4 ms·

Tbh AI is a derivative thing, a human can read something and be inspired in exactly the same way, I don't see how copyright is enforceable.

lionkor 3y ago
The difference is that it's not a human, it's a machine designed to do that. There was a choice, that's the difference.
- everforward 3y ago
  I don’t think this is a great line of argument. It hinges on choice, which rapidly degrades into an argument about free will and the nature of whether anyone truly makes a choice or if our apparent “choices” are just a rationalization of deterministic response to external stimuli. I don’t think there’s a subjectively true answer to that question, so we just end up bickering over free will instead of AI. If you just want to declare humans to be special, I would just go straight to that. Humans are already legally special in all kinds of ways.
  - graypegg 3y ago
    I think making humans legally special is a good argument though. The whole point of copyright, is to allow artists to be able to generate a little income with exclusive rights to the works they produce. It's not just there because it's some inherent property of artwork: us humans decided that courts should punish people that threaten the livelihood of artists (in a very narrow scope of ways) via the judicial system. Of course the "spirit" of the law is meaningless, but I at least don't think understanding copyright law as a purely legal tool, divorced from the human element, is participating in the same conversation artists are having. Should people that just make art, eat? Early human history the answer was no. Then we advanced to a point where people can specialize in skills, and art made life worth living, so the answer was yes. Now where are we?
    - visarga 3y ago
      Now that generative AI is here, there will be artists who will try to differentiate themselves from AI, and artists that will embrace it to explore new possibilities. It's not a matter of protecting artists, but of choosing what artists to protect, the first or second group? Should we ban photography as well, how about synthesizers, should home owners band new construction in their neighborhood to protect their investments? In my opinion any attempt at restricting AI training is also restricting people who would use it to create new things. And it will backfire spectacularly, by scanning for derivative works in AI we automatically need to do the same for every work claimed to be created by a human, because we don't know who's using AI secretly. And it will create a chilling effect, incidental similarity would be too high a risk to take. Even old works will be revealed, their secret influences laid bare for everyone to see. Excessive scrutiny could deter artists from experimenting with new forms of expression, possibly leading to a homogenized art world where innovation is curtailed.
      - graypegg 3y ago
        I can get that. There's never a path forward that doesn't leave something on the table. I of course want artistic freedom + technology to advance alongside each other. But we're also talking about MAKING generative AI models. Not USING generative AI models. Making a model is so far outside of the scope of a single artist it's almost comical. We're talking about a task that, given no bounds, would include the subtask "ingest all human creative output". That's hard to do so therefore it's restricted to the realm of well funded companies. But even as well off and talented as these companies are, they did very little of the actual work. The total scale of effort that goes into these big lists of coefficients, is beyond human comprehension at this point. We've literally NEVER had to contend with tasks of this magnitude before. Many thousands of centuries of human life hours distilled. Copyright as it's legally inscribed precisely, is ill-prepared to achieve it's end goals in this situation. But considering: 1) that's kind of cool we can do this 2) it makes interesting things that could better people's lives 3) we still think that humans should be able to make art (ai or not) and not die of starvation ideally ... we need to figure out what to do. Maybe it's not copyright! That was created to solve a specific problem. Now we have new problems. I just think people latch too hard onto the legalese as if it's some magic property of the universe, and NOT a set of systems humans made, for very human goals. I don't want a system where we just say "well look at copyright, it says this is fine, so we will just use everything for free". It's missing the point. I agree with you that it's asking the hard question of "which artists do we protect". That, I'm not feeling like I have a good answer for right now. I definitely heavily lean towards the talented artists who've honed their craft. That's just more interesting. But I wish more people we're thinking about it, in those terms.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
  Just like a camera. Which is why the copyright for photographs gets assigned to the photographer, it doesn't just disappear into the ether. In this case the copyright for a computer-generated image would tend to belong to whoever typed in the prompt.
jsemrau 3y ago
One could argue that all creativity is derivative as it is based on the art that came before it.
- callamdelaney 3y ago
  That's my point, but the copyright belongs to the guy who derived it, not the original creator, why turn that upside down for generative AI?
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  All Creative Work is Derivative: https://youtu.be/jcvd5JZkUXY https://youtu.be/jcvd5JZkUXY
phone8675309 3y ago
At least Adobe is asking for consent instead of scraping a bunch of questionably copyrighted things without the consent of their creators. If you did that to Disney then you'd be in jail, but since it's the little guys getting fucked I guess it doesn't matter.
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  Isn't Disney's stuff already in the training set? Nobody's in jail for doing it. Also, as other people have pointed out, this just restricts training to well funded companies. Everybody forgets about the little guys on Huggingface.
gentleman11 3y ago
A machine owned by a corporation is not a person. They don’t get the same rights as people

lionkor 3y ago

The difference is that it's not a human, it's a machine designed to do that. There was a choice, that's the difference.

