9 ms·

Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

49 points by mikro2nd 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JohnFen 2y ago
Well, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
echelon 2y ago
Real AI artists are spending hundreds of hours and their human labor is absolutely copyrightable. There are three types of labor-intensive AI art: (1) ComfyUI node graph editing, (2) canvas-based compositions that use AI as a filter or brush, and (3) large multi-day compositions typically built for film and gaming. Sometimes all of these manual and laborious methodologies are employed for one work. We're so past the "prompting" phase: artists are building complicated workflows, manually drawing and sketching on diffusion canvases, and spending days precisely rendering the videos that they want. It's more like Photoshop combined with custom-built shader pipelines than Midjourney. Or a long virtual filming and editing process with deliberate intention. You wouldn't call algorithmic manipulation by Photoshop non-copyrightable. If AI is just a "brush" employed by a human, and the human is doing a substantial amount of work, it shouldn't render the entire work uncopyrightable. If you'd like to see what actual AI artists are doing, check these out to get started: https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/ https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/ Here's something that was "prompted", but that took days of effort in pre-production, composing, and editing: https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ftvole/ouroboros_kling_15_ai_short_film/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ftvole/ouroboros_... Here's something else that was built up from lots of node graphs and drawing and editing. This is a tremendously complicated work: https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/comments/1fse25a/putting_this_here_because_it_deserves_more_views/ https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/comments/1fse25a/putting_th... You can't possibly tell me that these are uncopyrightable. And while you may or may not like these pieces yet, there is clearly something incredible is happening here. These are real artists. And as individual creators and small teams, they will soon be capable of taking on the likes of studios like Pixar without the millions of dollars of capital the big studios have employed.
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  Within the US' jurisdiction, the USPTO has ruled NO.
  - horsawlarway 2y ago
    Not really - they've ruled that the output of those flows may not be protected in some cases, but the actual node based comfy-ui flow is almost certainly something you can protect. Further, the official guidance was delayed again until later this month, and is currently open for comments: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/17/2024-21085/2024-guidance-update-on-patent-subject-matter-eligibility-including-on-artificial-intelligence https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/17/2024-21...
- croes 2y ago
  If that's the case then they are sampling previous artists and need to pay them. You can't have your cake and eat it.
  - horsawlarway 2y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't necessarily agree either. I think the most compelling reference work right now is probably a collage. > a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing. And the law there is actually pretty nuanced and tangled: A collage, while not a compilation, may be a collective or a derivative work. A collective work has copyright protection, but a derivative work does not. So basically, given the current environment I think we're honing in on a super clear and very helpful "sometimes"...
    - falcolas 2y ago
      It's about who created the work (book, painting, code, etc). If it's a human, then it's copyrightable. If it's an AI, then it's not. That's the stance the copyright office has been taking, going so far as to grant partial copyrights if a human substantially changes portions of an AI generated work.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hyggetrold 2y ago
> “The refusal of the U.S. Copyright Office to recognize human authorship in AI-assisted creations highlights a critical issue in modern intellectual property law. As AI continues to evolve, it is imperative that our legal frameworks adapt to protect the rights of those who harness these technologies for creative expression,” Allen’s lawyer, Pester, recently said. Got it. So while substantial efforts have been made to claim that real artists—people who spent years of their lives working to produce actual works of art—have no legitimate claim to legal protection from AI companies, the people that should get legal protection are the people using Midjourney.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
  I don't agree that AI generated work should grant a copyright to the prompter, but it's not an inconsistent position. The belief that training a model is fair use does not preclude the belief that copying the work directly is not.
spondylosaurus 2y ago
This may not be the reason he's "losing" money here, but I was struck by how much less... impressive that piece is to me now compared to when I first saw it. (Visually impressive; I've always known it was from Midjourney.) When the news first broke about it winning an award, I was like "well damn, I can see why—it's visually striking!" But the longer I look at it, and the more LLM-generated images I see in general, the less this one stands out to me. It's still pleasing, but seems less unique in both its strengths and flaws: the soft glowing lights, the tasteful muted palette, the random greebled details. And it bothers me that the glowing orb/archway in the center has a distinct border around most of its circumference, but the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall(?) :P
