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“A legal reality where you can only train AI on content you've licensed would be the worst for everybody bar massive companies, legacy artists included.” Care

“A legal reality where you can only train AI on content you've licensed would be the worst for everybody bar massive companies, legacy artists included.” Care to elaborate? Also, saying artists only concern themselves with the legality of art used in AI because of distaste when there are legal cases where their art has been appropriated seems like a bold position to take. It’s a practice founded on scooping everything up without care for origin or attribution and it’s not like it’s a transparent process. There are people that literally go out of their way to let artists know they’re training on their art and taunt them about it online. Is it unusual they would assume bad faith from those purporting to train their AI legally when participation up till now has either been involuntary or opt out? Rolling out AI features when your customers are artists is tone deaf at best and trolling at worst.

Workaccount2 1y ago
There is no "scooping up", the models aren't massive archives of copied art. People either don't understand how these models work or they purposely misrepresent it (or purposely refuse to understand it). Showing the model an picture doesn't create a copy of that picture in it's "brain". It moves a bunch of vectors around that captures an "essence" of what the image is. The next image shown from a totally different artist with a totally different style may well move around many of those same vectors again. But suffice to say, there is no copy of the picture anywhere inside of it. This also why these models hallucinate so much, they are not drawing from a bank of copies, they are working off of a fuzzy memory.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  > People either don't understand how these models work or they purposely misrepresent it (or purposely refuse to understand it). Not only that, they also assume or pretend that this is obviously violating copyright, when in fact this is a) not clear, and b) pending determination by courts and legislators around the world. FWIW, I agree with your perspective on training, but I also accept that artists have legitimate moral grounds to complain and try to fight it - so I don't really like to argue about this with them; my pet peeve is on the LLM side of things, where the loudest arguments come from people who are envious and feel entitled, even though they have no personal stake in this.
  - Riverheart 1y ago
    “Not only that, they also assume or pretend that this is obviously violating copyright, when in fact this is a) not clear, and b) pending determination by courts and legislators around the world.” Uh huh, so much worse than the people that assume or pretend that it’s obviously not infringing and legal. Fortunately I don’t need to wait for a lawyer to form an opinion and neither do those in favor of AI as you might’ve noticed. You see any of them backing down and waiting for answer from a higher authority?
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      > You see any of them backing down and waiting for answer from a higher authority? Should they? That's generally not how things work in most places. Normally, if something isn't clearly illegal, especially when it's something too new and different for laws to clearly cover, you're free to go ahead and try it; you're not expected to first seek a go-ahead from a court.
      - Riverheart 1y ago
        You just chided people for having strong opinions about AI infringement without a court ruling to back them up but now you’re saying that creating/promoting an entire industry based on a legal grey area is a social norm that you have no strong feelings about. I would have thought the same high bar to speak on copyright for those who believe it infringes would be applied equally to those saying it does not, especially when it financially benefits them. I don’t think we’ll find consensus.
    - bawolff 1y ago
      This is silly. What are you proposing? A coup to ban AI? Because that is the alternative to waiting for legislators and courts.
      - Riverheart 1y ago
        Never proposed a ban, the issue is copyright, use licensed inputs and I could care less. Pro AI people need to stop behaving like it’s a foregone conclusion that anything they do is right and protected from criticism because, as was pointed out, the legality of what is being done with unlicensed inputs, which is the majority of inputs, is still up for debate. I’m just calling attention to the double standard being applied in who is allowed to have an opinion on what the legal outcome should be prior to that verdict. Temporal said people shouldn’t “pretend or assume” that lots of AI infringes on other people’s work because the law hasn’t caught up but the same argument applies equally to them (AI proponents) and they have already made up their mind, independent of any legal authority, that using unlicensed inputs is legal. The difference in our opinions is that if I’m wrong, no harm done, if they’re wrong, lots of harm has already been done. I’m trying to have a nuanced conversation but this has devolved into some pro/anti AI, all or nothing thing. If you still think I want to ban AI after this wall of text I don’t know what to tell you dude. If I’ve been unclear it’s not for lack of trying.