everforward 3y ago
I don’t think this is a great line of argument. It hinges on choice, which rapidly degrades into an argument about free will and the nature of whether anyone truly makes a choice or if our apparent “choices” are just a rationalization of deterministic response to external stimuli. I don’t think there’s a subjectively true answer to that question, so we just end up bickering over free will instead of AI. If you just want to declare humans to be special, I would just go straight to that. Humans are already legally special in all kinds of ways.
- graypegg 3y ago
  I think making humans legally special is a good argument though. The whole point of copyright, is to allow artists to be able to generate a little income with exclusive rights to the works they produce. It's not just there because it's some inherent property of artwork: us humans decided that courts should punish people that threaten the livelihood of artists (in a very narrow scope of ways) via the judicial system. Of course the "spirit" of the law is meaningless, but I at least don't think understanding copyright law as a purely legal tool, divorced from the human element, is participating in the same conversation artists are having. Should people that just make art, eat? Early human history the answer was no. Then we advanced to a point where people can specialize in skills, and art made life worth living, so the answer was yes. Now where are we?
  - visarga 3y ago
    Now that generative AI is here, there will be artists who will try to differentiate themselves from AI, and artists that will embrace it to explore new possibilities. It's not a matter of protecting artists, but of choosing what artists to protect, the first or second group? Should we ban photography as well, how about synthesizers, should home owners band new construction in their neighborhood to protect their investments? In my opinion any attempt at restricting AI training is also restricting people who would use it to create new things. And it will backfire spectacularly, by scanning for derivative works in AI we automatically need to do the same for every work claimed to be created by a human, because we don't know who's using AI secretly. And it will create a chilling effect, incidental similarity would be too high a risk to take. Even old works will be revealed, their secret influences laid bare for everyone to see. Excessive scrutiny could deter artists from experimenting with new forms of expression, possibly leading to a homogenized art world where innovation is curtailed.
    - graypegg 3y ago
      I can get that. There's never a path forward that doesn't leave something on the table. I of course want artistic freedom + technology to advance alongside each other. But we're also talking about MAKING generative AI models. Not USING generative AI models. Making a model is so far outside of the scope of a single artist it's almost comical. We're talking about a task that, given no bounds, would include the subtask "ingest all human creative output". That's hard to do so therefore it's restricted to the realm of well funded companies. But even as well off and talented as these companies are, they did very little of the actual work. The total scale of effort that goes into these big lists of coefficients, is beyond human comprehension at this point. We've literally NEVER had to contend with tasks of this magnitude before. Many thousands of centuries of human life hours distilled. Copyright as it's legally inscribed precisely, is ill-prepared to achieve it's end goals in this situation. But considering: 1) that's kind of cool we can do this 2) it makes interesting things that could better people's lives 3) we still think that humans should be able to make art (ai or not) and not die of starvation ideally ... we need to figure out what to do. Maybe it's not copyright! That was created to solve a specific problem. Now we have new problems. I just think people latch too hard onto the legalese as if it's some magic property of the universe, and NOT a set of systems humans made, for very human goals. I don't want a system where we just say "well look at copyright, it says this is fine, so we will just use everything for free". It's missing the point. I agree with you that it's asking the hard question of "which artists do we protect". That, I'm not feeling like I have a good answer for right now. I definitely heavily lean towards the talented artists who've honed their craft. That's just more interesting. But I wish more people we're thinking about it, in those terms.
DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
Just like a camera. Which is why the copyright for photographs gets assigned to the photographer, it doesn't just disappear into the ether. In this case the copyright for a computer-generated image would tend to belong to whoever typed in the prompt.

jsemrau 3y ago

One could argue that all creativity is derivative as it is based on the art that came before it.

callamdelaney 3y ago
That's my point, but the copyright belongs to the guy who derived it, not the original creator, why turn that upside down for generative AI?
CaptainFever 3y ago
All Creative Work is Derivative: https://youtu.be/jcvd5JZkUXY https://youtu.be/jcvd5JZkUXY

phone8675309 3y ago

At least Adobe is asking for consent instead of scraping a bunch of questionably copyrighted things without the consent of their creators. If you did that to Disney then you'd be in jail, but since it's the little guys getting fucked I guess it doesn't matter.

CaptainFever 3y ago
Isn't Disney's stuff already in the training set? Nobody's in jail for doing it. Also, as other people have pointed out, this just restricts training to well funded companies. Everybody forgets about the little guys on Huggingface.

gentleman11 3y ago

A machine owned by a corporation is not a person. They don’t get the same rights as people