Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims • Hacker News Board

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#101

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #76

dylan604 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another example of when you have money, normal rules no longer apply to you.

There is criminal and there is civil. Just because something is illegal (speeding, jay walk-ing) doesn’t mean I’m some sort of psychopath for ignoring those laws - I make a calculation about how likely it is I’ll be caught vs. time saved. Similarly a business looks at a penalty and makes a judgement. This isn’t some insane immoral concept.

>There is criminal and there is civil.

Okay, but everything you said after that has nothing to do with that statement.

You choosing to break laws has nothing to do with criminal vs civil. It has everything to do with where your moral compass points. You choose to break rules because you've decided to do that based on whatever moral integerity you do/don't have.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#102

Post by Beaver117 » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

b800h wrote: post #91

unity1001 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can this be in actuality prevented? By abolishing copyright and making crediting the author a habit. There is no way copyrights can survive the AI. There is no way human civilization will let 200 year old legal practices hold back technological advancement.

I think there's a strong case for arguing that we may actually completely ban AI and any sufficiently strong ML algorithm. AI hasn't even realised a millionth of its potential yet, and it's already running rings around humans (cf. algorithmic feeds driving political conflicts online). I think potentially it will cease to be tolerated and be treated a bit like WMDs.

First time I've heard that line of thinking. How and when do you think thatl happen?

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#103

Post by hedora » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

cantSpellSober wrote: post #6

Email this morning: AI Generated Content Effective immediately, Getty Images will cease to accept all submissions created using AI generative models (e.g., Stable Diffusion, Dall‑E 2, MidJourney, etc.) and prior submissions utilizing such models will be removed. There are open questions with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and there are unaddressed rights issues with respect to the underlying im…

What if someone uses the Stable Diffusion editor plugin for photoshop, etc?

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#104

Post by noobermin » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #62

Reading between the lines of this, it sounds to me like Getty is preparing a copyright claim against the AI companies: 1. They seem of the opinion that the copyright question is open. 2. Their business stands to lose substantially as a result of such models existing. 3. It would be a bad look for them to make a claim whilst simultaneously accepting works from the models into Getty. 4. At least some of their watermark…

5. Getty pictures were trained on likely without permission. So, they definitely might be considering starting a lawsuit.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32573523

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#105

Post by visarga » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #43

henryfjordan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they do not. They assert that the AI can't be the "author", it has to be a human. It's exactly the same as trying to assign copyright to your camera. Even though it generated the image from photons, it was the human pressing the button that mattered.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-offic... > An image generated through artificial intelligence lacked the “human authorship” necessary for protection > Both in its 2019 decision and its decision this February, the USCO found the “human authorship” element was lacking and was wholly necessary to obtain a copyright, Engadget’s K. Holt wrote. Current copyright law only provides protections to “the…

Doesn't seem to apply to Stable Diffusion and Dall-E because there is substantial human work involved - picking and evolving the prompt and selecting the best result. Sometimes it's also collaging and masking. Maybe it could apply to making "variations" where you just have to click a button. But you still have to choose the subject image on which you do variations, and to pick the best one or scrap the lot.

It's completely different from a monkey stealing your camera and shooting some pictures. AI art depends on the intent and taste of the human, except when it's an almost copy of a training set example, but that can be filtered by software.

And if we look up from art, there are other fields that stand to benefit from AI image generation. For example illustration for educational contents, or ideas for products - shoes, clothes, cars, interior designs, maybe even cosplay costume design, it could be used to quickly create training data on a very specific topic, or to create de-biasing datasets (super balanced and diverse by design). A specially tuned version could function as a form of mood-inducing therapy - or Rorschach test. As a generative model of images it is of interest for AI research. So copyright gotta be weighed against all the other interests.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#106

Post by latchkey » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

OscarCunningham wrote: post #99

latchkey wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the copyright stuff is a ruse to distract from the real thing... they just don't want AI artwork. I asked this same question on here a few days ago when another site blocked AI artwork. I realized that the more that AI artwork gets blocked, the more that this is an opportunity to provide exactly that! Niches make great business models. Someone responded... https://lexica.art/ While not quite exactly what I wa…

What would be the use-case of an AI-art library? The AI is the library.

img2img?

Sharing generative text / parameters?