- rsynnott 2y ago
  AI-generated images are interesting in that, in general, the more you look at them, and in particular the more you look at the detail, the worse they look. This is, arguably, one simple way to distinguish them from actual art.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    >the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall Kind of like a Rembrandt or something. I guess there's a reason it's always been said "there's no accounting for taste" :)
    - spondylosaurus 2y ago
      But only part of it blends! If the whole circumference was like that, it wouldn't bug me.
      - fuzzfactor 2y ago
        I know what you mean, there's something to bug everyone ;) Maybe it's not going to be too easy to reach the level of a "masterpiece" with only a non-owner to bring it into the world?
remon 2y ago
Millions? His work? Come on now.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Nature photographers can spend weeks or months scouting out a proper locale, picking the vantage point, waiting for just the right moment (or collecting and curating hundreds of moments), and then doing (possibly) final touch-ups in a photo editor. Their work is copyrightable, and it can be argued the only "work" they did was pushing a shutter button and maybe some touch-ups. Nature did the rest. We extend copyright protection to them; it's difficult for me to see why we wouldn't extend copyright protection to AI-synthesized works on similar grounds.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    of course, we have the interesting case where a monkey pressed the shutter button, and the decision was that the resulting picture want copyrightable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
Spivak 2y ago
Y'all really want to be mad at this but this is one of those tragic cases where the worst person is correct. * AI companies claim that training should not be covered by copyright. This says nothing at all about the model outputs which can still violate copyright. * Curation makes something a copyrightable work. This applies to photographers and machine generated art. The copyright office's ruling doesn't change that second point although in practice it might raise the bar.
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  Genuinely asking: would/should the ownership rest solely with the person promoting the model, or would part of all of it belong to the model itself (and/or its creator)? My hunch is that this is a somewhat unprecedented scenario, so comparing Midjourney to a tool like Photoshop wouldn't be completely accurate—in the sense that of course Adobe doesn't hold the rights to things you make in Photoshop—but there could very well be established cases I'm unaware of!
- EnergyAmy 2y ago
  I don't think copyright applies to the image itself. The work of curation can be copyrighted, but here it's trivial, just selecting one image. If he published a book of AI-generated artwork, the curation of images could be copyrighted as a whole, but each individual image would not be copyrighted.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    What happens if he doesn't publish the book during his lifetime, and later his estate decides to release it but no matter how hard people try, nobody can figure out whether or not any AI was employed?
- michaelt 2y ago
  > Curation makes something a copyrightable work. Are you sure about that? I know one or two countries have "database rights" which give a special type of IP protection to collections of methodically collected facts, like digital maps and phone books. But I've never heard of "curation" being copyrightable in and of itself.
jms703 2y ago
Me sitting here wishing I had millions to lose in the first place...
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  It's hypothetical millions. He's claiming unrealizable profits because he can't protect his work from being copied without compensation. So technically, he has zero right now and is begging the government to use force of law (i.e. threat of violence) to direct millions to him.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  I'm working on my second million! ...I gave up on my first...
ilwrjtlaiwjertl 2y ago
what a jackass
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
AI art is dead, dude. Get over it. Grifters lost. Regulators won.
waffletower 2y ago
The U.S. Copyright Office has made a bogus claim -- 'work derived from AI platforms “contained no human authorship”' -- my belief is that this incorrect and probably illegal edict is simply a poor excuse for the office to neglect its mandate. They do not have the resources and technological footing to register the flood of AI art they would likely receive for copyright protection. Regardless of chutzpah I support Allen's move against it. Style has not been copyrightable, living human artists learn and are influenced from their exposure to the broad history of art, it is not somehow different for AI models to do so as well. Infringement lies in the output of AI models, not on its inputs. Artists using generative art making techniques have been provided copyright protections for generations. While inconvenient for the office, AI mediated works also warrant protection.
- wetpaws 2y ago
  [dead]
bickfordb 2y ago
Does this mean that if Hollywood shifts to AI for production that none of it will be copyrightable?
- Bilal_io 2y ago
  You bet they will lobby to protect their IP.
- waffletower 2y ago
  It means that studios will shift how they lobby for copyright law as they train internal AI models on their asset catalogs. Eventually, Allen's claim will be mainstream.
- lainga 2y ago
  Close! If Hollywood starts doing it, it will become copyrightable. (But somehow only if you can retain 5+ lawyers.)
- partomniscient 2y ago
