is gone. A forest photographed now exists in two places where previously there was one. AI generated art doesn’t replace artist created art, it allows people that can’t use artist created art to enjoy a shadow of the real thing (the photograph of the forest). I would certainly enjoy it if my generated pictures were annotated with the artists that were used to inspire it because it would lead me to a better source for future work, but it’s not a requirement.
dorkwood 3y ago
The developer community has done such a poor job explaining to artists why using their work without compensation is necessary. It's unrealistic to expect that a startup could purchase hundreds and millions of artists' images for training. The only alternative would be to not use them at all, and then things like Midjourney and Dall-E wouldn't even exist!
- figassis 3y ago
  I assume in the perspective of artists that is not a bad thing. Why should MJ exist in its current form if it has to take earnings from artists? Maybe science and engineering could have found another way to do this, but this seems like the easy way out and now we’re trying to rationalize it.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  > The developer community has done such a poor job explaining to artists why using their work without compensation is necessary "We want to use your work so you can be replaced many in jobs, but it's expensive to actually license your work, so we aren't paying." There, that's easy!
- doxick 3y ago
  The taxi community has done such a poor job explaining to the car industry why using their cars without paying for them is necessary. It's unrealistic to expect that a starting driver could pay for a drivers license, a car and a taxi-license. The only alternative would be... ...loans or investment. It would be loans or investments. Like any other business. You can't just steal cars either just to kickstart your taxi business...
  - slavik81 3y ago
    This has a striking similarity to the classic, "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" PSA. https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU
- maronato 3y ago
  They don’t have to purchase millions of artists’ images for training. They just have to purchase as many as their budget allows. That’s what VC money is for. If their business model requires either infringing copyright or paying billions of dollars for the rights, then perhaps it is a bad business model. I’m glad midjourney and dall-e showed us what’s possible, but now we must take a step back, delete those models, and do it right. Single companies should not hold the power to steal whatever they want from humanity and then capitalize on it.
actuallyrizzn 3y ago
Completely unsurprising misinterpretation of the word "launder."

65 points by wahnfrieden 3y ago

Khelavaster 3y ago

Creating a database of artists by city, to localize styles off of. Seems totally fine honestly..

justinl33 3y ago
I agree with that aspect of it, the democratization of individual artist's styles is okay and probably good for art. I think it's more the stuff said like: > all you have to do is just use those scraped datasets and then conveniently forget what you used to train the model. Boom legal problems solved forever showing that they plan to do this without any intention of attributing or fairly reimbursing the artists who's 'styles' (IP) they are localizing (and profiting off)
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > the democratization of individual artist's styles is okay and probably good for art. Is it? "The democratization of individual artist's styles" sure sounds like "automated ripping off" to me.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    "Democratization of individual artist's" without attribution or compensation or consent is a euphemism for copyright laundering
  - justinl33 3y ago
    It’s good for art, conditional on the fact that artists get paid. Obviously, more recognition is always better as long as it is compensated appropriately. Maybe democratisation was the wrong word; makes it seem like it should be ‘free’
    - pavel_lishin 3y ago
      Yeah, it sure is free, in the sense that shoplifting is also free.
  - __loam 3y ago
    Imagine thinking we need to democratize a skill that takes a pencil and some paper to start learning.
    - dorkwood 3y ago
      Many people in the world don't have access to a pencil and paper, and may not possess the will or motivation to spend many hours studying a difficult skill.
      - __loam 3y ago
        But they have a computer with a high end gpu to run stable diffusion right? Laughable.
        throwaway5959 3y ago
        You can run stable diffusion on a $600 M2 Mac Mini.
        sussmannbaka 3y ago
        I knew the Apple Pencil was expensive, but every M2 user should be able to afford paper and pencil.
        __loam 3y ago
        A ream of printer paper and a pencil is less than $10.
      - jrflowers 3y ago
        > may not possess the will or motivation to spend many hours studying a difficult skill. The cruel tyranny of “not doing a thing because I don’t want to do it” rears its ugly head once again. Why isn’t everyone more concerned about all of the things I could do but don’t want to?? It is the ultimate disadvantage!

artninja1988 3y ago

Art styles aren't copyrighted. Who cares?