Not just a library, but a community.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#107

Post by retzkek » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

z9znz wrote: post #10

Haha, Getty images should be planning a big pivot strategy, not worrying about AI content. I predict that within 5 years we will have this all refined to the point where we can generate almost any image we want, to our liking. If you're shopping for a stock photo, you only have what's available. I've looked for things before, and sometimes you have lots of options which just aren't quite what you want. So you take "g…

1. Train AI model using your massive library of stock images and offer image generation to your massive existing customer base.

2. Sue or C&D all other image generation services that can be shown to be using models trained in part with your images.

3. Profit!

It's really not a far step from "search for existing images with these keywords" to "generate image from these keywords/prompt". There's also the option to start with stock images, pick the closest, and have AI refine it to better match the user's vision, so now instead of "good enough" you have "perfect."

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#108

Post by mring33621 » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

ROTMetro wrote: post #73

can16358p wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. AI imagery is here to stay and will get better every day. A service should either embrace it or they will lose a significant portion of their users/customers to another who does support AI content. While most of the AI content is not ready for prime time in terms of coherence and resolution, it's just a matter of time that it reaches (and quickly surpasses) traditional methods.

But it's not copyrightable. I guess you can lie and say you created it, but you didn't, and computer generated. You created it no more than you created your house because you picked the layout and paint colors. There is no money in non-copyrightable generated computer images.

Bullshit.

I made a new image using a computer program that I was legally licensed to use.

The program might be Corel Draw.

It might be Blah Blah Diffusion Pro Plus.

Either way, I made the image and I own the copyright, unless some other contract was made between myself and the program's owner or my employer.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#109

Post by Jevon23 » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

The impression that I’m getting from a lot of the comments here (and a lot of past discussions about AI art on HN) is that tech people view the art industry as a “challenge”, and they want to use machine learning tools to “defeat” it - either because they just want to demonstrate the sheer power of these tools, or because they think artists are irrational for thinking that there’s something special about human art and they want to prove them wrong, or what have you.

I can’t think of any other way to explain the persistent desire to keep forcing AI art into spaces where it’s not wanted, or the repeated discussions about loopholes in the rules, how AI art can avoid detection, etc.

I suppose the comparison I would make is to chess. Computer assistance is strictly forbidden in chess tournaments - it’s cheating. Both the players and the spectators want to see matches played between two humans, without computer interference. You could devise clever ways of getting around the rules and cheating (there’s a big cheating scandal rocking the chess world as we speak), but no one would praise you for doing this. They would just think you were being a jerk.

Similarly, there will always be people who want to create communities centered around human art, simply because of the mere fact that it was made by a human and they want to see what human skill is able to accomplish without AI assistance.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#110

Post by extra88 » Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #84

jfoster wrote: post #62

Reading between the lines of this, it sounds to me like Getty is preparing a copyright claim against the AI companies: 1. They seem of the opinion that the copyright question is open. 2. Their business stands to lose substantially as a result of such models existing. 3. It would be a bad look for them to make a claim whilst simultaneously accepting works from the models into Getty. 4. At least some of their watermark…

There are two separate open US legal questions: 1) Does the use of copyrighted images in the OpenAI training model make the output a copyright infringement? This is not yet settled law. If I read a thousand books and write my own book, it's not an infringement, but if I copy and paste one page from each of a thousand books it would be. 2) Can an OpenAI generated image be copyrighted? Courts have ruled that an AI cann…

> if I copy and paste one page from each of a thousand books it would be.

It almost certainly would not be infringement. One page of text out of an entire work is very small. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole is one of the factors considered when making a fair use defense. This hypothetical book would also have zero effect on the potential market for the source books.

AI-generated images generally won't infringe on the training images because they don't substantially contain portions of the sources. If a generated image happened to be substantially similar to a particular source image, it could also affect the potential market for that source image. But it's also likely that there tons of human-made images that are coincidentally also substantially similar and they're not infringing on each other; they're also probably in the AI's training set so good luck trying to make the case that your image in the training is the one being infringed. On top of that, if the plaintiff could win, the actual market value of the source work is relevant to damages and that value is likely almost nothing so congratulations, you tied up the legal system just to get one AI-image taken down.

BTW, using all the images to train the AI is not itself infringement; I can't say there was no wrong-doing in the process of acquiring the images but using them to train the AI was not infringing on the copyrights of those images.

https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/