  Disney may well buy AI companies that may compete with them (like a next level acquisition equivalent of when they bought Pixar) and copyright everything instead. We live in an insane world where capitalism is a weapon which destroys and limits art, rather than art enriching us and the world.
- Lerc 2y ago
  The AI generated content would not be copyrightable. Manipulations of that AI content by people would still be copyrightable. Copyrightable output of pure AI is the nightmare situation. Imagine Disney trains an AI on purely content from in-house work-for-hire artists. They would then be free to generate an infinite amount of content that they claim ownership of. Copyright law, like all laws are intended to benefit society, not individuals. They can be changed as circumstances change. Sure, lobbyists can have a strong influence and attempt to tilt the playing field towards some individuals, but the primary strength of lobbyists is that they show up. Change goes to those who show up.
dvngnt_ 2y ago
looks like the crux is that supposedly ai-generated images don't have copyright protections > When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. > As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed in a registration application. but i think that's only if it's entirely prompt driven. you could argue that manual edits or additions would allow it to to have copyright?
- mcintyre1994 2y ago
  Also the other way - if you use an AI tool to edit an original image, is the output copyrightable? Is the answer different if the AI thing is doing a generative fill vs a bigger change? I guess this is the more financially important version of when Facebook was tagging any use of AI-powered tools in eg Photoshop as an AI generated image.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    Photoshop is an AI tool. For several years now, inpainting and other Photoshop tools have been powered by AI.
    - mcintyre1994 2y ago
      Yep agreed. My understanding is that Adobe add some sort of metadata if you use those AI powered tools, and Facebook were displaying AI generated image if you uploaded an image with that metadata present. I guess I'm just curious whether the output of those tools can be copyrighted. Is it a boolean like Facebook treated it, where as soon as you use any of these tools it can't be copyrighted, or is it more complicated?
      - fuzzfactor 2y ago
        From a more abstract viewpoint, what's the difference between any computer-aided editing at all versus none whatsoever? For instance some people have always had more advanced editing programs than others, or different performance levels of their hardware to run the software which makes/allows the final product to be more effortless than the mainstream by far. Effectively with significantly different output from the same input, all unique no matter how you try to make all your PC's run the same, kind of like a video game where you get better resolution or framerate when you have more advanced hardware and/or software. Sometimes just a little bit better which could be considered incremental. Sometimes much more than that which can astound as a major leap. When somebody comes along with a much more powerful hardware or software arrangement to output the same class of data, is it supposed to kick them out just because it's a major milestone that can not be ignored? You could start with something like a completely original watercolor, and very well be using the exact same PC but naturally get two distinct printouts from the same digital file simply from using two different printers. With more significant differences than if one would have been touched by AI and the other one not. Regardless of copyright, the person who submits the winning image to an image contest should really be the one to take home the prize.
dorianjp 2y ago
lol, leopards, faces
egypturnash 2y ago
The schadenfruede is so tasty.
- moshegramovsky 2y ago
  He's the very picture of entitlement. A portrait of entitlement even.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  It tastes even better if you buy into the zeitgeist
iamleppert 2y ago
Based on his argument, the human component should and rightfully be copyrightable. In this case, it's the prompt or conversation he had with the AI. That should definitely be able to be copyrightable, but I agree that the image itself should not. This is the fundamental problem with AI -- if the government isn't willing to protect it, there is fundamentally no market for it. What does that say about the value of the actual AI tools? If the content and images you produce with them can no longer be protected, what value are the tools used to create them?
- deepsun 2y ago
  Yes, but we need to figure out whether it's good or bad. E.g. medieval craftsmen assumed that monopolies were good, but today we consider them bad.
- fny 2y ago
  Recipes are not copyrightable. If the food you produce with them can no longer be protected, what value are the tools used to create them?
  - iamleppert 2y ago
    That's a bad analogy. Food is consumed exactly once and has to be produced again each time, and thats where the majority of the value is, even for food that is produced many times over from a recipe.
    - fny 2y ago
      By your logic, Coca-Cola has no reason to keep their recipe a trade secret.
- Lerc 2y ago
  >in this case, it's the prompt or conversation he had with the AI. That should definitely be able to be copyrightable, but I agree that the image itself should not. If you accept that, does that mean source code is copyrightable but compiled code is not? I'm kind-of ok with the raw output of diffusion models being public domain. It gets more complicated when The process is more than just Text->Image. Artists spending large amounts of time iterating, compositing, inpainting etc. are applying their knowledge of style, design, colour, and lighting.
