Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#51

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #20

sandworm101 wrote: post #13

>> He wrote that the sheer size of the LAION database may protect the company because it is “simply not plausible that every training image used to train Stable Diffusion was copyrighted (as opposed to copyrightable) or that all DeviantArt users’ output images rely upon (theoretically) copyright training images.” This is where I think the judge misspoke. "Copyrighted" does not mean registered . Copyrights attach at c…

Copyright does at least in theory lapse, depending on the nature of the work. I don't think I've seen any AI companies claiming all their training dataset is pre-copyright however.

In what way is training "copying"?

This is just an attempt at a landgrab by idiot copyright maximalists.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#52

Post by brookst » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

wavemode wrote: post #24

alistairSH wrote: post #15

This might be a dumb question... I decide to try my hand at art. So, I take courses at the local college, where I'm exposed to copyrighted art. Anything I produce will, in some small way, be based on the totality of my life experience, including any copyrighted material I've encountered along the way? How is training an AI any different than "training" a human? In the human case, isn't any court case really based on…

I think the detail that makes it tricky is that, in theory, an AI could just have a single neuron and simply output verbatim the image it was trained on. In which case we obviously wouldn't say that the image it outputs is a new work and freed from copyright. So clearly there is some threshold of "transformativeness" which an AI must possess in order to be trained on one image and produce a different one that is cons…

That sounds a lot like music copyright, which also has a subjective threshold. It’s kind of a mess but it’s more or less worked for a century. Certainly better than any formula for rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic similarity would.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#53

Post by whywhywhywhy » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9

Headline is quite a bit more definitive than the actual ruling: > The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into problems as two of them — McKernan and Ortiz — did not register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office. Two of them got bounced, Anderson remains. > Judge Orrick writes that it is “unclear” as to whether Stable Diffusion holds “compressed copies” of the image…

> in both style and content, which are copywritten

The "style" certainly isn't copywritten because you can't copyright a style. Someone creating doodles in her style is absolutely allowed.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#54

Post by ToucanLoucan » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #17

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9

Headline is quite a bit more definitive than the actual ruling: > The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into problems as two of them — McKernan and Ortiz — did not register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office. Two of them got bounced, Anderson remains. > Judge Orrick writes that it is “unclear” as to whether Stable Diffusion holds “compressed copies” of the image…

It does not contain compressed "copies" of the image. It contains a synthesis of the image.

And the synthesis was created with material that the AI company did not license and did not have permission to use for this purpose.

I have ZERO issue with image generators on their own. They're quite cool technology. The only thing I and tons and tons of other people have requested is they not use images without permission to train them, that's literally it. That's my sole, single, solitary objection and yet every AI interested person, advocate, and company rep will do intellectual back-flips to explain why this is unreasonable.

It's not unreasonable to ask permission before you use something. It just isn't.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#55

Post by brookst » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #27

alistairSH wrote: post #15

This might be a dumb question... I decide to try my hand at art. So, I take courses at the local college, where I'm exposed to copyrighted art. Anything I produce will, in some small way, be based on the totality of my life experience, including any copyrighted material I've encountered along the way? How is training an AI any different than "training" a human? In the human case, isn't any court case really based on…

You can argue that artists given an implicit license for people to copy art into their own brains while viewing it. The same way websites give an implicit license for a browser to copy the page to display it. That does not necessarily mean they given an implicit license for someone else to copy the work as part of AI training. Separate to that is the issue of producing new works that are too similar to existing works…

I think you’re proposing two big expansions to copyright: 1) that it covers what an observer can do, and 2) that everything is illegal unless explicitly made legal.

I don’t think I want to live in that world.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#56

Post by alistairSH » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #32

alistairSH wrote: post #15

This might be a dumb question... I decide to try my hand at art. So, I take courses at the local college, where I'm exposed to copyrighted art. Anything I produce will, in some small way, be based on the totality of my life experience, including any copyrighted material I've encountered along the way? How is training an AI any different than "training" a human? In the human case, isn't any court case really based on…

You are not missing anything: you are asking the key question in that process. We don’t have an answer. As a society, we agree that you, a human, copying art you’ve seen is original (or at least derivative enough that it warrants a new copyright). We agree that a photocopy machine, or rather a human operating one, is copying art in a way that is not creative enough to warrant a copyright — so the human goes to jail.…

If I build a Rube Goldberg painting machine and somebody else "pulls the trigger" to start the machine, who owns the output? Me or the other person? In the case of today's AI models, I could see arguing that the creator of the AI or the creator of the prompt have some rights to a specific output, but not the AI itself.

