5 ms·

I do not trust the corrupt courts of the United States to decide on anything. Or, more charitably even if the blatant exploitation of artists can't be proven to

by chx 2y ago

I do not trust the corrupt courts of the United States to decide on anything. Or, more charitably even if the blatant exploitation of artists can't be proven to breach any existing statute -- and the law is always behind -- even then I will shorten this obvious truism as "all AI art is stolen art".

FeepingCreature 2y ago
Why not go one step further? All art is stolen art.
- thfuran 2y ago
  Because that makes no damn sense.
  - FeepingCreature 2y ago
    There's literally a saying that explicitly spells out "great artists steal." Art is imitation plus adaptation, and everybody used to know this, artists included, until they all spontaneously forgot about a year ago, around the time when the artificial imitation machines started becoming commercial threats.
    - seanhunter 2y ago
      Yes. That saying probably[1] started life with the quote from TS Elliot, who said "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." The composer Igor Stravinsky "took" that and changed it to “A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” and after that quote was further changed in the LaTex documentation (believe it or not), Steve Jobs took it and changed it to be Pablo Picasso saying "Lesser artists copy, great artists steal". It doesn't seem there's any evidence of Picasso saying it although Steve Jobs said a lot that Picasso said it. [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/
      - richard_todd 2y ago
        It’s amusing that the sequence of events in that story makes a great example of prior art getting regurgitated and altered by humans. If he were an AI bot, we would say Steve Jobs “hallucinated” a fact about Picasso.
    - chx 2y ago
      Yeah. Still there is a human mind and effort between the original and the copy or we wouldn't care that much. That's the fundamental difference. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40475364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40475364
      - FeepingCreature 2y ago
        Sure so call it dehumanized art, but don't call it stolen art just because that sounds more severe. It's just the '24 version of "You wouldn't download a car."
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Max-q 2y ago
    If you go to art school, what you do is study and analyze what artists have done before you. We humans learn much in the same way as an AI. We study what has been made by others. I think accusing AI generated work to theft, is a based on the wrong assumptions. It's not just art. What do you do in computer science courses? Or math, language, physics, or any other subject? You study what has already been made. What you produce based on that knowledge is not considered theft. Have you ever seen an AI image that, if a human made it, would be considered a theft?
    - thfuran 2y ago
      >If you go to art school, what you do is study and analyze what artists have done before you. You don't have to go to art school to produce art. Even if you do go, there's nothing stopping you from producing art unlike what you studied. >We humans learn much in the same way as an AI. We study what has been made by others. I think accusing AI generated work to theft, is a based on the wrong assumptions. What assumptions? >It's not just art. What do you do in computer science courses? Or math, language, physics, or any other subject? You study what has already been made. Most of "what has already been made" is not "copyrighted work for which you have no license or exception" >What you produce based on that knowledge is not considered theft. It certainly can be. >Have you ever seen an AI image that, if a human made it, would be considered a theft? I've certainly seen AI produce things that would be considered copyright violation or misappropriation of likeness or similar offences if they were to be used commercially.
      - FeepingCreature 2y ago
