We’ve filed a lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion • Hacker News Board

Re: We’ve filed a lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion

#471

Post by danaris » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

anothernewdude wrote: post #466

danaris wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's equivalent to trying to sue a compression codec because a specific archive contains a copyrighted image. That's plainly untrue, as Stable Diffusion is not just the algorithm, but the trained model—trained on millions of copyrighted images.

Stable Diffusion is essentially a Compression Codec though. It's one optimised to compress real world images and art, by using statistics gathered from real world images and art. It's like the compression that occurs when I say "Mona Lisa" and you read it, and can know many aspects of that painting.

I will admit to knowing the overall underlying technology better than the details of what specific implementations consist of. My understanding is, though, that "Stable Diffusion" is both a specific refinement (or set of refinements) of the same ML techniques that created DALL-E, Midjourney, and other ML art generators, and the trained model that the group working on it created to go with it.

So while it would be possible to create a "Public Diffusion" that took the Stable Diffusion refinements of the ML techniques and created a model built solely out of public-domain art, as it stands, "Stable Diffusion" includes by definition the model that is built from the copyrighted works in question.

Re: We’ve filed a lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion

#472

Post by Ephil012 » Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 11:07 PM UTC

Ephil012 wrote: post #418

Ephil012 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should clarify a bit about how latent space works as I didn't in the original comment. Stable diffusion has something called an encoder and decoder. What the encoder does is it takes an image, finds it's fundamental characteristics, and then converts it into a data point (for the sake of simplicity we will use a vector even though it doesn't have to be). Let's say the vector represents a black dog. If you took a si…

Update: As I’ve looked more into the topic the less sure I am now about if I’m correct. I still think that there’s probably little chance that the whole dataset is shipped with stable diffusion. However, I am wondering about if maybe partial examples are shipped with it (e.g. a dictionary of certain concepts) or if there any any other caveats where stable diffusion might contain traces of the original data (note: I d…

Nevermind, asked someone on a Discord who is more familiar with ML than me. Also, checked a few resources online. As far as I can tell there aren't any traces of the original dataset in Stable Diffusion. There aren't even partial examples of the dataset in there according to the person I talked to. Maybe they're wrong, but I suspect they are right. I did read there is a dictionary for CLIP, but that's a bunch of words that Stable Diffusion can recognize and not saved artwork.

Disclaimer: Not an ML expert

Re: We’ve filed a lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion

#473

Post by Xelynega » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 10:20 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #368

Xelynega wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's very unclear" in legal cases is synonymous with "it hasn't been challenged in court yet". You say they're moderately confident because they're fairly reputable, but remember that Madoff was a "reputable business man" for the 20 years he ran a ponzi scheme. They don't have to be confident in the legality to do it, they just had to be confident in the potential profit. With openai being values at $10B by Microsof…

That's one company. There's dozens if not hundreds of companies, research groups and individuals working under the same assumption. Maybe it's a mass delusion but that feels like a stretch. Also your wording makes this sound entirely like a sinister conspiracy or cash grab. Many people think this is simply a worthy pursuit and the right direction to be looking at the moment.

If I make it sound like a sinister conspiracy or cash grab, that's because that's what it as long as it's a private entity and not a public endeavor.

I don't deny that this might be a worthy pursuit or the right direction to be looking, or that that's the reason some people are in it. I just question the motivations of a private company valued at $10b which is going to have a lot more control over the direction of the industry than those passionate individuals.