3 ms·

Penny Arcade[1] had a rant about this very subject this morning: > The big players in this space all happen believe things about other people's intellectual pr

Penny Arcade[1] had a rant about this very subject this morning: > The big players in this space all happen believe things about other people's intellectual property that are orthogonal to human flourishing. It appears to be endemic in their spaces. Other times, we don't have to work so hard. For example: Perplexity literally duplicates other people's work on its own site. Then, it will generate a podcast based on the uncredited work. They want the same thing as Google's Gemini, in that you'll come to it for a search experience that's owned end to end - powered by your own uncredited work. Gen AI models have also been used to appropriate an artist's distinctive art style[2] in a way that pushes up against the edge of copyright. You've all heard about OpenAI and Scarlett Johansson[3]. This kind of stuff makes the industry look shady. In theory existing copyright law should cover these new AI cases, but if you use something like Figma AI and it "rips off" (as John puts it) an existing app, you might not even realize that you're copying someone else's design because there's no provenance. That makes it harder to follow the law. [1]: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2024/07/01/jobophage https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2024/07/01/jobophage [2]: https://waxy.org/2022/11/invasive-diffusion-how-one-unwilling-illustrator-found-herself-turned-into-an-ai-model/ https://waxy.org/2022/11/invasive-diffusion-how-one-unwillin... [3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01578-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01578-4

gedy 2y ago
Not defending typing in an (living) artist's name in a gen AI tool, but the weak spot in your argument is your example of "appropriate an artist's distinct style" - her work looks very similar to and clearly inspired by others.
roenxi 2y ago
This is one of those instances where all the people complaining are entirely correct but my forecast is they're still going to lose the war because they are up against economics. They have the same problem that the anti-torrent crowd has - the technology exists and is cheap to use. There is no longer any economic value in having a distinct style, and there might not even be any way to protect it. Any teenager with no training or talent can copy a style with the tools that now exist. Hopefully most artists don't make money from their specific style anyway. I doubt xkcd.com is panicking because other people might start drawing stick figure comics. > In theory existing copyright law should cover these new AI cases, but if you use something like Figma AI and it "rips off" (as John puts it) an existing app, you might not even realize that you're copying someone else's design because there's no provenance. This specific case doesn't seem like a problem. All the OSS software I'm using seems to have copied design elements wholesale from existing software projects and corporations shamelessly copy off each other.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Correct. As much as Mr. Gruber may be irritated / frustrated that Figma AI's engine just apes Apple design patterns when asked to build a novel interface, how much legal protection do we really want to give button, switch, and gauge patterns? Think about how wildly different Photoshop and Gimp's UIs are. Do we want a world where every application has to be that different from its neighbors because the government has granted strong legal protections for interface design IP? Remember what Nintendo owning an exclusive patent on the crosspad did to every other game console's crosspad for several decades? To give an analogy: I think people generally consider the "APIs are copyrightable" decision to be a bit bullshit... Who wants stronger protections for human interface designs than we already have?
  - ch_sm 2y ago
    Yeah I agree that generic UI elements should not be protected by IP law. What‘s baffling to me is that the design that Figma AI produced is so clearly derivative in layout and graphical style choices. There absolutely is more than one good way to design a weather app. The thought that many companies might soon use Figma AI as their starting points for their designs is kind of depressing to me, seeing as there is already so little originality present in current UI/Visual design anyways. Things might get a lot more generic and uninspired quickly.
tivert 2y ago
>> The big players in this space all happen believe things about other people's intellectual property that are orthogonal to human flourishing. It appears to be endemic in their spaces. They believe things that are contrary to human flourishing on a more fundamental level than their attitudes towards other's intellectual property. They believe in technopoly [1], where all things are subservient to the technology and must change to serve it, no matter the consequences to people. You see this in their attitudes toward artists and their IP, and even in the kind of future employment they envision: where machines do the enjoyable creative work and humans do mind-numbing, inhuman monitoring and review tasks [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly [2] https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-23-maximal-plausibility-reverse-centaurs-0a3e71fd9c2b https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-23...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

gedy 2y ago

Not defending typing in an (living) artist's name in a gen AI tool, but the weak spot in your argument is your example of "appropriate an artist's distinct style" - her work looks very similar to and clearly inspired by others.

roenxi 2y ago

This is one of those instances where all the people complaining are entirely correct but my forecast is they're still going to lose the war because they are up against economics. They have the same problem that the anti-torrent crowd has - the technology exists and is cheap to use. There is no longer any economic value in having a distinct style, and there might not even be any way to protect it. Any teenager with no training or talent can copy a style with the tools that now exist. Hopefully most artists don't make money from their specific style anyway. I doubt xkcd.com is panicking because other people might start drawing stick figure comics. > In theory existing copyright law should cover these new AI cases, but if you use something like Figma AI and it "rips off" (as John puts it) an existing app, you might not even realize that you're copying someone else's design because there's no provenance. This specific case doesn't seem like a problem. All the OSS software I'm using seems to have copied design elements wholesale from existing software projects and corporations shamelessly copy off each other.

shadowgovt 2y ago
Correct. As much as Mr. Gruber may be irritated / frustrated that Figma AI's engine just apes Apple design patterns when asked to build a novel interface, how much legal protection do we really want to give button, switch, and gauge patterns? Think about how wildly different Photoshop and Gimp's UIs are. Do we want a world where every application has to be that different from its neighbors because the government has granted strong legal protections for interface design IP? Remember what Nintendo owning an exclusive patent on the crosspad did to every other game console's crosspad for several decades? To give an analogy: I think people generally consider the "APIs are copyrightable" decision to be a bit bullshit... Who wants stronger protections for human interface designs than we already have?
- ch_sm 2y ago
  Yeah I agree that generic UI elements should not be protected by IP law. What‘s baffling to me is that the design that Figma AI produced is so clearly derivative in layout and graphical style choices. There absolutely is more than one good way to design a weather app. The thought that many companies might soon use Figma AI as their starting points for their designs is kind of depressing to me, seeing as there is already so little originality present in current UI/Visual design anyways. Things might get a lot more generic and uninspired quickly.

tivert 2y ago

>> The big players in this space all happen believe things about other people's intellectual property that are orthogonal to human flourishing. It appears to be endemic in their spaces. They believe things that are contrary to human flourishing on a more fundamental level than their attitudes towards other's intellectual property. They believe in technopoly [1], where all things are subservient to the technology and must change to serve it, no matter the consequences to people. You see this in their attitudes toward artists and their IP, and even in the kind of future employment they envision: where machines do the enjoyable creative work and humans do mind-numbing, inhuman monitoring and review tasks [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly [2] https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-23-maximal-plausibility-reverse-centaurs-0a3e71fd9c2b https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-23...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]