The monkey case seems fairly cut-and-dry to me - the monkey didn't steal the camera (as often reported) - the photographer engineered a situation to get the result (he set up the camera, the tripod, and held onto the tripod so the monkey wouldn't steal the whole rig). It's his art. If the monkey actually stole the camera, then it's nobody's art - just a random occurrence.

If an artist orchestrates a group of humans to create art, the art belongs to the artist, not the group (as far as I know - I'd love to hear otherwise).

I guess for me, given today's technology, I don't see an "AI" as any different than a Rube Goldberg machine hurling paint at a wall. A human had to create the AI and a human had to prompt the AI, one or both of them own the art. And in all cases, the art is always based on something the human saw previously. No art exists in a vacuum.

And I agree that a system like music rights might be appropriate. The AI author, the AI prompter, and probably anybody involved in the training data, all have some right to the output. Then the question is what % to each, but that's solvable.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#57

Post by spywaregorilla » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

tiledjinn wrote: post #41

spywaregorilla wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not contain compressed "copies" of the image. It contains a synthesis of the image.

reconcile your view with the case law on john carmack non-literally copying code

This case involved a guy under NDA working with a competitor to build similar product and included testimony from oculus that they used ZeniMax's code, literally, including copy pasted segments.

My read on the case is that it happened, John made a big public outrage post, and then gradually after news interest died down, more facts were revealed that made it much more obvious that oculus was in the wrong but nobody cared anymore.

It's also not relevant to making an ai model. That is at best relevant to producing a similar output using an ai model

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#58

Post by ToucanLoucan » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #53

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #9

Headline is quite a bit more definitive than the actual ruling: > The three artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — immediately ran into problems as two of them — McKernan and Ortiz — did not register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office. Two of them got bounced, Anderson remains. > Judge Orrick writes that it is “unclear” as to whether Stable Diffusion holds “compressed copies” of the image…

> in both style and content, which are copywritten The "style" certainly isn't copywritten because you can't copyright a style. Someone creating doodles in her style is absolutely allowed.

SomeONE, not someTHING, and "creating" isn't the issue, "monetizing" is.

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#59

Post by wanderingstan » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #32

alistairSH wrote: post #15

This might be a dumb question... I decide to try my hand at art. So, I take courses at the local college, where I'm exposed to copyrighted art. Anything I produce will, in some small way, be based on the totality of my life experience, including any copyrighted material I've encountered along the way? How is training an AI any different than "training" a human? In the human case, isn't any court case really based on…

You are not missing anything: you are asking the key question in that process. We don’t have an answer. As a society, we agree that you, a human, copying art you’ve seen is original (or at least derivative enough that it warrants a new copyright). We agree that a photocopy machine, or rather a human operating one, is copying art in a way that is not creative enough to warrant a copyright — so the human goes to jail.…

Excellent point regarding the famous Monkey selfie, which I think points to the emerging issue of biological vs artificial agents.

It presents a sort of mirrored view of the GenAI issue: The human photographer does not get credit because the monkey is deemed to be the "agent of intent" rather than him, presumably because it's a living thing. If a photograph was triggered instead by a human tossing a rock onto the shutter, no one would claim that the rock now holds the copyright!

Interesting thought experiment to replace the monkey with other "organic agents" and some method for them to trigger a photo: A squirrel? A lizard? A cockroach? A slime mold? At what point is the organism so "simple" that you say it was just part of the system/mechanism?

Then on the artificial side, to replace the monkey with different mechanisms (as was your point): A photocopier seems quite different to a GenAI model. At what point does the human who set up the situation stop being the "agent"?

Relevant concept of the Intentional Stance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance

EDIT: Or at the far end of the spectrum, what about "art" that is made from DNA activity?! Does the copyright belong to the DNA? https://www.labiotech.eu/trends-news/gene-craft-laurie-ramse...

Re: Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against AI Image Generators

#60

Post by alexwebb2 » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

RyanAdamas wrote: post #34

Copyright is new age nonsense that denies the chain of influence and inspiration that exists between all people. If you can create something sell it. If it can be easily recreated (or stored digitally) then it isn't yours. Bits are not a bug.

If we go that route, then doesn't that remove almost all financial incentive to produce new content that could be digitally stored / copied / recreated?

Because as soon as you create it and try to sell it for $1, someone else will recreate it instantly and put it up for $0.50, and so on until the value of all non-physical works is effectively $0 the moment after creation.

Feels like that would result in way less human art being made.