- Riverheart 1y ago
  The collection of the training data is the “scooping up” I mentioned. I assume you acknowledge the training data doesn’t spontaneously burst out of the aether? As for the model, it’s still creating deterministic, derivative works based off its inputs and the only thing that makes it random is the seed so it being a database of vectors is irrelevant.
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    deterministic is neither here nor there for copyright infringement. a hash of an image is not infringing, and a slightly noisy version of it is.
    - Riverheart 1y ago
      Nobody is trying to copyright an image hash and determinism matters because it’s why the outputs are derivative rather than inspired.
      - bawolff 1y ago
        That is not how copyright works. "Inspired" works can still be derrivative. In the US, entirely deterministic works are not considered derrivative works as they aren't considered new creative works (if anything they are considered the same as the original). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...
        Riverheart 1y ago
        “In the US, entirely deterministic works are not considered derrivative works as they aren't considered new creative works (if anything they are considered the same as the original)” Okay, so if the inputs to the model are my artwork to replicate my style, is the output copyrightable by you? You just said deterministic works aren’t derivative, they’re considered the same as the original. That’s not anything I’ve heard AI proponents claim and the outputs are more original than a 1 to 1 photocopy but I assume like the case you linked to that the answer will be, no, you can’t copyright.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Training data at scale unavoidably taints models with vast amounts of references to the same widespread ideas that appear repeatedly in said data, so because the model has "seen" probably millions of photos of Indiana Jones, if you ask for an image of an archeologist who wears a hat and uses a whip, it's weighted averages are going to lead it to create something extremely similar to Indiana Jones because it has seen Indiana Jones so much. Disintegrating IP into trillions of pieces and then responding to an instruction to create it with something so close to the IP as to barely be distinguishable is still infringement. The flip-side to that is the truly "original" images where no overt references are present all look kinda similar. If you run vague enough prompts to get something new that won't land you in hot water, you end up with a sort of stock-photo adjacent looking image where the lighting doesn't make sense and is completely unmotivated, the framing is strange, and everything has this over-smoothed, over-tuned "magazine copy editor doesn't understand the concept of restraint" look.
  - tpmoney 1y ago
    > if you ask for an image of an archeologist who wears a hat and uses a whip, it's weighted averages are going to lead it to create something extremely similar to Indiana Jones because it has seen Indiana Jones so much. If you ask a human artist for an image of "an archeologist who wears a hat and uses a whip" you're also going to get something extremely similar to Indiana Jones unless you explicitly ask for something else. Let's imagine we go to deviantart and ask some folks to draw us some drawing from these prompts: A blond haired fighter from a fantasy world that wears a green tunic and green pointy cap and used a sword and shield. A foreboding space villain with all black armor, a cape and full face breathing apparatus that uses a laser sword. A pudgy plumber in blue overalls and a red cap of Italian descent I don't know about you but I would expect with nothing more than that, most of the time you're going to get something very close to Link, Darth Vader and Mario. Link might be the one with the best chance to get something different just because the number of publicly known images of "fantasy world heroes" is much more diverse than the set of "black armored space samurai" and "Italian plumbers" > Disintegrating IP into trillions of pieces and then responding to an instruction to create it with something so close to the IP as to barely be distinguishable is still infringement. But it's the person that causes the creation of the infringing material that is responsible for the infringement, not the machine or device itself. A xerox machine is a machine that disintegrates IP into trillions of pieces and then responds to instructions to duplicate that IP almost exactly (or to the best of its abilities). And when that functionality was challenged, the courts rightfully found that a xerox machine in and of itself, regardless of its capability to be used for infringement is not in and of itself infringing.

