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> Is it okay to reproduce the hard-won style of other artists using AI? Who owns the resulting art? Who profits from it? Which artists are in the training data

> Is it okay to reproduce the hard-won style of other artists using AI? Who owns the resulting art? Who profits from it? Which artists are in the training data for AI, and what is the legal and ethical status of using copyrighted work for training? These were important questions before multimodal AI, but now developing answers to them is increasingly urgent. I have to disagree with the conclusion. This was an important discussion to have two to three years ago, then we had it online, and then we more or less agreed that it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up with no recourse. What the post should say is "we know that this is unfair to artists, but the tech companies are making too much money from them and we have no way to force them to change".

shkkmo 1y ago
> This was an important discussion to have two to three years ago, then we had it online, and then we more or less agreed that it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up with no recourse. Speak for yourself, there was no consensus online. There are plenty of us that think that dramatically expanding the power of copyright would be a huge mistake that would primarily benefit larger companies and do little to protect or fund small artists.
- OtherShrezzing 1y ago
  >There are plenty of us that think that dramatically expanding the power of copyright would be a huge mistake that would primarily benefit larger companies and do little to protect or fund small artists. The status quo also primarily benefits larger companies, and does little (exactly nothing, if we're being earnest) to protect or fund small artists. It's reasonable to hold both opinions that: 1) artists aren't being compensated, even though their work is being used by these tools, and 2) massive expansion of copyright isn't the appropriate response to 1).
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
eadmund 1y ago
> it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up I never thought it was unfair to artists for others to look at their work and imitate it. That seems to me to be what artists have been doing since the second caveman looked at a hand painting on a cave wall and thought, ‘huh, that’s pretty neat! I’d like to try my hand at that!’
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  Right the difference is that it’s a large company looking at it then copying it and reselling it without credit, which basically everyone would understand as bad without the indirection of a model. Edit: the key words here are “company” and “reselling”
  - eadmund 1y ago
    But it’s not copying and reselling — it’s imitation. Copying is controlled by copyrights. And imitation isn’t controlled by anything. As for a company: a company is just a group of people acting together.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      #1, it’s extremely easy to coerce direct copies out of models that artists could be pursued for infringement if they drew, but companies reselling said copyrighted artwork face no penalty #2, yes, it’s a group of people who came together to build an algorithm that learns to extract features learned from images made by other people in order to generate images somewhere between these images in a high dimensional space. They sell these images and give no credit or cash to the images being “interpolated” between. Notice this doesn’t extend to open source, it’s the commercial aspect that represents theft. The reality is that laws are meant to be interpreted not by their letter but their spirit. The AI can’t exist without the hard work its trained on, and the outputs often resemble the inputs in a manner that approaches copying, so selling those outputs without compensation for the artists in the training set should be illegal. It won’t be, but it should.
Taek 1y ago
I don't think there's consensus around that idea. Lots of people (myself included) feel that copyright is already vastly overreaching, and that AI represents forward progress for the proliferation of art in society (its crap today, but digital cameras were crap in 2007 and look where they are now). Its also not clear for example that Studio Ghibli lost by having their art style plastered all over the internet. I went home and watched a Ghibli film that week, as I'm sure many others did as well. Their revenue is probably up quite a bit right now? "How can we monetize art" remains an open question for society, but I certainly don't think that AI without restrictions is going to lead to fewer people with art jobs.
- hnbad 1y ago
  Copyright is a logical consequence of property rights. I'd agree that property rights hold back industry and trade but if you want to abolish property rights, you first have to decommodify the essentials like food, housing, public infrastructure and healthcare, because unleashing the market when it has control over all of these is going to have some very undesirable consequences.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Copyright isn't a property right. Property rights are rivalrous. If you own a sandwich and a thousand other people want to eat your sandwich, only one person can, so property rights exist to define who gets to choose who gets to eat the sandwich. Writings and discoveries are non-rivalrous. To quote the first head of the US Patent Office: > He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. The term "intellectual property" is an attempt to conflate these things, to justify net-destructive money grabs like retroactive copyright term extensions, because traditional property rights don't expire but copyrights explicitly and intentionally do.
    - immibis 1y ago
      The definition of capitalism is a system in which all sorts of things that are not property are artificially made into property and given artificial property rights which can be traded.
hnbad 1y ago
> What the post should say is "we know that this is unfair to artists, but the tech companies are making too much money from them and we have no way to force them to change". It seemed a fact of life that companies will just abuse your personal data to their liking and can do what they want with information they collect about you because "if it's free, you're the product" (and even if you paid for it, "you should know better" etc). Then GDPR and its international derivatives came along and changed that. It seemd a fact of life that companies that technically don't have an actual market monopoly can do whatever they want within their vertically integrated walled gardens because competitors can just create their own vertically integrated walled gardens to compete with them and the rules for markets don't apply to walled gardens. Then the DSA and DMA came along and changed that. I don't see why legislation can't change this, too. Of course just with the GDPR, DSA and DMA we'll hear from libertarians, megacorps and astroturf movements how unfair it all is to mom & pop startups and how it's going to ruin the economy but I think given the angle grider the US is currently taking to its own economy (and by extension the global economy because we're all connected), I think that's no longer a valid argument in politics.
DeathArrow 1y ago
>> it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up What framework can we use to decide if something is fair or not? Style is not something that should be copyrighted. I can pain in the style of X painter, I can write in the style of Y writer, I can compose music in the style of Z composer. Everything has a style. Dressing yourself has a style. Speaking has a style. Even writing mathematical proofs can have a style. Copying another person's style might reflect poor judgement, bad taste and lack of originality but it shouldn't be illegal. And anyone in the business of art should have much more than a style. He should have original ideas, a vision a way to tell stories, a way to make people ask themselves questions. A style is merely a tool. If all someone has is a style, then good luck!
- gosub100 1y ago
  In music, someone can sing the same style as another, but if they imitate it to the point that there is brand confusion, where the consumer believes the product came from X when it actually came from Y, that's clearly crossing the line.
  - ChadNauseam 1y ago
    Is that actually crossing a line? I'm sure some consumers have thought that rocket league was associated with FIFA, or that studio Ghibli movies were made by Disney. But these aren't widespread issues because we have a robust system of trademarks that draws a clear line: you can't use trademarked names or iconography in a way that causes confusion. But if some people heading Olivia Rodrigo's "good 4 you" think they're listening to Paramore because they have a similar style, that has never been illegal
    - gosub100 1y ago
      vanilla ice vs queen case doesn't support your claim.
      - ChadNauseam 1y ago
        vanilla ice completely copied queen's baseline, not just the queen style. (not to mention that it never went to court)
wat10000 1y ago
“Fair” doesn’t matter. The only consensus that matters is what is legal and profitable. The former seems to be pretty much decided in favor of AI, with some open question about whether large media companies enjoy protections that smaller artists don’t. (The legal battle when some AI company finally decides to let their model imitate Disney stuff is going to be epic.) Profitable remains to be seen, but doesn’t matter much while investors’ money is so plentiful.
- __loam 1y ago
  > The former seems to be pretty much decided in favor of AI None of the cases against AI companies have been decided afaik. There's a ton of ongoing litigation. > but doesn’t matter much while investors’ money is so plentiful. More and more people are realizing how wasteful this stuff is every day.
Suppafly 1y ago
> and then we more or less agreed that it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up with no recourse. No we didn't agree with that.