throwaway918299 2y ago
let me ask midjourney to generate an image of the world's smallest violin
- Oarch 2y ago
  I was looking for exactly this comment and was not disappointed.
Manuel_D 2y ago
The inpainting tool in Photoshop is AI. If you use the inpainting tool, congratulations you're an AI artist. Should copyrighted of any images produced with the inpainting tool be ignored?
- falcolas 2y ago
  Yes. Or rather, it should get the same copyright consideration as all the artwork that went into building the models. So still yes.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    But the images that went into building the models are copyrightable. Adobe has a license to use them for AI training, but the authors still have copyrighht. So as per your logic the answer would actually be "no, these images aren't exempt from copyright."
    - falcolas 2y ago
      Nothing from the OP or the original AI Artist was about using Adobe. That said, were the images used by Adobe actually licensed for AI training, or was an existing overly broad license aimed at "showing this in an online gallery" interpreted by lawyers to include AI training? Because that latter option is being done by a lot of corporations (including Google) to make "ethical" AI models.
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        Adobe trains its models on Adobe Stock and public domain images > Adobe does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content. Firefly generative AI models are trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired. https://slate.com/technology/2024/06/adobe-terms-use-backlash-licensing-royalty-generative-ai-creative-cloud.html https://slate.com/technology/2024/06/adobe-terms-use-backlas... > Nothing from the OP or the original AI Artist was about using Adobe. The point is that even using basic photoshop tools is "AI art".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
caskethopper 2y ago
Will code generated via LLM be handled the same way, or does this only apply to expressive elements in art?
- falcolas 2y ago
  Last I heard, nothing generated by an LLM can be copyrighted. Copyright is for protecting the intellectual work of humans, not computers. The closest I've heard is a LLM generated book had portions of the book copyrighted by the "Author", but only the portions where the author had significantly altered the LLM generated text.
volleygman180 2y ago
It's fun to ponder how modern society will evolve if this same mindset is applied to other domains that generative AI is eventually used for, specifically sciences. If AI (art) works cannot be copyrighted, there's hope that the same would apply to the other domains and prohibiting AI-generated works from being patented. Imagine AI finding 50 new ways of making insulin that don't violate the existing patents... One can dream, right?! This could cripple monopolies and bring more power back to small businesses and individuals, as the capitalistic playing-field is leveled.
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
He could sell licenses to use his prompts and make licensees sign an NDA
- mikro2nd 2y ago
  Or he could just sell them as an NFT...
thomastjeffery 2y ago
copy ≠ theft Can we please end this delusional demand that property rights can be applied to data? Pretty please? If not now, then when? How much more unfeasible does copyright need to be before we move on? How much more unfeasible can it really get? When are we, as participants in a society, going to simply give up on playing this ridiculous game? Copyright demands that we all participate in its own failure. That is, all of us but a select few who have already won the game.
onemoresoop 2y ago
This artist won a $300 prize at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition 2022. I'm a bit confused what millions he's talking about but in my opinion the best bet for him would've been to commission some artists to create a real painting of his work and strike the iron while hot. Did anybody think that gen AI artwork would be a hot market for long?
- beej71 2y ago
  I assume he added up the number of times people have used the image and multiply it by some fee. But he's wrong. If there were a fee to use this image, basically zero people would use it. They'd all go to midjourney and make their own better images for free.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
AI art is extremely analogous to photography. As a photographer you did not create the universe you are walking around in, you prompt your camera to look at a certain location and you push a button.
- waffletower 2y ago
  This ^^^. So many cannot see the blatant parallel with photography here -- there is a rich art historic debate regarding the value of photography that went through very similar stages of rejection (and ultimate acceptance). This is a fantastic example of George Santayana's famous aphorism.
Yizahi 2y ago
The irony is so thick that you can eat it with spoon. Is like stealing meat from a market and then arguing that it is his, because he already transformed it into a meat pie, and that's his own product now. :)
kup0 2y ago
Dear journalists/others: for the love of all that is good, please for f's sake stop calling these people "artists". It reinforces the lie they tell themselves. They are nothing of the sort. They are, at most, and even this is overly generous, someone commissioning a "fake artist" (AI) to make something for them
- lovethevoid 2y ago
  I always wondered why there was an immediate rush to call them AI artists despite the first and predominant use being writing. Even a prompt is just writing text. Even with all the fancy visual tools, you still need to write a prompt somewhere along the lines. Yet “AI writers” isn’t really a thing journalists/bloggers refer to them as. It’s interesting from the outside, as neither a writer or an artist.

