7 ms·

Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. One thing I would say, it's interesting to consider what would make this not so obviously bad. Like, we could ask

Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. One thing I would say, it's interesting to consider what would make this not so obviously bad. Like, we could ask AI to assess the physical attributes of the characters it generated. Then ask it to permute some of those attributes. Generate some random tweaks: ok but brawy, short, and a different descent. Do similarly on some clothing colors. Change the game. Hit the "random character" button on the physical attributes a couple times. There was an equally shatteringly-awful less-IP-theft (and as someone who thinks IP is itself incredibly ripping off humanity & should be vastly scoped down, it's important to me to not rest my arguments on IP violations).... An equally shattering recent incident for me. Having trouble finding it, don't remember the right keywords, but an article about how AI has a "default guy" type that it uses everywhere, a super generic personage, that it would use repeatedly. It was so distasteful. The nature of 'AI as compression', as giving you the most median answer is horrific. Maybe maybe maybe we can escape some of this trap by iterating to different permutations, by injecting deliberate exploration of the state spaces. But I still fear AI, worry horribly when anyone relies on it for decision making, as it is anti-intelligent, uncreative in extreme, requiring human ingenuity to budge off its rock of oppressive hypernormality that it regurgitates.

shadowgovt 2y ago
> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. I mean... If I go to Google right now and do an image search for "archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip," the first picture is a not-even-changed image of Indiana Jones. Which I will then copy and paste into whatever project I'm working on without clicking through to the source page (usually because the source page is an ad-ridden mess). Perhaps the Internet itself is the hideous theft machine, and AI is just the most efficient permutation of user interface onto it. (Incidentally, if you do that search, you will also, hilariously, turn up images of an older gentleman dressed in a brown coat and hat who is clearly meant to be "The Indiana Jones you got on Wish" from a photo-licensing site. The entire exercise of trying to extract wealth via exclusive access to memetic constructs is a fraught one).
- rurp 2y ago
  The key difference is that the google example is clearly copying someone elses work and there are plenty of laws and norms that non-billionaires need to follow. If you made a business reselling the image you copied you would expect to get in trouble and have to stop. But AI companies are doing essentially the same thing in many cases and being rewarded for it. The hypocrisy is much of the problem. If we're going to have IP laws that severely punish people and smaller companies for reselling the creative works of others without any compensation or permission then those rules should apply to powerful well-connected companies as well.
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago
  Your position cannot distinguish stealing somebody's likeness and looking at them.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    I agree without argument. I have also thoroughly enjoyed the animatronic dead Presidents at Disney World.
littlecranky67 2y ago
But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones, he creates a perfect copy and I hang it on my fridge. Where did I (or the artist) violate any copyright (or other) laws? It is the artist that is replaced by the AI, not the copyrighted IP.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  Depends on if you paid him or not. If he sold it to you, then he is infringing on Disney’s IP and depriving them of that revenue.
  - eb0la 2y ago
    If you're paying for tokens used to generate that...
    - mcmcmc 2y ago
      Then the service that sold you tokens and delivered copyright infringing content is violating the law
- Velorivox 2y ago
  That does infringe copyright...you're just unlikely to get in trouble for it. You might get a cease and desist if the owner of the IP finds out and can spare a moment for you.
  - RajT88 2y ago
    Totally agree. LLM's are just automating that infringement process. If you make money off it, it's no longer fair use; it's infringement. Even if you don't make money off it, it's not automatically fair use. My own favorite crazy story about copyright violations: Metallica sued Green Jello for parodying Enter Sandman (including a lyric where it says "It's not Metallica"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Harley_House_(of_Love) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Harley_House_(of_Love... They lost that case. The kicker? Metallica were guest vocalists on that album.
mcmcmc 2y ago
So if it’s a theft machine, how is the answer to try teaching it to hide the fact that it’s stealing by changing its outputs? That’s like a student plagiarizing an essay and then swapping some words with a thesaurus pretending that changes anything. Wouldn’t the more appropriate solution in the case of theft be to remunerate the victims and prevent recidivism? Instead of making it “not so obviously bad” why not just… make it good? Require AI services to either prove that 100% of their training corpus is either copyright free or properly licensed, or require them to compensate copyright holders for any infringing outputs.
- chrisweekly 2y ago
  (below is my shallow res, maybe naive?) That might inject a ton of $ into "IP", doing further damage to the creative commons. How can we support remix culture for humans, while staving off ultimately-destructive AI slop? Maybe copyleft / creative-commons licenses w/ explicit anti-AI prohibitions? Tho that could have bad ramifications too. ALL of this makes me kind of uncomfortable and sad, I want more creativity and fewer lawyers.
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    > doing further damage to the creative commons Not sure I understand this part. Because creators would be getting paid for their works being used for someone else’s commercial gain?
    - chrisweekly 2y ago
      Because it reinforces the idea that creative works should usually involve lawyers.
      - mcmcmc 2y ago
        No it doesn’t. It reinforces that copyright is the law. If you don’t violate someone’s copyright, you don’t need a lawyer.
Pet_Ant 2y ago
> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. I hate how it is common to advance a position to just state a conclusion as if it were a fact. You keep repeating the same thing over and over until it seems like a concensus has been reached instead of an actual argument reasoned from first principle. This is no theft here. Any copyright would be flimsier than software patents. I love Studio Ghibli (including $500/seat festival tickets) but it's the heart and the detail that make them what they are. You cannot clone that. Just some surface similarity. If that's all you like about the movies... you really missed the point. Imagine if in early cinema someone had tried to claim mustachioed villian, ditsy blonde, or dumb jock? These are just tropes and styles. Quality work goes much much much deeper, and that cannot be synthesised. I can AI generate a million engagement rings, but I cannot pick the perfect one that fits you and your partners love story. PS- the best work they did was "When Marnie was There". Just fitted together perfectly.
- asadotzler 2y ago
  >it's the heart and the detail that make them what they are. You cannot clone that You absolutely can and these theft machines are proving that, literally cloning those details with very high precision and fidelity.
  - Pet_Ant 2y ago
    I didn't mean visual fidelity, I meant the way that plot and theme and art interleave. I first watched My Neighbour Totoro on VHS with no visual fidelity and it was still magic. You can easily steal the style of a political cartoon or especially XKCD but you cannot steal or generate genuine fresh insight or poignant relevant metaphor for the current moment.
- dvsfish 2y ago
  The engagement ring is a good example object, but I feel it serves the opposite argument better. If engagement rings were as ubiquitous and easy to generate as Ghibli images have become, they would lose their value very quickly -- not even just in the monetary sense, but the sentimental value across the market would crash for this particular trinket. It wouldn't be about picking the right one anymore, it would be finding some other thing that better conveys status or love through scarcity. If you have a 3d printer you'd know this feeling where abundance diminishes the value of something directly. Any pure plastic items you have are reduced to junk very quickly once you know you can basically have anything on a whim (exceptions for things with utility, however these are still printable). If I could print 30 rings a day, my partner wouldn't want any of them as a show of my undying love. Something more special and rare and thoughtful would have to take its place. This isn't meant to come across as shallow in any way, its just classic supply and demand relating to non monetary value.
airstrike 2y ago
Can we not call it "theft"? It's such a loaded term and doesn't really mean the same thing when we're talking about bits and bytes.
- moolcool 2y ago
  OK, but then we need a common standard. If Facebook is allowed to use libgen, I should also be allowed.
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    Correct. Legalize them both.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  Only if we stop calling software distribution "piracy" under the false pretenses that anything is being stolen.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    I'm OK with that too!
m3kw9 2y ago
Do google pay anyone when I use image search and the results are straight from their website?
- AkBKukU 2y ago
  This was decided in court[1] over two decades as acceptable fair-use and that thumbnail images do not constitute a copyright violation. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13767420941977220880&q=kelly+v+arriba+soft+corp&hl=en&as_sdt=6,39 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=137674209419772...
areoform 2y ago
Theft from whom and how? Are you telling me that our culture should be deprived of the idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset? Indiana Jones is 44 years old. When are we allowed to remix, recreate and expand on this like humanity has done since humans first started sitting down next to a fire and telling stories? edit: this reminds of this iconic scene from Dr. Strangelove, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ Mandrake: Colonel... that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there. Guano: That's private property. Mandrake: Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit! Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you? Mandrake: What? Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company. I guess we all have to answer to the Walt Disney company.
- calmbell 2y ago
  "idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset" is very different from the almost exact image of Indiana Jones.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Exactly. The idea of Indiana Jones, the adventurer archaeologist more at home throwing a punch than reading a book, is neither owned by nor unique to Lucasfilm (Disney). There is a ton of media out there featuring this trope character [1]. Yes, the trope is overwhelmingly associated with the image of Harrison Ford in a fedora within the public consciousness, but copyright does not apply to abstract ideas such as tropes. Some great video games to feature adventurer archaeologists: * NetHack (One of the best roles in the game) * Tomb Raider series (Lara Croft is a bona fide archaeologist) * Uncharted series (Nathan Drake is more of a treasure hunter but he becomes an archaeologist when he retires from adventuring) * Professor Layton series * La-Mulana series (very obviously inspired by Indiana Jones, but not derivative) * Spelunky (inspired by La-Mulana) [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventurerArchaeologist https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventurerArchae...
RataNova 2y ago
I don't think AI is doomed to be uncreative but it definitely needs human weirdness and unpredictability to steer it
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
How is it different from fan art, which is legal.
zulban 2y ago
Interesting proposal. Maybe if race or sex or height or eye color etc isn't given, and the LLM determines there's no reason not to randomize in this case (avoid black founding fathers), the backend could tweak its own prompt by programatically inserting a few random traits to the prompt. If you describe an Indiana Jones character, but no sex, 50/50 via internal call to rand() that it outputs a woman.
fennecfoxy 2y ago
Yup it's called overfitting. But I don't suppose you'd appreciate a neutral model either.
satvikpendem 2y ago
> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine [...] awful [...] horriffic Ah, I thought I knew this account from somewhere. It seems surprisingly easy to figure out what account is commenting just based on the words used, as I've commented that only a few active people on this site seem to use such strong words as shown here.