        > You don't have to go to art school to produce art. Even if you do go, there's nothing stopping you from producing art unlike what you studied. Sure, but also you do, presumably, have to see to paint. The overwhelming majority of our training corpus is just visual observation.
        thfuran 2y ago
        What are you trying to suggest is the significance of that?
- dahart 2y ago
  Maybe because that’s misleading and not very useful? There are different kinds of stealing, and the platitude “all art is stolen” conflates them. The kind you’re referring to is stealing ideas, and is not illegal. The kind parent is referring to is what copyright is designed for, and it happens to be illegal. It’s helpful to distinguish between these two kinds of stealing, because one can be good for society and art and business, and the other not so much. The historical context of the idea that “all art is stolen” is intentional hyperbole, it’s meant to be provocative and a little but humorous, and not meant to be taken absolutely literally like you are implicitly suggesting. It does not mean literally that thieves walked out with the paintings, nor does it mean that art progressed because people were hand-copying the Mona Lisa. It was referring to varying degrees of using other people’s art as inspiration, borrowing subject matter or composition, mimicking techniques, etc. None of this is what AI does. AI is trained on fixations (to borrow the copyright term) and can only produce remixes of fixations. It can’t do the kind of stealing that T.S. Eliot was talking about. It doesn’t steal ideas, it only steals pixels.
  - FeepingCreature 2y ago
    I disagree that it's what copyright is designed for, and I disagree that it's illegal, and I also disagree that it's stealing - or in the sense of the phrase, I disagree that it's a different kind of stealing. I think the sense in which AI steals is exactly and only the sense in which artists steal. The historical context is taking others' art into your own cognition and building upon it, adding your own spin. That is exactly what AI does. The idea that AI can only produce remixes - putting aside the battles that were fought in the art world over the validity of remixes - is simply false. It was never true! It's an urban legend that's retold and retold because it'd be very convenient for certain arguments if it were true. But it just isn't. I seriously recommend that you spend a week's worth of free time just playing around with SDXL, in a UI that's capable of inpainting. IMO, the quickest way to realize this idea is false is to actually engage with the system.
    - dahart 2y ago
      What is the “it” you are announcing disagreement with? You deny that breaking copyright is illegal? Or what are you trying to say exactly? It’s not an opinion that photocopying art is illegal and borrowing ideas is not, that is codified into law. Declaring disagreement with that idea seems silly to me, so I assume you mean something else, but it’s not clear what you mean. This isn’t a convincing argument, it seems like hyperbole to me. The authors of copyright laws, and the Berne Convention, did happen to write down what they intended, and they do make an actual distinction between stealing fixations and stealing ideas, and they clarified that stealing ideas is not covered by copyright laws. There are other IP laws that cover some forms of idea stealing. > The idea that AI can only produce remixes […] is simply false Why do you believe that? We know exactly how it’s built, we know what the algorithms do, and there’s nothing in there capable of original thought. It only interpolates, it does not extrapolate. AI is trained on examples, it builds a Markov model that reproduces what it learned, statistically, and locally reproduces what it was shown. We can prove it without engaging with the system, because we (humans) built the system. It’s deterministic and mechanical and repeatable. What exactly do you claim it’s doing beyond this? Be specific.