49 points by mikro2nd 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

JohnFen 2y ago

Well, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

echelon 2y ago

Real AI artists are spending hundreds of hours and their human labor is absolutely copyrightable. There are three types of labor-intensive AI art: (1) ComfyUI node graph editing, (2) canvas-based compositions that use AI as a filter or brush, and (3) large multi-day compositions typically built for film and gaming. Sometimes all of these manual and laborious methodologies are employed for one work. We're so past the "prompting" phase: artists are building complicated workflows, manually drawing and sketching on diffusion canvases, and spending days precisely rendering the videos that they want. It's more like Photoshop combined with custom-built shader pipelines than Midjourney. Or a long virtual filming and editing process with deliberate intention. You wouldn't call algorithmic manipulation by Photoshop non-copyrightable. If AI is just a "brush" employed by a human, and the human is doing a substantial amount of work, it shouldn't render the entire work uncopyrightable. If you'd like to see what actual AI artists are doing, check these out to get started: https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/ https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/ Here's something that was "prompted", but that took days of effort in pre-production, composing, and editing: https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ftvole/ouroboros_kling_15_ai_short_film/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1ftvole/ouroboros_... Here's something else that was built up from lots of node graphs and drawing and editing. This is a tremendously complicated work: https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/comments/1fse25a/putting_this_here_because_it_deserves_more_views/ https://www.reddit.com/r/comfyui/comments/1fse25a/putting_th... You can't possibly tell me that these are uncopyrightable. And while you may or may not like these pieces yet, there is clearly something incredible is happening here. These are real artists. And as individual creators and small teams, they will soon be capable of taking on the likes of studios like Pixar without the millions of dollars of capital the big studios have employed.

ProllyInfamous 2y ago
Within the US' jurisdiction, the USPTO has ruled NO.
- horsawlarway 2y ago
  Not really - they've ruled that the output of those flows may not be protected in some cases, but the actual node based comfy-ui flow is almost certainly something you can protect. Further, the official guidance was delayed again until later this month, and is currently open for comments: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/17/2024-21085/2024-guidance-update-on-patent-subject-matter-eligibility-including-on-artificial-intelligence https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/17/2024-21...
croes 2y ago
If that's the case then they are sampling previous artists and need to pay them. You can't have your cake and eat it.
- horsawlarway 2y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't necessarily agree either. I think the most compelling reference work right now is probably a collage. > a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing. And the law there is actually pretty nuanced and tangled: A collage, while not a compilation, may be a collective or a derivative work. A collective work has copyright protection, but a derivative work does not. So basically, given the current environment I think we're honing in on a super clear and very helpful "sometimes"...
  - falcolas 2y ago
    It's about who created the work (book, painting, code, etc). If it's a human, then it's copyrightable. If it's an AI, then it's not. That's the stance the copyright office has been taking, going so far as to grant partial copyrights if a human substantially changes portions of an AI generated work.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hyggetrold 2y ago

> “The refusal of the U.S. Copyright Office to recognize human authorship in AI-assisted creations highlights a critical issue in modern intellectual property law. As AI continues to evolve, it is imperative that our legal frameworks adapt to protect the rights of those who harness these technologies for creative expression,” Allen’s lawyer, Pester, recently said. Got it. So while substantial efforts have been made to claim that real artists—people who spent years of their lives working to produce actual works of art—have no legitimate claim to legal protection from AI companies, the people that should get legal protection are the people using Midjourney.

ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
I don't agree that AI generated work should grant a copyright to the prompter, but it's not an inconsistent position. The belief that training a model is fair use does not preclude the belief that copying the work directly is not.

spondylosaurus 2y ago

This may not be the reason he's "losing" money here, but I was struck by how much less... impressive that piece is to me now compared to when I first saw it. (Visually impressive; I've always known it was from Midjourney.) When the news first broke about it winning an award, I was like "well damn, I can see why—it's visually striking!" But the longer I look at it, and the more LLM-generated images I see in general, the less this one stands out to me. It's still pleasing, but seems less unique in both its strengths and flaws: the soft glowing lights, the tasteful muted palette, the random greebled details. And it bothers me that the glowing orb/archway in the center has a distinct border around most of its circumference, but the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall(?) :P

rsynnott 2y ago
AI-generated images are interesting in that, in general, the more you look at them, and in particular the more you look at the detail, the worse they look. This is, arguably, one simple way to distinguish them from actual art.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall Kind of like a Rembrandt or something. I guess there's a reason it's always been said "there's no accounting for taste" :)
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    But only part of it blends! If the whole circumference was like that, it wouldn't bug me.
    - fuzzfactor 2y ago
      I know what you mean, there's something to bug everyone ;) Maybe it's not going to be too easy to reach the level of a "masterpiece" with only a non-owner to bring it into the world?