Workaccount2 1y ago

There is no "scooping up", the models aren't massive archives of copied art. People either don't understand how these models work or they purposely misrepresent it (or purposely refuse to understand it). Showing the model an picture doesn't create a copy of that picture in it's "brain". It moves a bunch of vectors around that captures an "essence" of what the image is. The next image shown from a totally different artist with a totally different style may well move around many of those same vectors again. But suffice to say, there is no copy of the picture anywhere inside of it. This also why these models hallucinate so much, they are not drawing from a bank of copies, they are working off of a fuzzy memory.

TeMPOraL 1y ago
> People either don't understand how these models work or they purposely misrepresent it (or purposely refuse to understand it). Not only that, they also assume or pretend that this is obviously violating copyright, when in fact this is a) not clear, and b) pending determination by courts and legislators around the world. FWIW, I agree with your perspective on training, but I also accept that artists have legitimate moral grounds to complain and try to fight it - so I don't really like to argue about this with them; my pet peeve is on the LLM side of things, where the loudest arguments come from people who are envious and feel entitled, even though they have no personal stake in this.
- Riverheart 1y ago
  “Not only that, they also assume or pretend that this is obviously violating copyright, when in fact this is a) not clear, and b) pending determination by courts and legislators around the world.” Uh huh, so much worse than the people that assume or pretend that it’s obviously not infringing and legal. Fortunately I don’t need to wait for a lawyer to form an opinion and neither do those in favor of AI as you might’ve noticed. You see any of them backing down and waiting for answer from a higher authority?
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    > You see any of them backing down and waiting for answer from a higher authority? Should they? That's generally not how things work in most places. Normally, if something isn't clearly illegal, especially when it's something too new and different for laws to clearly cover, you're free to go ahead and try it; you're not expected to first seek a go-ahead from a court.
    - Riverheart 1y ago
      You just chided people for having strong opinions about AI infringement without a court ruling to back them up but now you’re saying that creating/promoting an entire industry based on a legal grey area is a social norm that you have no strong feelings about. I would have thought the same high bar to speak on copyright for those who believe it infringes would be applied equally to those saying it does not, especially when it financially benefits them. I don’t think we’ll find consensus.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    This is silly. What are you proposing? A coup to ban AI? Because that is the alternative to waiting for legislators and courts.
    - Riverheart 1y ago
      Never proposed a ban, the issue is copyright, use licensed inputs and I could care less. Pro AI people need to stop behaving like it’s a foregone conclusion that anything they do is right and protected from criticism because, as was pointed out, the legality of what is being done with unlicensed inputs, which is the majority of inputs, is still up for debate. I’m just calling attention to the double standard being applied in who is allowed to have an opinion on what the legal outcome should be prior to that verdict. Temporal said people shouldn’t “pretend or assume” that lots of AI infringes on other people’s work because the law hasn’t caught up but the same argument applies equally to them (AI proponents) and they have already made up their mind, independent of any legal authority, that using unlicensed inputs is legal. The difference in our opinions is that if I’m wrong, no harm done, if they’re wrong, lots of harm has already been done. I’m trying to have a nuanced conversation but this has devolved into some pro/anti AI, all or nothing thing. If you still think I want to ban AI after this wall of text I don’t know what to tell you dude. If I’ve been unclear it’s not for lack of trying.
Riverheart 1y ago
The collection of the training data is the “scooping up” I mentioned. I assume you acknowledge the training data doesn’t spontaneously burst out of the aether? As for the model, it’s still creating deterministic, derivative works based off its inputs and the only thing that makes it random is the seed so it being a database of vectors is irrelevant.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  deterministic is neither here nor there for copyright infringement. a hash of an image is not infringing, and a slightly noisy version of it is.
  - Riverheart 1y ago
    Nobody is trying to copyright an image hash and determinism matters because it’s why the outputs are derivative rather than inspired.
    - bawolff 1y ago
      That is not how copyright works. "Inspired" works can still be derrivative. In the US, entirely deterministic works are not considered derrivative works as they aren't considered new creative works (if anything they are considered the same as the original). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...
      - Riverheart 1y ago
        “In the US, entirely deterministic works are not considered derrivative works as they aren't considered new creative works (if anything they are considered the same as the original)” Okay, so if the inputs to the model are my artwork to replicate my style, is the output copyrightable by you? You just said deterministic works aren’t derivative, they’re considered the same as the original. That’s not anything I’ve heard AI proponents claim and the outputs are more original than a 1 to 1 photocopy but I assume like the case you linked to that the answer will be, no, you can’t copyright.
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
Training data at scale unavoidably taints models with vast amounts of references to the same widespread ideas that appear repeatedly in said data, so because the model has "seen" probably millions of photos of Indiana Jones, if you ask for an image of an archeologist who wears a hat and uses a whip, it's weighted averages are going to lead it to create something extremely similar to Indiana Jones because it has seen Indiana Jones so much. Disintegrating IP into trillions of pieces and then responding to an instruction to create it with something so close to the IP as to barely be distinguishable is still infringement. The flip-side to that is the truly "original" images where no overt references are present all look kinda similar. If you run vague enough prompts to get something new that won't land you in hot water, you end up with a sort of stock-photo adjacent looking image where the lighting doesn't make sense and is completely unmotivated, the framing is strange, and everything has this over-smoothed, over-tuned "magazine copy editor doesn't understand the concept of restraint" look.
- tpmoney 1y ago
  > if you ask for an image of an archeologist who wears a hat and uses a whip, it's weighted averages are going to lead it to create something extremely similar to Indiana Jones because it has seen Indiana Jones so much. If you ask a human artist for an image of "an archeologist who wears a hat and uses a whip" you're also going to get something extremely similar to Indiana Jones unless you explicitly ask for something else. Let's imagine we go to deviantart and ask some folks to draw us some drawing from these prompts: A blond haired fighter from a fantasy world that wears a green tunic and green pointy cap and used a sword and shield. A foreboding space villain with all black armor, a cape and full face breathing apparatus that uses a laser sword. A pudgy plumber in blue overalls and a red cap of Italian descent I don't know about you but I would expect with nothing more than that, most of the time you're going to get something very close to Link, Darth Vader and Mario. Link might be the one with the best chance to get something different just because the number of publicly known images of "fantasy world heroes" is much more diverse than the set of "black armored space samurai" and "Italian plumbers" > Disintegrating IP into trillions of pieces and then responding to an instruction to create it with something so close to the IP as to barely be distinguishable is still infringement. But it's the person that causes the creation of the infringing material that is responsible for the infringement, not the machine or device itself. A xerox machine is a machine that disintegrates IP into trillions of pieces and then responds to instructions to duplicate that IP almost exactly (or to the best of its abilities). And when that functionality was challenged, the courts rightfully found that a xerox machine in and of itself, regardless of its capability to be used for infringement is not in and of itself infringing.