shadowgovt 2y ago

> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. I mean... If I go to Google right now and do an image search for "archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip," the first picture is a not-even-changed image of Indiana Jones. Which I will then copy and paste into whatever project I'm working on without clicking through to the source page (usually because the source page is an ad-ridden mess). Perhaps the Internet itself is the hideous theft machine, and AI is just the most efficient permutation of user interface onto it. (Incidentally, if you do that search, you will also, hilariously, turn up images of an older gentleman dressed in a brown coat and hat who is clearly meant to be "The Indiana Jones you got on Wish" from a photo-licensing site. The entire exercise of trying to extract wealth via exclusive access to memetic constructs is a fraught one).

rurp 2y ago
The key difference is that the google example is clearly copying someone elses work and there are plenty of laws and norms that non-billionaires need to follow. If you made a business reselling the image you copied you would expect to get in trouble and have to stop. But AI companies are doing essentially the same thing in many cases and being rewarded for it. The hypocrisy is much of the problem. If we're going to have IP laws that severely punish people and smaller companies for reselling the creative works of others without any compensation or permission then those rules should apply to powerful well-connected companies as well.
WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago
Your position cannot distinguish stealing somebody's likeness and looking at them.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  I agree without argument. I have also thoroughly enjoyed the animatronic dead Presidents at Disney World.