remon 2y ago

Millions? His work? Come on now.

shadowgovt 2y ago
Nature photographers can spend weeks or months scouting out a proper locale, picking the vantage point, waiting for just the right moment (or collecting and curating hundreds of moments), and then doing (possibly) final touch-ups in a photo editor. Their work is copyrightable, and it can be argued the only "work" they did was pushing a shutter button and maybe some touch-ups. Nature did the rest. We extend copyright protection to them; it's difficult for me to see why we wouldn't extend copyright protection to AI-synthesized works on similar grounds.
- fragmede 2y ago
  of course, we have the interesting case where a monkey pressed the shutter button, and the decision was that the resulting picture want copyrightable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

Spivak 2y ago

Y'all really want to be mad at this but this is one of those tragic cases where the worst person is correct. * AI companies claim that training should not be covered by copyright. This says nothing at all about the model outputs which can still violate copyright. * Curation makes something a copyrightable work. This applies to photographers and machine generated art. The copyright office's ruling doesn't change that second point although in practice it might raise the bar.

spondylosaurus 2y ago
Genuinely asking: would/should the ownership rest solely with the person promoting the model, or would part of all of it belong to the model itself (and/or its creator)? My hunch is that this is a somewhat unprecedented scenario, so comparing Midjourney to a tool like Photoshop wouldn't be completely accurate—in the sense that of course Adobe doesn't hold the rights to things you make in Photoshop—but there could very well be established cases I'm unaware of!
EnergyAmy 2y ago
I don't think copyright applies to the image itself. The work of curation can be copyrighted, but here it's trivial, just selecting one image. If he published a book of AI-generated artwork, the curation of images could be copyrighted as a whole, but each individual image would not be copyrighted.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  What happens if he doesn't publish the book during his lifetime, and later his estate decides to release it but no matter how hard people try, nobody can figure out whether or not any AI was employed?
michaelt 2y ago
> Curation makes something a copyrightable work. Are you sure about that? I know one or two countries have "database rights" which give a special type of IP protection to collections of methodically collected facts, like digital maps and phone books. But I've never heard of "curation" being copyrightable in and of itself.

jms703 2y ago

Me sitting here wishing I had millions to lose in the first place...

shadowgovt 2y ago
It's hypothetical millions. He's claiming unrealizable profits because he can't protect his work from being copied without compensation. So technically, he has zero right now and is begging the government to use force of law (i.e. threat of violence) to direct millions to him.
DonHopkins 2y ago
I'm working on my second million! ...I gave up on my first...

ilwrjtlaiwjertl 2y ago

what a jackass

MisterBastahrd 2y ago

AI art is dead, dude. Get over it. Grifters lost. Regulators won.

waffletower 2y ago

The U.S. Copyright Office has made a bogus claim -- 'work derived from AI platforms “contained no human authorship”' -- my belief is that this incorrect and probably illegal edict is simply a poor excuse for the office to neglect its mandate. They do not have the resources and technological footing to register the flood of AI art they would likely receive for copyright protection. Regardless of chutzpah I support Allen's move against it. Style has not been copyrightable, living human artists learn and are influenced from their exposure to the broad history of art, it is not somehow different for AI models to do so as well. Infringement lies in the output of AI models, not on its inputs. Artists using generative art making techniques have been provided copyright protections for generations. While inconvenient for the office, AI mediated works also warrant protection.

wetpaws 2y ago
[dead]

bickfordb 2y ago

Does this mean that if Hollywood shifts to AI for production that none of it will be copyrightable?

