4 ms·

When I was quite young and visiting my grandmother's home, I made a painting or drawing of Garfield. I was definitely not the artistic type and I had no trainin

When I was quite young and visiting my grandmother's home, I made a painting or drawing of Garfield. I was definitely not the artistic type and I had no training or guidance on drawing or coloring, but on that day I felt inspired, and pretty much reproduced that ugly fat cat without reference to an official image. This must be the common case for practically any kid creating art these days; they are going to imitate commercial and copyrighted content that they are most exposed to. It just seems a natural thing to do, the unnatural course being that they come up with something beyond the Threshold of Originality.

schkolne 3y ago
Yeah the infringement (in this old school model) would be if you then used that image as -- say -- the cover of a book or something. Then, it would be analyzed to see if it's "fair use" (satire, etc) or infringement. I guess the question with MJ is -- if I make such a Garfield with MJ, show it to my parents etc., put it on the fridge, is that a problem? prob not. i'm not a lawyer but -- that doesn't seem like I'm infringing. but... did MJ infringe by selling me a subscription that gave me that image for pay? (pay that otherwise Garfield's IP owners might've received)
- everforward 3y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the creation of the image is still infringement. No one is going to sue a child over a drawing on a fridge, though. The PR would be a nightmare, there's no earnings to seize, and it's not cannibalizing the market for the real thing in any way. Midjourney has issues on a couple of fronts One is the direct infringement, ie who is the creator? Is it the AI for creating it or the human who entered the prompt? Whoever created it is infringing, but again, probably not worth it to sue Joe Schmoe over it. The second is that Midjourney hosts all of the images they generate, some of which are infringing. I'm guessing they're trying to use Safe Harbor protections, but I'm a little dubious that they can actually call the output of their own AI "user content". Users are promoting the AI, but Midjourney is still the one generating the content.

schkolne 3y ago

Yeah the infringement (in this old school model) would be if you then used that image as -- say -- the cover of a book or something. Then, it would be analyzed to see if it's "fair use" (satire, etc) or infringement. I guess the question with MJ is -- if I make such a Garfield with MJ, show it to my parents etc., put it on the fridge, is that a problem? prob not. i'm not a lawyer but -- that doesn't seem like I'm infringing. but... did MJ infringe by selling me a subscription that gave me that image for pay? (pay that otherwise Garfield's IP owners might've received)

everforward 3y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the creation of the image is still infringement. No one is going to sue a child over a drawing on a fridge, though. The PR would be a nightmare, there's no earnings to seize, and it's not cannibalizing the market for the real thing in any way. Midjourney has issues on a couple of fronts One is the direct infringement, ie who is the creator? Is it the AI for creating it or the human who entered the prompt? Whoever created it is infringing, but again, probably not worth it to sue Joe Schmoe over it. The second is that Midjourney hosts all of the images they generate, some of which are infringing. I'm guessing they're trying to use Safe Harbor protections, but I'm a little dubious that they can actually call the output of their own AI "user content". Users are promoting the AI, but Midjourney is still the one generating the content.