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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
by 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 agoCorrect. 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 agoYeah 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.