by chx 2y ago

FeepingCreature 2y ago

Why not go one step further? All art is stolen art.

thfuran 2y ago
Because that makes no damn sense.
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  There's literally a saying that explicitly spells out "great artists steal." Art is imitation plus adaptation, and everybody used to know this, artists included, until they all spontaneously forgot about a year ago, around the time when the artificial imitation machines started becoming commercial threats.
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Yes. That saying probably[1] started life with the quote from TS Elliot, who said "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." The composer Igor Stravinsky "took" that and changed it to “A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” and after that quote was further changed in the LaTex documentation (believe it or not), Steve Jobs took it and changed it to be Pablo Picasso saying "Lesser artists copy, great artists steal". It doesn't seem there's any evidence of Picasso saying it although Steve Jobs said a lot that Picasso said it. [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/
    - richard_todd 2y ago
      It’s amusing that the sequence of events in that story makes a great example of prior art getting regurgitated and altered by humans. If he were an AI bot, we would say Steve Jobs “hallucinated” a fact about Picasso.
  - chx 2y ago
    Yeah. Still there is a human mind and effort between the original and the copy or we wouldn't care that much. That's the fundamental difference. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40475364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40475364
    - FeepingCreature 2y ago
      Sure so call it dehumanized art, but don't call it stolen art just because that sounds more severe. It's just the '24 version of "You wouldn't download a car."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Max-q 2y ago
  If you go to art school, what you do is study and analyze what artists have done before you. We humans learn much in the same way as an AI. We study what has been made by others. I think accusing AI generated work to theft, is a based on the wrong assumptions. It's not just art. What do you do in computer science courses? Or math, language, physics, or any other subject? You study what has already been made. What you produce based on that knowledge is not considered theft. Have you ever seen an AI image that, if a human made it, would be considered a theft?
  - thfuran 2y ago
    >If you go to art school, what you do is study and analyze what artists have done before you. You don't have to go to art school to produce art. Even if you do go, there's nothing stopping you from producing art unlike what you studied. >We humans learn much in the same way as an AI. We study what has been made by others. I think accusing AI generated work to theft, is a based on the wrong assumptions. What assumptions? >It's not just art. What do you do in computer science courses? Or math, language, physics, or any other subject? You study what has already been made. Most of "what has already been made" is not "copyrighted work for which you have no license or exception" >What you produce based on that knowledge is not considered theft. It certainly can be. >Have you ever seen an AI image that, if a human made it, would be considered a theft? I've certainly seen AI produce things that would be considered copyright violation or misappropriation of likeness or similar offences if they were to be used commercially.
    - FeepingCreature 2y ago
      > You don't have to go to art school to produce art. Even if you do go, there's nothing stopping you from producing art unlike what you studied. Sure, but also you do, presumably, have to see to paint. The overwhelming majority of our training corpus is just visual observation.
      - thfuran 2y ago
        What are you trying to suggest is the significance of that?
dahart 2y ago
Maybe because that’s misleading and not very useful? There are different kinds of stealing, and the platitude “all art is stolen” conflates them. The kind you’re referring to is stealing ideas, and is not illegal. The kind parent is referring to is what copyright is designed for, and it happens to be illegal. It’s helpful to distinguish between these two kinds of stealing, because one can be good for society and art and business, and the other not so much. The historical context of the idea that “all art is stolen” is intentional hyperbole, it’s meant to be provocative and a little but humorous, and not meant to be taken absolutely literally like you are implicitly suggesting. It does not mean literally that thieves walked out with the paintings, nor does it mean that art progressed because people were hand-copying the Mona Lisa. It was referring to varying degrees of using other people’s art as inspiration, borrowing subject matter or composition, mimicking techniques, etc. None of this is what AI does. AI is trained on fixations (to borrow the copyright term) and can only produce remixes of fixations. It can’t do the kind of stealing that T.S. Eliot was talking about. It doesn’t steal ideas, it only steals pixels.
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  I disagree that it's what copyright is designed for, and I disagree that it's illegal, and I also disagree that it's stealing - or in the sense of the phrase, I disagree that it's a different kind of stealing. I think the sense in which AI steals is exactly and only the sense in which artists steal. The historical context is taking others' art into your own cognition and building upon it, adding your own spin. That is exactly what AI does. The idea that AI can only produce remixes - putting aside the battles that were fought in the art world over the validity of remixes - is simply false. It was never true! It's an urban legend that's retold and retold because it'd be very convenient for certain arguments if it were true. But it just isn't. I seriously recommend that you spend a week's worth of free time just playing around with SDXL, in a UI that's capable of inpainting. IMO, the quickest way to realize this idea is false is to actually engage with the system.
  - dahart 2y ago
    What is the “it” you are announcing disagreement with? You deny that breaking copyright is illegal? Or what are you trying to say exactly? It’s not an opinion that photocopying art is illegal and borrowing ideas is not, that is codified into law. Declaring disagreement with that idea seems silly to me, so I assume you mean something else, but it’s not clear what you mean. This isn’t a convincing argument, it seems like hyperbole to me. The authors of copyright laws, and the Berne Convention, did happen to write down what they intended, and they do make an actual distinction between stealing fixations and stealing ideas, and they clarified that stealing ideas is not covered by copyright laws. There are other IP laws that cover some forms of idea stealing. > The idea that AI can only produce remixes […] is simply false Why do you believe that? We know exactly how it’s built, we know what the algorithms do, and there’s nothing in there capable of original thought. It only interpolates, it does not extrapolate. AI is trained on examples, it builds a Markov model that reproduces what it learned, statistically, and locally reproduces what it was shown. We can prove it without engaging with the system, because we (humans) built the system. It’s deterministic and mechanical and repeatable. What exactly do you claim it’s doing beyond this? Be specific.