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We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

stablediffusionlitigation.com

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Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#221

Post by bryanrasmussen »

realusername wrote: post #137
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #131

It seems to me the communal voice of HN varies widely on copyright issues depending on who is getting sued and who is getting potentially hurt by violations. People who generally make less money than programmers - writers, artists, musicians - should stop their whining and their unfair uses of copyright to control their creative output. Programmers who are getting shafted by big corporations using their code to build…

I'm personally for a massive reduction of copyright time to align it on patents but that's beside the point, even in the current copyright system that argument against machine learning makes no sense. The proof of that is they even had to lie about how stable diffusion works on this website to make it convincing, that's a clear sign that they are in the wrong. Even themselves discovered that the truth won't get them…

I meant it more that if the suit fails in the U.S similar suits might work in other countries.

It is a multi-front battle they face.

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#222

Post by chrischen »

charcircuit wrote: post #118
chrischen wrote: post #22

“It is a par­a­site that, if allowed to pro­lif­er­ate, will make artists extinct.” This is the fundamentally flawed and misguided argument that can literally be applied to any technological progress to curtail advancement. Imagine if the medical tricorder (a device from Star Trek that does maybe 99% of what modern doctors do) is suddenly invented today. Doctors could use this argument to defend their livelihoods, bu…

>artists exist for their output for society People will still be creative and make art even without society consuming their output. But society can create incentives to reward people for making art.

But incentives to maximize output is different from incentives to preserve current artists’ livelihoods.

We can create incentives so more people become doctors, but the purpose of incentives at the end of the day must maximize life saving, whether it’s done by an AI or a doctor using an AI.

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#223

Post by astrange »

synu wrote: post #217
astrange wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually judges would care more about whether the bytes came from than how many of them there are. Since SD is trained by gradient updating against several different images at the same time, it of course never copies any image bits straight into it. Since it's a latent-diffusion model, actual "image"ness is limited to the image encoder (VAE), so any fractional bits would be in there if you want to look. The text encod…

The important distinction then is using another program or device to analyze the bits but without copying them, that takes its own new impression? Like using a camera?

Well, theoretically more like a vague memory of it or taking notes on it.

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#224

Post by chrischen »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #18
chrischen wrote: post #6

Why only Stability AI and not OpenAI?

Going against a less well-funded company makes a favorable outcome more likely. Further, they only need a precedent - a ruling against SD would also apply to Dall-E.

Makes sense. Does that mean OpenAI could essentially help fund Stability AI’s defense then?

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#225

Post by cudgy »

dymk wrote: post #113
mbgerring wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Humans decided to include artwork that they did not have any right to use as part of a training data set. This is about holding humans accountable for their actions.

“Did they have a right to use publicly posted images” is up for the courts to decide

Pretty sure that’s already decided. Publicly played movies and music are not available to be used. Why would the same not apply to posted images?

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#226

Post by hhjinks »

dylan604 wrote: post #166
realusername wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> storing it in the training data means the AI can recreate it. No it doesn't, it means that abstract facts related to this image might be stored.

The pedantry gets tiring. If the AI can't recreate it exactly, it can recreate a likeness that is compelling enough that the average person would think it was the same. If it can't now, it will as it gets better. That's the point of using the training data.

Why does this argument apply to an Artificial Intelligence, but not a human one? A human is not breaking copyright just by being able recreate a copyrighted work they've studied.

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#227

Post by ifdefdebug »

XorNot wrote: post #155
AlotOfReading wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a 'color of your bits' topic, but I'm not sure why the internal representation matters. It's pretty trivial to recreate famous works like the Mona Lisa or Starry Night or Monet's Water Lily Pond. Obviously some representation of the originals exist inside the model+prompt. Why wouldn't that apply to other images in the training sets?

Because you're silently invoking additional data (the prompt + noise seed), which is not present in the training weights. You have the prompt + noise seed for any given output. An MPEG codec doesn't contain every movie in the world just because it could represent them if given the right file. The white light coming off a blank canvas also doesn't contain a copy of the Mona Lisa which will be revealed once someone obs…

OK so let me encrypt a movie and distribute that. Then you tell people they need to invoke additional data to watch the movie. Also give some hints (try the movie title lol).

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#228

Post by headsoup »

visarga wrote: post #207
headsoup wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a more complex scenario than it first appears. I think the lawsuits have a case if they can prove copyrighted images were taken and used directly in the commercial product. The moral arguments about AI and it's use and abuse are broad and difficult, because they rely on the intent of the end user rather than the developer of the tool to prove an argument has merit. I personally don't like AI art, but I c…

> It cheapens the artform. Everyone make their own artistic judgements, nobody's ideas are better. If people prefer this https://lexica.art/ (scroll down) then that's their right.

Tell me how those are 'ideas?'

I imagine there are plenty of people that prefer Autotune voices for some reason too. Doesn't mean everyone needs to agree that it's good in itself or for artists.

Re: We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion

#230

Post by madaxe_again »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #28
dr_dshiv wrote: post #2

“Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion con­tains unau­tho­rized copies of mil­lions—and pos­si­bly bil­lions—of copy­righted images.” That’s going to be hard to argue. Where are the copies? “Hav­ing copied the five bil­lion images—with­out the con­sent of the orig­i­nal artists—Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion relies on a math­e­mat­i­cal process called dif­fu­sion to store com­pressed copies of these train­ing images, which in turn are recom­bine…

> That’s going to be hard to argue. Where are the copies? In fairness, Diffusion is arguably a very complex entropy coding similar to Arithmetic/Huffman coding. Given that copyright is protectable even on compressed/encrypted files, it seems fair that the “container of compressed bytes” (in this case the Diffusion model) does “contain” the original images no differently than a compressed folder of images contains the…

In that vein, surely MD5 hashes should also be copyrighted, as they are derived from a work.
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