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Stable Diffusion is a big deal

simonwillison.net

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Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#461

Post by dodobirdlord »

mellavora wrote: post #89
throwaway1851 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really significant, novel copyright issues implicated by these large generative models trained on other people’s IP. If you take a step back, you can see that there are different ways to frame what is happening. One frame is: “Defendant built an algorithm that memorized features of Plaintiff’s IP. Defendant’s algorithm recombines parts of those features in order to produce works in the same domain that comp…

How about if I use Stable Diffusion, running 24/7 on a massive set of parallel clusters, and file for IP protection on all of the resulting images? What potentially human-creatable images have I just taken ownership of? Let's extend: what if I claim IP ownership of every image which StableDiffusion could produce?

The main reason is that you can’t, because only a work produced by a human is eligible for copyright.

For example, it has previously been litigated that nobody has IP ownership of an image taken with a camera by an animal.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#462

Post by marcAKAmarc »

avg_dev wrote: post #363
marcAKAmarc wrote: post #317

This doesn't strictly have to do with stable diffusion, but I really really hope that someone eventually creates a service that hosts live interfaces for all of the legacy image generation models. The turn around on these things is wild, and I worry that unique image generation techniques will become antiquated and forgotten.

I am sorry, I could not parse your comment. Can you explain what it means in simple terms? Thanks.

Sure. It is probably hard to parse because I do not have solid knowledge regarding image generation AI stuff.

To restate my previous sentiment, I am quite attached to image generation with GPT-2, which is now legacy. Even though GPT-2 is not as advanced in many ways as more modern alternatives, I am artistically attached to its' shortcomings/artifacts. I really hope older image generation methods like gpt-2 remain available as a service to the general public.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#463

Post by throwaway1851 »

kergonath wrote: post #387
throwaway1851 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this type of reduction again and again to advocate for one position or another relating to ML. Human consciousness and thought processes aren’t “just” anything (math, electrical impulses, etc.) — the fact is, we don’t know what the brain really does and how it’s connected to our conscious experience, or even what that is! Deep learning is very powerful and impressive in its applications to date. However, it’s s…

> Human consciousness and thought processes aren’t “just” anything (math, electrical impulses, etc.) — the fact is, we don’t know what the brain really does and how it’s connected to our conscious experience, or even what that is! There are a lot of things we don’t know, but it is not magic. There is no discussion that artificial neurones don’t have much in common with the real ones, which are very non-linear and muc…

> “There are a lot of things we don’t know, but it is not magic. . . . [I]n the end it’s all electrochemistry.”

That’s an element of a belief system you may choose to subscribe to, not a fact. It can’t be a fact because there’s no way to prove or disprove it.

> “My point that even in the case of a ML model, you cannot get an exact reproduction any more than you can get from a human’s memory.”

Not quite. ML models can and do memorize and regurgitate near-exact features of the inputs. It’s not the goal, but it happens.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#464

Post by eloff »

galdosdi wrote: post #394
eloff wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a new user of copilot for the last three months, I can't disagree more. I was initially skeptical, and I have noticed it often produces code that looks good but is wrong. However, it still saves me enough time each day to pay for the monthly subscription - in one day. That's a 30x ROI. I imagine it only gets better from here. I wont go back to programming without it.

Can I ask what kind of programming you do for it to be so helpful? I mostly do maintenance of legacy codebases (also known as codebases, lol) where a lot of the work is figuring out where the changes need to be made and actually making the changes is frequently just a few lines here and there. When I do have to figure out how to use some API, it's often not an open source one, so Copilot would not have it in its corp…

It's really more like a smarter autocomplete. I haven't tried it on a third party API yet, we don't use many at work. I work in a startup on a Python and TypeScript code base. To give an example, last night I was creating a unit test and copilot filled in the assertions. It missed one it couldn't know about, and it got two wrong. But it was a lot faster. The most amazing case to me was with a function to transform URLs to an image resize service. There was a bug in the function, it needed to return URLs ending in .SVG as-is. I went to fix the bug by typing "if" and copilot filled in the `if url.lower().endswith(".svg") return url`. It knew about the bug before I did. Too bad it couldn't do a code review when I originally wrote the function.

