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Hey, computer, make me a font

serce.me

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Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#121

Post by Rantenki »

BoorishBears wrote: post #86
Rantenki wrote: post #84

OK, that's cool, but those fonts are all terrible. The serifs are all different sizes and shapes, sometimes on the same letter. The kerning looks like a random walk. The stroke widths are all over the place, and/or the hinting is busted. Now, that said, it's pretty amazing that this works at all, but it'll take some pretty specific training on a model to get something that can compete with a human made font that's cu…

> Sadly, we'll also probably see adoption of these kinds of fonts (along with graphic design, illustration, songwriting, screenwriting, etc)... because "meh, good enough" combined with some Dunning-Kruger. Ironic bringing up Dunning-Kruger as you treat generic RLHF as a "pretty specific training" and make sweeping declarations about how people will use AI as if the current SOTA of several of the tasks you just mentio…

I never mentioned reinforcement learning, and my DK statement was completely around using flawed fonts for graphic design, etc.

My partner _is_ a professional graphic designer, and we _have_ seen some pretty terrible client graphics that came out of Midjourney. They're amazing for what they are, but it's very difficult to get something out of it that competes with a professional illustrator, even ignoring the whole copyrighted content in the model issue.

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#122

Post by rogerclark »

tpmoney wrote: post #96
rogerclark wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so depressing to think that this is what people want.

What is that? The ability to quickly and easily generate creative or expressive pieces of computer wizardry without first having to delve into the depths of esoteric knowledge? Of course people want that. It turns out you can’t specialize in everything, but sometimes you just want to be able to make something good enough without having to engage the services of an expert in the field. No this might not be the most be…

Do you wholeheartedly believe this and can you truly not understand why others might be uncomfortable with the direction of generative AI? Defending your viewpoint makes sense, but I don't buy the idea that the other stance is completely incomprehensible.

The grandma doesn't need generative fonts. She already has fonts that ship with her phone and computer. She already has iMovie for her grandkid videos. Does she need the ability to generate videos of political figures saying things they didn't say?

Obviously, what concerns us is a race to the bottom for the value of all human output.

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#123

Post by ddingus »

logicallee wrote: post #119
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your phrasing almost makes it sound like you're sharing a clear example of it analyzing and completing a complex task correctly, while perfectly understanding what it's doing. OpenAI has hardcoded (or heavily overfit) several special-purpose functions into their ChatGPT systems. In the past few months, they've integrated other special-purpose models, so their tools can do more than just predictive text (e.g. image…

>>statistical prediction that does not involve any degree of thinking, analysis, or understanding. >This is a straw argument. People say that it does not understand anything, that it just predicts text as though it does. However, I believe they're mistaken. I find that it clearly understands things. What do you think? Do you think it understands you when you speak to it? Can it do problem solving or original thought…

That mirrors my experiences. One thing in particular that I find notable is to ask it a question after it has made an effort.

"Does this really answer the question"

Or, describe how the information you provided will reach the goal in a possible, practical way.

It does understand basics, like me, you, others. And it can handle logic expressions to a degree I find notable.

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#124

Post by ddingus »

raincole wrote: post #120
mock-possum wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not this agin /eyeroll It’s not illegal for a human to look through 71,000 fonts and then creat their own. It can’t be illegal for a human to use a robot to look through the fonts for them.

> it can't be... Oh boy it totally can. I'm not saying it it, but it totally can. I feel many people (at least on HN) treat laws like programming. There are some similarities, but programmers like to eliminate arbitrary special cases, while lawmakers love to create arbitrary special cases. It's like their only job, really.

In fact, that failure to grok lawmakers, lies at the heart of many poor decisions made.

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#125

Post by BoorishBears »

Rantenki wrote: post #121
BoorishBears wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, we'll also probably see adoption of these kinds of fonts (along with graphic design, illustration, songwriting, screenwriting, etc)... because "meh, good enough" combined with some Dunning-Kruger. Ironic bringing up Dunning-Kruger as you treat generic RLHF as a "pretty specific training" and make sweeping declarations about how people will use AI as if the current SOTA of several of the tasks you just mentio…

I never mentioned reinforcement learning, and my DK statement was completely around using flawed fonts for graphic design, etc. My partner _is_ a professional graphic designer, and we _have_ seen some pretty terrible client graphics that came out of Midjourney. They're amazing for what they are, but it's very difficult to get something out of it that competes with a professional illustrator, even ignoring the whole c…

Reinforcement learning from human feeedback is the training you're referring to, you just don't realize it.

RLHF is why 2 years ago "They're amazing for what they are" would have been "They're so hideous no one in their right mind would use them", and why in 2 years that too will be some weaker form of argument.

There's no special knowledge needed to know "I like X over Y": RLHF allows a model to turn that into guidance at a scale that's never been possible before.

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#126

Post by bmitc »

ballenf wrote: post #28
philipwhiuk wrote: post #18

> To train the model, I assembled a dataset of 71k distinct fonts. I give it a week before Monotype sues your face off.

Copyright around fonts may not support such a suit in the same as way as works of art. Wikipedia says: "In the United States, the shapes of typefaces are not eligible for copyright but may be protected by design patent (although it is rarely applied for, the first US design patent that was ever awarded was for a typeface).[1]" So just scanning the rendered font (as opposed to the code that generates it), may be harde…

General question. What is the end game of all this? Corporations that have the money and other means are just wildly burning electricity while sucking up the world's art and knowledge work.

How can anyone possibly protect their work in this no holds barred environment?

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#127

Post by notatoad »

gigglesupstairs wrote: post #52

"Fucking Hell" - first thing I yelled to myself when I saw that headline Kudos for the project, of course, but it just saddens me a bit more. Nothing is sacred anymore.

were fonts ever sacred? monotype has made a whole business off of making helvetica and times new roman alternatives that are basically indistinguishable to the originals but don't require licencing fees.

that seems like exactly the sort of business that deserves to be taken over by AI.

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#128

Post by spookie »

jbc1 wrote: post #103
speps wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it saves you having to credit anyone, win-win!

Awful lot of sites have icons on them. I can't recall ever seeing icon credit. Copilot is like a year old.

That's not a good argument, I'm sorry. A lot of people spent time and effort designing and creating something; credit, or reference is the least one could do.

If it's not done, even in a comment inside the HTML... well, it would be nice if it were :)

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#129

Post by jbc1 »

spookie wrote: post #128
jbc1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awful lot of sites have icons on them. I can't recall ever seeing icon credit. Copilot is like a year old.

That's not a good argument, I'm sorry. A lot of people spent time and effort designing and creating something; credit, or reference is the least one could do. If it's not done, even in a comment inside the HTML... well, it would be nice if it were :)

Not a good argument for what?

Re: Hey, computer, make me a font

#130

Post by bambax »

SerCe wrote: post #100
bambax wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author says he achieved text-to-SVG generation but doesn't point to a code repository for it... It would be super interesting (or does gpt-4 do it natively?) That said, I'm not sure that you need GPT-4 for outlining a BW image and making a path out of it; Corel Draw did that well, over 25 years ago? So yes, another approach to what the author is doing, would be to generate font bitmaps using any of the leading im…

Hi, I am the author. For text-to-SVG, check out IconShop [1]. It was the paper that I tried to reproduce results from initially. In the paper, there is a comparison of their approach against using GPT-4 [2]. Using vectorisation tools like potrace, is indeed a much more popular approach, and there are quite a few papers generating fonts this way. The most recent I believe is DualVector [3]. But I tried to approach the…

Thank you for the follow-up! Much appreciated!
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