littlecranky67 2y ago

But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones, he creates a perfect copy and I hang it on my fridge. Where did I (or the artist) violate any copyright (or other) laws? It is the artist that is replaced by the AI, not the copyrighted IP.

mcmcmc 2y ago
Depends on if you paid him or not. If he sold it to you, then he is infringing on Disney’s IP and depriving them of that revenue.
- eb0la 2y ago
  If you're paying for tokens used to generate that...
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    Then the service that sold you tokens and delivered copyright infringing content is violating the law
Velorivox 2y ago
That does infringe copyright...you're just unlikely to get in trouble for it. You might get a cease and desist if the owner of the IP finds out and can spare a moment for you.
- RajT88 2y ago
  Totally agree. LLM's are just automating that infringement process. If you make money off it, it's no longer fair use; it's infringement. Even if you don't make money off it, it's not automatically fair use. My own favorite crazy story about copyright violations: Metallica sued Green Jello for parodying Enter Sandman (including a lyric where it says "It's not Metallica"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Harley_House_(of_Love) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Harley_House_(of_Love... They lost that case. The kicker? Metallica were guest vocalists on that album.

mcmcmc 2y ago

So if it’s a theft machine, how is the answer to try teaching it to hide the fact that it’s stealing by changing its outputs? That’s like a student plagiarizing an essay and then swapping some words with a thesaurus pretending that changes anything. Wouldn’t the more appropriate solution in the case of theft be to remunerate the victims and prevent recidivism? Instead of making it “not so obviously bad” why not just… make it good? Require AI services to either prove that 100% of their training corpus is either copyright free or properly licensed, or require them to compensate copyright holders for any infringing outputs.

chrisweekly 2y ago
(below is my shallow res, maybe naive?) That might inject a ton of $ into "IP", doing further damage to the creative commons. How can we support remix culture for humans, while staving off ultimately-destructive AI slop? Maybe copyleft / creative-commons licenses w/ explicit anti-AI prohibitions? Tho that could have bad ramifications too. ALL of this makes me kind of uncomfortable and sad, I want more creativity and fewer lawyers.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  > doing further damage to the creative commons Not sure I understand this part. Because creators would be getting paid for their works being used for someone else’s commercial gain?
  - chrisweekly 2y ago
    Because it reinforces the idea that creative works should usually involve lawyers.
    - mcmcmc 2y ago
      No it doesn’t. It reinforces that copyright is the law. If you don’t violate someone’s copyright, you don’t need a lawyer.

Pet_Ant 2y ago

> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine. I hate how it is common to advance a position to just state a conclusion as if it were a fact. You keep repeating the same thing over and over until it seems like a concensus has been reached instead of an actual argument reasoned from first principle. This is no theft here. Any copyright would be flimsier than software patents. I love Studio Ghibli (including $500/seat festival tickets) but it's the heart and the detail that make them what they are. You cannot clone that. Just some surface similarity. If that's all you like about the movies... you really missed the point. Imagine if in early cinema someone had tried to claim mustachioed villian, ditsy blonde, or dumb jock? These are just tropes and styles. Quality work goes much much much deeper, and that cannot be synthesised. I can AI generate a million engagement rings, but I cannot pick the perfect one that fits you and your partners love story. PS- the best work they did was "When Marnie was There". Just fitted together perfectly.