Bilal_io 2y ago
You bet they will lobby to protect their IP.
waffletower 2y ago
It means that studios will shift how they lobby for copyright law as they train internal AI models on their asset catalogs. Eventually, Allen's claim will be mainstream.
lainga 2y ago
Close! If Hollywood starts doing it, it will become copyrightable. (But somehow only if you can retain 5+ lawyers.)
partomniscient 2y ago
Disney may well buy AI companies that may compete with them (like a next level acquisition equivalent of when they bought Pixar) and copyright everything instead. We live in an insane world where capitalism is a weapon which destroys and limits art, rather than art enriching us and the world.
Lerc 2y ago
The AI generated content would not be copyrightable. Manipulations of that AI content by people would still be copyrightable. Copyrightable output of pure AI is the nightmare situation. Imagine Disney trains an AI on purely content from in-house work-for-hire artists. They would then be free to generate an infinite amount of content that they claim ownership of. Copyright law, like all laws are intended to benefit society, not individuals. They can be changed as circumstances change. Sure, lobbyists can have a strong influence and attempt to tilt the playing field towards some individuals, but the primary strength of lobbyists is that they show up. Change goes to those who show up.

dvngnt_ 2y ago

looks like the crux is that supposedly ai-generated images don't have copyright protections > When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. > As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed in a registration application. but i think that's only if it's entirely prompt driven. you could argue that manual edits or additions would allow it to to have copyright?

mcintyre1994 2y ago
Also the other way - if you use an AI tool to edit an original image, is the output copyrightable? Is the answer different if the AI thing is doing a generative fill vs a bigger change? I guess this is the more financially important version of when Facebook was tagging any use of AI-powered tools in eg Photoshop as an AI generated image.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  Photoshop is an AI tool. For several years now, inpainting and other Photoshop tools have been powered by AI.
  - mcintyre1994 2y ago
    Yep agreed. My understanding is that Adobe add some sort of metadata if you use those AI powered tools, and Facebook were displaying AI generated image if you uploaded an image with that metadata present. I guess I'm just curious whether the output of those tools can be copyrighted. Is it a boolean like Facebook treated it, where as soon as you use any of these tools it can't be copyrighted, or is it more complicated?
    - fuzzfactor 2y ago
      From a more abstract viewpoint, what's the difference between any computer-aided editing at all versus none whatsoever? For instance some people have always had more advanced editing programs than others, or different performance levels of their hardware to run the software which makes/allows the final product to be more effortless than the mainstream by far. Effectively with significantly different output from the same input, all unique no matter how you try to make all your PC's run the same, kind of like a video game where you get better resolution or framerate when you have more advanced hardware and/or software. Sometimes just a little bit better which could be considered incremental. Sometimes much more than that which can astound as a major leap. When somebody comes along with a much more powerful hardware or software arrangement to output the same class of data, is it supposed to kick them out just because it's a major milestone that can not be ignored? You could start with something like a completely original watercolor, and very well be using the exact same PC but naturally get two distinct printouts from the same digital file simply from using two different printers. With more significant differences than if one would have been touched by AI and the other one not. Regardless of copyright, the person who submits the winning image to an image contest should really be the one to take home the prize.

dorianjp 2y ago

lol, leopards, faces

egypturnash 2y ago

The schadenfruede is so tasty.

moshegramovsky 2y ago
He's the very picture of entitlement. A portrait of entitlement even.
EasyMark 2y ago
It tastes even better if you buy into the zeitgeist

iamleppert 2y ago

Based on his argument, the human component should and rightfully be copyrightable. In this case, it's the prompt or conversation he had with the AI. That should definitely be able to be copyrightable, but I agree that the image itself should not. This is the fundamental problem with AI -- if the government isn't willing to protect it, there is fundamentally no market for it. What does that say about the value of the actual AI tools? If the content and images you produce with them can no longer be protected, what value are the tools used to create them?

deepsun 2y ago
Yes, but we need to figure out whether it's good or bad. E.g. medieval craftsmen assumed that monopolies were good, but today we consider them bad.
fny 2y ago
Recipes are not copyrightable. If the food you produce with them can no longer be protected, what value are the tools used to create them?
- iamleppert 2y ago
  That's a bad analogy. Food is consumed exactly once and has to be produced again each time, and thats where the majority of the value is, even for food that is produced many times over from a recipe.
  - fny 2y ago
    By your logic, Coca-Cola has no reason to keep their recipe a trade secret.
Lerc 2y ago
>in this case, it's the prompt or conversation he had with the AI. That should definitely be able to be copyrightable, but I agree that the image itself should not. If you accept that, does that mean source code is copyrightable but compiled code is not? I'm kind-of ok with the raw output of diffusion models being public domain. It gets more complicated when The process is more than just Text->Image. Artists spending large amounts of time iterating, compositing, inpainting etc. are applying their knowledge of style, design, colour, and lighting.

throwaway918299 2y ago

let me ask midjourney to generate an image of the world's smallest violin

Oarch 2y ago
I was looking for exactly this comment and was not disappointed.