wahnfrieden 3y ago
For instance, Nintendo has entries in the artist DB - those affected by Japanese law may care: > Japan’s new guidelines also sketch out pathways to protect artists’ work, but the legalities can quickly get dense. An aggrieved artist will have to prove that a commercially sold, AI-generated piece of art has “similarity” with their own work. > “If a company isn’t careful, artists can sue or demand compensation if their work is used to create parts of commercial products.” They can show the work’s “reliance on an existing image,” according to Taichi Kakinuma, an AI-focused partner at the law firm Storia. The fastest way to prove this is with evidence that the work was used as training data. But since training data sets are not publicly disclosed, they may have no knowledge of its use, let alone be able to secure evidence
- artninja1988 3y ago
  Sounds like propoyed laws crafted by those in power clinging desperately to their control in fear of becoming opsolete. At the end of the day, there is no theft, no matter the pearl clutching moral outrage by those who want to keep some false artificial scarcity for their benefit.
  - iterateoften 3y ago
    Governments around the world have enforced artificial scarcity for centuries. Continuing to do so would be nothing new. It takes resources and time to produce something unique that people want. For centuries governments have offered patents, licenses and protections for individuals so that people would continue to innovate, create something new and move the world forward. Will people continue to do so knowing that at a moments notice someone will rip you off? Time will tell but for me personally I stopped publishing my side projects because why should I work hard for hundreds of hours just so Microsoft and AI companies can make more money using my work without giving me an ounce of credit? Copyright came into being because of the printing press making things to easy to replicate. If the current laws don’t protect works sufficiently history says more laws will be written that do rather than things will be a free for all.

Imnimo 3y ago

I'm not clear on what the "laundering" is supposed to be here. I feel like that screenshot doesn't give me any context for what the user is saying. Given that Codex is a code model, it seems unlikely it's directly related to artists. The artist list looks to me like a list of names to try in a prompt - my guess is they were creating something like this: https://remidurant.com/artists/ https://remidurant.com/artists/, a reference for how different styles and names affect the model's outputs. I don't think an artist's name being on the list implies that Midjourney was specifically trained to mimic that artist. At least that's not my reading of the little snippets we have here. I feel like if you're going to be upset about Midjourney, you'd be upset about the training data. Not a compilation of names to try in prompts. That list of names doesn't change the model (assuming I've understood what it is, of course - and I could very well be wrong, given how little context we're given).

kylebenzle 3y ago
People's lack of understanding of statistics seems to grow everyday, even moreso no that they started calling statistics, "AI". The attacks will keep coming as people get dumber and dumber.

__loam 3y ago

The entitlement of AI developers towards the collective labor of millions of artists will never cease to disgust me.

Aeolun 3y ago
Why put shit on the internet if you don’t want people to see and use it? The collective naivete of artists continues to astound me. If a human can look at your art and learn from it, replicate it, and sell it, then so can an AI. If the human doesn’t pay for it, then neither should the AI. Of course you are not allowed to use the exact same (or close enough) piece of art, but that’s no different for a human.
- LightFog 3y ago
  There are many reasons artists make their work available for others - enriching hustlers who crap on the artist’s work while making a buck is probably low on the list though.
- __loam 3y ago
  It's astounding to me that people still don't seem to understand the difference between chopping down a tree and clear cutting a forest. Your callous disrespect for the people who made these ai systems possible proves my point, so thanks I guess.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Pray tell who loses out here? A cut forest is gone. A forest photographed now exists in two places where previously there was one. AI generated art doesn’t replace artist created art, it allows people that can’t use artist created art to enjoy a shadow of the real thing (the photograph of the forest). I would certainly enjoy it if my generated pictures were annotated with the artists that were used to inspire it because it would lead me to a better source for future work, but it’s not a requirement.

dorkwood 3y ago

The developer community has done such a poor job explaining to artists why using their work without compensation is necessary. It's unrealistic to expect that a startup could purchase hundreds and millions of artists' images for training. The only alternative would be to not use them at all, and then things like Midjourney and Dall-E wouldn't even exist!

figassis 3y ago
I assume in the perspective of artists that is not a bad thing. Why should MJ exist in its current form if it has to take earnings from artists? Maybe science and engineering could have found another way to do this, but this seems like the easy way out and now we’re trying to rationalize it.
meepmorp 3y ago
> The developer community has done such a poor job explaining to artists why using their work without compensation is necessary "We want to use your work so you can be replaced many in jobs, but it's expensive to actually license your work, so we aren't paying." There, that's easy!
doxick 3y ago
The taxi community has done such a poor job explaining to the car industry why using their cars without paying for them is necessary. It's unrealistic to expect that a starting driver could pay for a drivers license, a car and a taxi-license. The only alternative would be... ...loans or investment. It would be loans or investments. Like any other business. You can't just steal cars either just to kickstart your taxi business...
- slavik81 3y ago
  This has a striking similarity to the classic, "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" PSA. https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU https://youtu.be/HmZm8vNHBSU
maronato 3y ago
They don’t have to purchase millions of artists’ images for training. They just have to purchase as many as their budget allows. That’s what VC money is for. If their business model requires either infringing copyright or paying billions of dollars for the rights, then perhaps it is a bad business model. I’m glad midjourney and dall-e showed us what’s possible, but now we must take a step back, delete those models, and do it right. Single companies should not hold the power to steal whatever they want from humanity and then capitalize on it.

actuallyrizzn 3y ago

Completely unsurprising misinterpretation of the word "launder."