asadotzler 2y ago
>it's the heart and the detail that make them what they are. You cannot clone that You absolutely can and these theft machines are proving that, literally cloning those details with very high precision and fidelity.
- Pet_Ant 2y ago
  I didn't mean visual fidelity, I meant the way that plot and theme and art interleave. I first watched My Neighbour Totoro on VHS with no visual fidelity and it was still magic. You can easily steal the style of a political cartoon or especially XKCD but you cannot steal or generate genuine fresh insight or poignant relevant metaphor for the current moment.
dvsfish 2y ago
The engagement ring is a good example object, but I feel it serves the opposite argument better. If engagement rings were as ubiquitous and easy to generate as Ghibli images have become, they would lose their value very quickly -- not even just in the monetary sense, but the sentimental value across the market would crash for this particular trinket. It wouldn't be about picking the right one anymore, it would be finding some other thing that better conveys status or love through scarcity. If you have a 3d printer you'd know this feeling where abundance diminishes the value of something directly. Any pure plastic items you have are reduced to junk very quickly once you know you can basically have anything on a whim (exceptions for things with utility, however these are still printable). If I could print 30 rings a day, my partner wouldn't want any of them as a show of my undying love. Something more special and rare and thoughtful would have to take its place. This isn't meant to come across as shallow in any way, its just classic supply and demand relating to non monetary value.

airstrike 2y ago

Can we not call it "theft"? It's such a loaded term and doesn't really mean the same thing when we're talking about bits and bytes.

moolcool 2y ago
OK, but then we need a common standard. If Facebook is allowed to use libgen, I should also be allowed.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  Correct. Legalize them both.
bigyabai 2y ago
Only if we stop calling software distribution "piracy" under the false pretenses that anything is being stolen.
- airstrike 2y ago
  I'm OK with that too!

m3kw9 2y ago

Do google pay anyone when I use image search and the results are straight from their website?

AkBKukU 2y ago
This was decided in court[1] over two decades as acceptable fair-use and that thumbnail images do not constitute a copyright violation. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13767420941977220880&q=kelly+v+arriba+soft+corp&hl=en&as_sdt=6,39 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=137674209419772...

areoform 2y ago

Theft from whom and how? Are you telling me that our culture should be deprived of the idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset? Indiana Jones is 44 years old. When are we allowed to remix, recreate and expand on this like humanity has done since humans first started sitting down next to a fire and telling stories? edit: this reminds of this iconic scene from Dr. Strangelove, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ Mandrake: Colonel... that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there. Guano: That's private property. Mandrake: Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit! Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you? Mandrake: What? Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company. I guess we all have to answer to the Walt Disney company.

calmbell 2y ago
"idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset" is very different from the almost exact image of Indiana Jones.
- chongli 2y ago
  Exactly. The idea of Indiana Jones, the adventurer archaeologist more at home throwing a punch than reading a book, is neither owned by nor unique to Lucasfilm (Disney). There is a ton of media out there featuring this trope character [1]. Yes, the trope is overwhelmingly associated with the image of Harrison Ford in a fedora within the public consciousness, but copyright does not apply to abstract ideas such as tropes. Some great video games to feature adventurer archaeologists: * NetHack (One of the best roles in the game) * Tomb Raider series (Lara Croft is a bona fide archaeologist) * Uncharted series (Nathan Drake is more of a treasure hunter but he becomes an archaeologist when he retires from adventuring) * Professor Layton series * La-Mulana series (very obviously inspired by Indiana Jones, but not derivative) * Spelunky (inspired by La-Mulana) [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventurerArchaeologist https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventurerArchae...

RataNova 2y ago

I don't think AI is doomed to be uncreative but it definitely needs human weirdness and unpredictability to steer it

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

How is it different from fan art, which is legal.

zulban 2y ago

Interesting proposal. Maybe if race or sex or height or eye color etc isn't given, and the LLM determines there's no reason not to randomize in this case (avoid black founding fathers), the backend could tweak its own prompt by programatically inserting a few random traits to the prompt. If you describe an Indiana Jones character, but no sex, 50/50 via internal call to rand() that it outputs a woman.

fennecfoxy 2y ago

Yup it's called overfitting. But I don't suppose you'd appreciate a neutral model either.

satvikpendem 2y ago

> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine [...] awful [...] horriffic Ah, I thought I knew this account from somewhere. It seems surprisingly easy to figure out what account is commenting just based on the words used, as I've commented that only a few active people on this site seem to use such strong words as shown here.