They have a 60 day free trial. Try it out, it's one of the most interesting changes in developer tools in a while. I feel like I'm living in the future sometimes when using it.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#466

Post by petra »

ryandrake wrote: post #413
galdosdi wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what kind of programming you do for it to be so helpful? I mostly do maintenance of legacy codebases (also known as codebases, lol) where a lot of the work is figuring out where the changes need to be made and actually making the changes is frequently just a few lines here and there. When I do have to figure out how to use some API, it's often not an open source one, so Copilot would not have it in its corp…

I haven't tried copilot either, but one of the things I'd be curious about is how well it can conform to a company's coding style guidelines and/or match its coding style with the existing legacy code that's being modified. One of the major annoyances of working as a team with legacy code is when someone forgets to, or deliberately avoids, conforming their code to the style and techniques of the surrounding code. Not…

That's an issue but it seems fixable.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#467

Post by peoplefromibiza »

thegrimmest wrote: post #450
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and the fact that it is a replica anyway, copying money is a crime, almost anywhere in the World, the simple act of making a copy is enough. Money usually contain artworks I would also not generate pictures of child pornography There's a reason why SD apply censorship filters to generated images

Yes, selling an exact copy of a copyrighted work is an infringement (giving it away generally isn't). Creating a derivative work, or work in the same style, is fair use. Generating a digital image of money isn't the same thing as counterfeiting currency. > I would also not generate pictures of child pornography Legality aside, why not ? Who is harmed? > There's a reason why SD apply censorship filters to generated im…

> I'm not sure there is. I don't think any one group of people is uniquely equipped to limit what images another group of people can generate with ML.

of course there is, you're free as long as you respect the rules.

https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion/pull/36

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#468

Post by eloff »

ryandrake wrote: post #413
galdosdi wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what kind of programming you do for it to be so helpful? I mostly do maintenance of legacy codebases (also known as codebases, lol) where a lot of the work is figuring out where the changes need to be made and actually making the changes is frequently just a few lines here and there. When I do have to figure out how to use some API, it's often not an open source one, so Copilot would not have it in its corp…

I haven't tried copilot either, but one of the things I'd be curious about is how well it can conform to a company's coding style guidelines and/or match its coding style with the existing legacy code that's being modified. One of the major annoyances of working as a team with legacy code is when someone forgets to, or deliberately avoids, conforming their code to the style and techniques of the surrounding code. Not…

I haven't tried copilot in languages less opinionated about style, so I'm not sure how well it handles that case. In Python, TypeScript, and rust it seems to work well. In any case I use auto format on save, so that fixes some of the potential formatting issues.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#469

Post by peoplefromibiza »

michaelchisari wrote: post #6

After using SD heavily for a week, I half agree with this. It is incredibly disruptive, and it's wild how much it accelerates the creative process. I'll give you that. But two things I've noticed: First, artists will still have a massive advantage over non-artists with this tool. A photographer who intimately knows the different lenses and cameras and industry terms will get to a representation of their idea much fas…

> First, artists will still have a massive advantage over non-artists with this tool

that's assuming the people artists sell their expertise to are able to understand the difference or what they are looking at

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmvqm/an-ai-generated-artwo...

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#470

Post by peoplefromibiza »

winddude wrote: post #378
_gabe_ wrote: post #307

Is it just me, or do the comments in this thread seem to be the exact opposite of the sentiment in the comments on similar Github Copilot threads? I just find it a bit ironic that programmers are irate about Github Copilot using their copyrighted material to train. However, if it's an ML model training off of copyrighted artists material, clearly its a transformative work. I just find the opposing sentiments for thes…

Copilot wasn't released opensource.

the dataset SD was trained on is not opensource either, it can't be, it includes copyrighted material for which they have no right or license.
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