Manuel_D 2y ago

The inpainting tool in Photoshop is AI. If you use the inpainting tool, congratulations you're an AI artist. Should copyrighted of any images produced with the inpainting tool be ignored?

falcolas 2y ago
Yes. Or rather, it should get the same copyright consideration as all the artwork that went into building the models. So still yes.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  But the images that went into building the models are copyrightable. Adobe has a license to use them for AI training, but the authors still have copyrighht. So as per your logic the answer would actually be "no, these images aren't exempt from copyright."
  - falcolas 2y ago
    Nothing from the OP or the original AI Artist was about using Adobe. That said, were the images used by Adobe actually licensed for AI training, or was an existing overly broad license aimed at "showing this in an online gallery" interpreted by lawyers to include AI training? Because that latter option is being done by a lot of corporations (including Google) to make "ethical" AI models.
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      Adobe trains its models on Adobe Stock and public domain images > Adobe does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content. Firefly generative AI models are trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired. https://slate.com/technology/2024/06/adobe-terms-use-backlash-licensing-royalty-generative-ai-creative-cloud.html https://slate.com/technology/2024/06/adobe-terms-use-backlas... > Nothing from the OP or the original AI Artist was about using Adobe. The point is that even using basic photoshop tools is "AI art".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

caskethopper 2y ago

Will code generated via LLM be handled the same way, or does this only apply to expressive elements in art?

falcolas 2y ago
Last I heard, nothing generated by an LLM can be copyrighted. Copyright is for protecting the intellectual work of humans, not computers. The closest I've heard is a LLM generated book had portions of the book copyrighted by the "Author", but only the portions where the author had significantly altered the LLM generated text.

volleygman180 2y ago

It's fun to ponder how modern society will evolve if this same mindset is applied to other domains that generative AI is eventually used for, specifically sciences. If AI (art) works cannot be copyrighted, there's hope that the same would apply to the other domains and prohibiting AI-generated works from being patented. Imagine AI finding 50 new ways of making insulin that don't violate the existing patents... One can dream, right?! This could cripple monopolies and bring more power back to small businesses and individuals, as the capitalistic playing-field is leveled.

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

He could sell licenses to use his prompts and make licensees sign an NDA

mikro2nd 2y ago
Or he could just sell them as an NFT...

thomastjeffery 2y ago

copy ≠ theft Can we please end this delusional demand that property rights can be applied to data? Pretty please? If not now, then when? How much more unfeasible does copyright need to be before we move on? How much more unfeasible can it really get? When are we, as participants in a society, going to simply give up on playing this ridiculous game? Copyright demands that we all participate in its own failure. That is, all of us but a select few who have already won the game.

onemoresoop 2y ago

This artist won a $300 prize at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition 2022. I'm a bit confused what millions he's talking about but in my opinion the best bet for him would've been to commission some artists to create a real painting of his work and strike the iron while hot. Did anybody think that gen AI artwork would be a hot market for long?

beej71 2y ago
I assume he added up the number of times people have used the image and multiply it by some fee. But he's wrong. If there were a fee to use this image, basically zero people would use it. They'd all go to midjourney and make their own better images for free.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

AI art is extremely analogous to photography. As a photographer you did not create the universe you are walking around in, you prompt your camera to look at a certain location and you push a button.

waffletower 2y ago
This ^^^. So many cannot see the blatant parallel with photography here -- there is a rich art historic debate regarding the value of photography that went through very similar stages of rejection (and ultimate acceptance). This is a fantastic example of George Santayana's famous aphorism.

Yizahi 2y ago

The irony is so thick that you can eat it with spoon. Is like stealing meat from a market and then arguing that it is his, because he already transformed it into a meat pie, and that's his own product now. :)

kup0 2y ago

Dear journalists/others: for the love of all that is good, please for f's sake stop calling these people "artists". It reinforces the lie they tell themselves. They are nothing of the sort. They are, at most, and even this is overly generous, someone commissioning a "fake artist" (AI) to make something for them

lovethevoid 2y ago
I always wondered why there was an immediate rush to call them AI artists despite the first and predominant use being writing. Even a prompt is just writing text. Even with all the fancy visual tools, you still need to write a prompt somewhere along the lines. Yet “AI writers” isn’t really a thing journalists/bloggers refer to them as. It’s interesting from the outside, as neither a writer or an artist.