shkkmo 1y ago

> This was an important discussion to have two to three years ago, then we had it online, and then we more or less agreed that it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up with no recourse. Speak for yourself, there was no consensus online. There are plenty of us that think that dramatically expanding the power of copyright would be a huge mistake that would primarily benefit larger companies and do little to protect or fund small artists.

OtherShrezzing 1y ago
>There are plenty of us that think that dramatically expanding the power of copyright would be a huge mistake that would primarily benefit larger companies and do little to protect or fund small artists. The status quo also primarily benefits larger companies, and does little (exactly nothing, if we're being earnest) to protect or fund small artists. It's reasonable to hold both opinions that: 1) artists aren't being compensated, even though their work is being used by these tools, and 2) massive expansion of copyright isn't the appropriate response to 1).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

eadmund 1y ago

> it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up I never thought it was unfair to artists for others to look at their work and imitate it. That seems to me to be what artists have been doing since the second caveman looked at a hand painting on a cave wall and thought, ‘huh, that’s pretty neat! I’d like to try my hand at that!’

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
Right the difference is that it’s a large company looking at it then copying it and reselling it without credit, which basically everyone would understand as bad without the indirection of a model. Edit: the key words here are “company” and “reselling”
- eadmund 1y ago
  But it’s not copying and reselling — it’s imitation. Copying is controlled by copyrights. And imitation isn’t controlled by anything. As for a company: a company is just a group of people acting together.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    #1, it’s extremely easy to coerce direct copies out of models that artists could be pursued for infringement if they drew, but companies reselling said copyrighted artwork face no penalty #2, yes, it’s a group of people who came together to build an algorithm that learns to extract features learned from images made by other people in order to generate images somewhere between these images in a high dimensional space. They sell these images and give no credit or cash to the images being “interpolated” between. Notice this doesn’t extend to open source, it’s the commercial aspect that represents theft. The reality is that laws are meant to be interpreted not by their letter but their spirit. The AI can’t exist without the hard work its trained on, and the outputs often resemble the inputs in a manner that approaches copying, so selling those outputs without compensation for the artists in the training set should be illegal. It won’t be, but it should.

