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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

#391

Post by corethree »

nirvdrum wrote: post #385
corethree wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the answer isn't an hallucination? Maybe it made the answer up creatively and is lying to you about its own capabilities. The fact that it knows the definition of creativity makes it's answer suspect. It's like saying this: "I am not capable of speaking or understanding English, what you see here is just a statistical prediction of the next most likely words. I do not in actuality understand or speak…

Well, we know how these things are built and how they function. This isn’t Skynet building an army and being coy about it.

We don't actually. We don't know fully how these things work.

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

#392

Post by corethree »

nirvdrum wrote: post #351
corethree wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the content generated by an LLM does not exist anywhere else... it is by definition "creative."

Which is precisely why I said “genuine creativity” in hopes of avoiding pedantry around word etymology. It’s hard to have these discussions when people are deliberately being obtuse. By this definition, nearly everything is creative making any discussion about it meaningless. So, let’s use the connotative meaning.

Ok yeah let's avoid that bullshit then. The problem is there's enough leeway between the words that I could honestly say everything LLMs generate are representative of what most humans define as "genuine creativity" and I bet you that I can show you human art and computer art side by side and you'd be incapable of knowing which one is genuinely creative.

I hate pedantic vocabulary just as much as you and this is not the direction I want to take it. But that test I outlined above literally points out that there is no difference. What the LLMs output fits our definition of genuine creativity because you can't tell the difference.

In fact the word itself is the ludicrous thing here. You just made it up to differentiate AI art and human art, but in reality there is no differentiator it's one category with zero recognizable difference... the only actual difference is "what" created it.

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

#393

Post by jofla_net »

__loam wrote: post #369
CrimsonRain wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally agree. As someone who hates how commoditization already permeated everything in the West we're sadly in for many years ahead of cheap regurgitated knockoffs in practically every human output domain imaginable, pictures, music, literature. All the while being told that what we were doing in these domains is 'just' this and 'only' that. At the same time it is fascinating from a scientific perspective, when it lands in the same boat as you're sailing it becomes quite unsettling.

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

#394

Post by xeckr »

csallen wrote: post #344
nologic01 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are going on an irrelevant tangent (whether people enjoying being creative - which is obviously true at least for some) instead of answering a very clear and simple question: how, in your evolved and less broken universe, will talented people dedicate their life to produce something that society does not acknowledge or reward but simply appropriates.

Why do we as a society need to answer that question? When automobiles were popularized, entire generations of families and people devoted to horsecraft suddenly found their business model obsolete. Did we as a society need to come together to ask how talented people in the horse industry might be able to continue to profitably dedicate their lives to that task? No, we just let the market figure it out, and allowed ch…

If a copy of someone's work is used to create a product (in this case, to train the GenAI), then it makes sense for the creator to receive some form of credit.

Your car/horse example makes no sense in this context because the existence of cars is not predicated on the existence of horses. On the other hand, GenAI is not possible without the art that forms the training data.

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

#395

Post by Riverheart »

corethree wrote: post #291
AlexandrB wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if this is true, the sum of a human's total experiences is far more vast than what LLMs are trained on and is mostly non-copyrighted material. Your eyes are open ~16 hours a day, constantly exposing your brain to various non-copyrighted stuff like trees, rocks, animals, the insides of your house, the crap on your desk, other people's faces, traffic, etc.

Right. LLMs have content that isn't copyrighted too. But humans like LLMs do have copyrighted content. That means humans are breaking the law that LLMs are also breaking.

Human society is built around humans so there is a reason I’m allowed to store art and stories in my brain; I and the vast majority of people can do jack all with it, pose little threat to the owners if we could, would draw attention if we did, and it’s not worthwhile or feasible to sue an entire population of content consumers for consuming content so people act smart and pick and choose their battles so society can function.

LLMs and diffusion models don’t “consume content” and the content they produce doesn’t come from inspiration, greed, boredom or any number of human traits. They don’t remember the Target logo to go shop there or a college class they took to apply for a job so they can be a tax paying member of society.

