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Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

reuters.com

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Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#361

Post by Turing_Machine »

kranke155 wrote: post #110
shkkmo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why isn't it that an artist could say, hey I'm letting you see this painting, but you are not allowed to sit down with a canvas and learn how to reproduce it? Because you can do that in galleries - no photos, no reproductions. But you can't stop people from sitting and studying your painting and then painting stuff similar to it. One of the core assertions that is being decided in this case is if there is any actua…

I find the whole comparison "it´s just like a person learning" to be a tiring trope. It's demonstrably not. Like I said to another poster - you've probably seen a Picasso. Can you make me a copy? Because a Diffusion model can. But you can't. Why not? Your denial that there is a demonstrable difference between human and machine attention is part of the core obfuscation these companies are using to win this battle, so…

> Can you make me a copy?

If I am a decent human artist who's looked at many Picasso works and spent time studying how to reproduce his style?

Of course I can.

Artists copy each other's styles all the time, dude. You can literally go to Deviant Art (or wherever), scroll through, and point out examples of style copying, often much more glaring that anything I've seen out of a diffusion model.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#362

Post by theonlybutlet »

panta wrote: post #343
theonlybutlet wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you propose is just a different small set of monopolistic players. Copyright has always been a trade off between the creator and society. It should be enforced the exact same way as it currently is. Fair use is fair use. By your same logic, what is the difference between an AI or a very productive human? Where do you draw the line?

Fair use by a machine is a concept which has hardly been studied by legislators. Personally I'd draw the line at the human/machine boundary.

Fair enough, if that's is so, there's even less of a case to be made. The person inputting variables (i.e a prompt) into the model that prints out non-fair use outputs would be at fault. The end work would be the actual object subject to litigation. It's just a tool then. The current system still stands then.

Arguing a trained model is infringing would then be like arguing the manufacturers of my monitor were infringing as it contained the very same RGB.as the artist.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#363

Post by creer »

cmiles74 wrote: post #120
harshreality wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you memorize all of harry potter word for word, or some famous solo vocal track from memory, are you committing a copyright violation? Or only if you then recreate it and try to redistribute your copy? The scenario where AI training is locked down doesn't result in 1,000,000 individuals getting paid. (What would they get paid, and by whom?) It results in Disney, Adobe, etc.—massive companies with existing licenses…

Where is this idea that copyrighted material should be excluded from training data coming from? My understanding is that people want to be compensated when their intellectual property is used as training data for a machine. That strikes me as an entirely reasonable expectation. One person memorizing Harry Potter for their own amusement, even if they make money doing public appearances where they recite sections of th…

> people want to be compensated when their intellectual property is used as training data for a machine.

That's fine that they want to. The question is whether copyright law gives them that and that's very unlikely.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#364

Post by theonlybutlet »

unsui wrote: post #349
theonlybutlet wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In law there is such a thing as legal person as opposed to natural person. When it comes to commercial law, its provisions tends to relate to legal persons.

legal personhood (such as corporate personhood) are tools/frameworks which facilitate certain economic actions, such as the creation of charters for specific initiatives. Like any useful force amplifier, legal personhood has effectively been co-opted to benefit those entities which stand to gain from it (e.g., corporations, large-money political donors, etc). Thus, it probably won't surprise anyone when AIs are grant…

I agree with you somewhat, in that human rights should be protected and law is just a tool, that I feel should be used to better humanity. There is a philosophical thought behind the whole idea of copyright, I suspect it'd be best to use that as a starting point rather as I'm sure it would weigh the pros and cons of your point against other factors. It fundamentally is designed to strike a balance between a creator and wider society.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#365

Post by pmoriarty »

raincole wrote: post #115
ballenf wrote: post #66

Can someone explain again how an ML system scanning and training on a copyrighted work is different from a highly skilled artist doing the same? There are artists that can study a painting for a few minutes and then recreate it from memory. There are artists who study a particular body of work so long that they can create more works indistinguishable in style. If an artist recreates a copyrighted work or creates a de…

> how an ML system scanning and training on a copyrighted work is different from a highly skilled artist doing the same? You just answered it? One is a ML system and one is a human? I'm really, really baffled why people keep using this argument. Like you guys know machines are not humans, right? ...right? Humans are special cases in laws. Always have been and always will be (until AGI). A pedestrian is treated differ…

Isn't copyright about the final product, not how it was arrived at?

If I independently come up with a song called "Let it Be" that has the same lyrics as the Beatles song and publish it without the permission of the copyright holders, I will have violated their copyright.

It doesn't matter if I heard the song before or not. It doesn't matter if I did it myself or used a computer to do it. What matters is the final product and my publishing of a song close enough to the one that was copyrighted.

AI image generators are just tools, like Photoshop is a tool. Nobody cares if you used a paint brush or Photoshop to create something that looks like a copyrighted image, why should AI image generators be any different?

If the final image is similar enough to a copyrighted work and I publish that image without permission of the copyright holder, then that's a copyright violation.

If the final image is different enough, then it's not.

That an AI was used and how the AI was trained are completely separate issues.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#366

Post by __loam »

ballenf wrote: post #66

Can someone explain again how an ML system scanning and training on a copyrighted work is different from a highly skilled artist doing the same? There are artists that can study a painting for a few minutes and then recreate it from memory. There are artists who study a particular body of work so long that they can create more works indistinguishable in style. If an artist recreates a copyrighted work or creates a de…

The issue is that ml companies are using exact copies of the work in question, and using it to make massive for-profit systems without permission or compensation. Individual artists don't threaten the market in the same way.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#367

Post by frumper »

__loam wrote: post #366
ballenf wrote: post #66

Can someone explain again how an ML system scanning and training on a copyrighted work is different from a highly skilled artist doing the same? There are artists that can study a painting for a few minutes and then recreate it from memory. There are artists who study a particular body of work so long that they can create more works indistinguishable in style. If an artist recreates a copyrighted work or creates a de…

The issue is that ml companies are using exact copies of the work in question, and using it to make massive for-profit systems without permission or compensation. Individual artists don't threaten the market in the same way.

How do they get the works in question to train on?

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#368

Post by frumper »

xeckr wrote: post #331
thrill wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law does not say it is a matter of scale.

Scalable GenAI hardly existed as a sci-fi concept when the law was passed.

Then we should write a law to make it a matter of scale.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#369

Post by __loam »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #78
ballenf wrote: post #66

Can someone explain again how an ML system scanning and training on a copyrighted work is different from a highly skilled artist doing the same? There are artists that can study a painting for a few minutes and then recreate it from memory. There are artists who study a particular body of work so long that they can create more works indistinguishable in style. If an artist recreates a copyrighted work or creates a de…

No difference. Some people are just luddites or have vested interest against automation of their own field (but fine with other fields).

I don't know. It seems pretty shitty that these systems are literally leveraging their work against them. It also seems shitty that we're trying to automate cultural expression. Even if it's not explicitly illegal, the ai art guys are still ass holes.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#370

Post by __loam »

frumper wrote: post #367
__loam wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that ml companies are using exact copies of the work in question, and using it to make massive for-profit systems without permission or compensation. Individual artists don't threaten the market in the same way.

How do they get the works in question to train on?

They download them from the public internet. The issue is that digital artists are basically required to maintain a public portfolio to get work. Them doing that is not implicit permission to use that work for whatever the fuck you want, as at says at the bottom of every image on Google images.
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