Taek 1y ago

I don't think there's consensus around that idea. Lots of people (myself included) feel that copyright is already vastly overreaching, and that AI represents forward progress for the proliferation of art in society (its crap today, but digital cameras were crap in 2007 and look where they are now). Its also not clear for example that Studio Ghibli lost by having their art style plastered all over the internet. I went home and watched a Ghibli film that week, as I'm sure many others did as well. Their revenue is probably up quite a bit right now? "How can we monetize art" remains an open question for society, but I certainly don't think that AI without restrictions is going to lead to fewer people with art jobs.

hnbad 1y ago
Copyright is a logical consequence of property rights. I'd agree that property rights hold back industry and trade but if you want to abolish property rights, you first have to decommodify the essentials like food, housing, public infrastructure and healthcare, because unleashing the market when it has control over all of these is going to have some very undesirable consequences.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Copyright isn't a property right. Property rights are rivalrous. If you own a sandwich and a thousand other people want to eat your sandwich, only one person can, so property rights exist to define who gets to choose who gets to eat the sandwich. Writings and discoveries are non-rivalrous. To quote the first head of the US Patent Office: > He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. The term "intellectual property" is an attempt to conflate these things, to justify net-destructive money grabs like retroactive copyright term extensions, because traditional property rights don't expire but copyrights explicitly and intentionally do.
  - immibis 1y ago
    The definition of capitalism is a system in which all sorts of things that are not property are artificially made into property and given artificial property rights which can be traded.

hnbad 1y ago

> What the post should say is "we know that this is unfair to artists, but the tech companies are making too much money from them and we have no way to force them to change". It seemed a fact of life that companies will just abuse your personal data to their liking and can do what they want with information they collect about you because "if it's free, you're the product" (and even if you paid for it, "you should know better" etc). Then GDPR and its international derivatives came along and changed that. It seemd a fact of life that companies that technically don't have an actual market monopoly can do whatever they want within their vertically integrated walled gardens because competitors can just create their own vertically integrated walled gardens to compete with them and the rules for markets don't apply to walled gardens. Then the DSA and DMA came along and changed that. I don't see why legislation can't change this, too. Of course just with the GDPR, DSA and DMA we'll hear from libertarians, megacorps and astroturf movements how unfair it all is to mom & pop startups and how it's going to ruin the economy but I think given the angle grider the US is currently taking to its own economy (and by extension the global economy because we're all connected), I think that's no longer a valid argument in politics.

DeathArrow 1y ago

>> it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up What framework can we use to decide if something is fair or not? Style is not something that should be copyrighted. I can pain in the style of X painter, I can write in the style of Y writer, I can compose music in the style of Z composer. Everything has a style. Dressing yourself has a style. Speaking has a style. Even writing mathematical proofs can have a style. Copying another person's style might reflect poor judgement, bad taste and lack of originality but it shouldn't be illegal. And anyone in the business of art should have much more than a style. He should have original ideas, a vision a way to tell stories, a way to make people ask themselves questions. A style is merely a tool. If all someone has is a style, then good luck!

gosub100 1y ago
In music, someone can sing the same style as another, but if they imitate it to the point that there is brand confusion, where the consumer believes the product came from X when it actually came from Y, that's clearly crossing the line.
- ChadNauseam 1y ago
  Is that actually crossing a line? I'm sure some consumers have thought that rocket league was associated with FIFA, or that studio Ghibli movies were made by Disney. But these aren't widespread issues because we have a robust system of trademarks that draws a clear line: you can't use trademarked names or iconography in a way that causes confusion. But if some people heading Olivia Rodrigo's "good 4 you" think they're listening to Paramore because they have a similar style, that has never been illegal
  - gosub100 1y ago
    vanilla ice vs queen case doesn't support your claim.
    - ChadNauseam 1y ago
      vanilla ice completely copied queen's baseline, not just the queen style. (not to mention that it never went to court)

wat10000 1y ago

“Fair” doesn’t matter. The only consensus that matters is what is legal and profitable. The former seems to be pretty much decided in favor of AI, with some open question about whether large media companies enjoy protections that smaller artists don’t. (The legal battle when some AI company finally decides to let their model imitate Disney stuff is going to be epic.) Profitable remains to be seen, but doesn’t matter much while investors’ money is so plentiful.

__loam 1y ago
> The former seems to be pretty much decided in favor of AI None of the cases against AI companies have been decided afaik. There's a ton of ongoing litigation. > but doesn’t matter much while investors’ money is so plentiful. More and more people are realizing how wasteful this stuff is every day.

Suppafly 1y ago

> and then we more or less agreed that it's unfair for artists to have their works sucked up with no recourse. No we didn't agree with that.