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

#396

Post by raincole »

notnullorvoid wrote: post #358
raincole wrote: post #142

My perspective is there are two different main issues about AI (especially Stable Diffusion). One is how it works consistently with the current law. Ml model is basically a highly lossy compressed data format. If you collect millions of copyrighted images, merge them into a super big image, then compress it into a .jpg. Are you allowed to redistribute this .jpg file? To me, it's mostly depending on how lossy (low qua…

It's not compression. Compression implies the input can be reconstructed from the output (lossy or not), in the case of these ml models the input is the training data and the output is the model. You can't reconstruct even a fraction of that training data using the model alone therefore it is not compression even in the most lossy sense. The model produced though can be an efficient compressor/decompressor, which pro…

> Compression implies the input can be reconstructed from the output (lossy or not), in the case of these ml models the input is the training data and the output is the model. You can't reconstruct even a fraction of that training data using the model alone therefore it is not compression even in the most lossy sense.

It's already proven that you can reconstruct at least a small fraction of the training set from diffusion models. It's something quite well known, so could we not die on this hill?

[1] https://twitter.com/Eric_Wallace_/status/1620449942090420224 [2] The paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188 [3] Relevant HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34596187

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

#397

Post by rperez333 »

Wissenschafter wrote: post #215
nologic01 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your infinite sanity you have not answered my question of how a creative person will dedicate their life (starting from long studies) producing something that society will not reward in any way.

In their freetime? Do you not have any? Should society reward people who want to dedicate to something that has no inherent survival benefit? Should that not be something done in ones own time? Why is society obligated to pay artists? It isn't.

Because most people prefer spend their free time consuming art instead of staring at a wall. You just forgot that art embraces games, music, movies, tv shows, comics, books or even some Youtube.

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

#398

Post by singron »

pmoriarty wrote: post #365
raincole wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

Patents do work this way, but copyright doesn't cover independent invention. However, in practice, if you reproduce a popular work exactly, it's so incredibly unlikely to be actual independent invention, that the court will assume it's not.

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

#399

Post by lofaszvanitt »

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…

Have you been sitting in Midjourney rooms and saw the prompts? :DDD

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

#400

Post by grey8 »

corethree wrote: post #392
nirvdrum wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is precisely why I said “genuine creativity” in hopes of avoiding pedantry around word etymology. It’s hard to have these discussions when people are deliberately being obtuse. By this definition, nearly everything is creative making any discussion about it meaningless. So, let’s use the connotative meaning.

Ok yeah let's avoid that bullshit then. The problem is there's enough leeway between the words that I could honestly say everything LLMs generate are representative of what most humans define as "genuine creativity" and I bet you that I can show you human art and computer art side by side and you'd be incapable of knowing which one is genuinely creative. I hate pedantic vocabulary just as much as you and this is not…

I think you're right.

Why? Just observe how art and content is perceived before and after you tell people it was made by AI. I think it's an unfounded bias.

You probably remember the AI art piece that won an art contest? It was perceived as better than the rest, obviously, or it wouldn't have won - until it was revealed it was made by AI.

Now, IMHO, that was not fair and if it was disqualified, that was absolutely the right move, but that's not the point.

The same can be observed when people talk about (AI) art. I've seen people comment "Awesome! There is just something about [this artwork] that AI can't reproduce, human art has soul!" even though the artwork they commented on* was made by AI

After it is revealed to be AI made, it is suddenly "soulless" and not genuine anymore.

I remember there was an online mental health care platform that (without revealing this) introduced AI therapists. According to their analytics, the AI therapists, on average, got higher scores than the human therapists. Then, word got out they're using AI and suddenly, people rated the service a lot worse than before. It was obviously wrong to not disclose this.

There's nothing wrong with valuing craftsmanship and human work higher than machine work. We as humans do and I do, too - but generally, nowadays, digital watercolor art made in Photoshop (and co) is not inherently considered "not creative" or "soulless" because it wasn't painted with real watercolor... but I'm pretty sure that was not always the case. I'm sure artists discussed about how digital art is not genuine, creative or soulless back then, too.

Can anyone that was there at the time tell me if there were similarities in sentiment when digital art and Photoshop (and co) became popular?

What I'm trying to say is that there is definitely a bias at work and people generally can't tell the difference if they are not told about the (possibility of) involvement of AI.

I also fear that currently, we're just the lame adults that don't like the new thing and eventually in 10 to 20 years after AI art is normal and accepted by the generation that grew up with it, something new will come out that that generation will think is lame and not genuine, and so on.

That is how I remember it. I'm relatively sure, but take it with a grain of salt - memories are, as we know, not reliable.

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