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On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

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Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#71

Post by ben_w »

madeofpalk wrote: post #36

> But I can't even get cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn't a profit-making company, but it's certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities…

> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI have?

What you probably get is a LLM that can perfectly understand well written text as you might find on Wikipedia, but which would struggle severely with colloquial language of the kind found on Reddit and Twitter.

> then it should give some of that value back to the content.

That's literally built into their corporate rules for how to take investment money, and when those rules were written they were criticised because people didn't think they'd ever grow enough for it to matter.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#72

Post by bearjaws »

ssgodderidge wrote: post #26

I wonder what effects AI ripping off today's artists will have on the next generation. They will grow up with AI "art" generators. Will they be concerned enough about AI-ripping them off that the don't put out novel, "human-made" works of art? Will they put down the AI tools long enough to learn "manual" forms of art?

The same effect type writers and printing had on Scribes and Scriptoriums - they won't be around, they won't be needed, people will not pay for them except for extremely niche scenarios.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#73

Post by Literalyevery »

Your result is art not some AI generating something which looks familiar to what you did.

As far fetched as it might sound for obviuos artists: I'm also an artist when i write code and design systems and architect things.

I hate software patents and if i write a really good system, i'm happy to share how i did it.

I would only be pissed at someone if they just copy paste my work not if they got inspired by it.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#74

Post by [deleted] »

larrik wrote: post #52
madeofpalk wrote: post #36

> But I can't even get cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn't a profit-making company, but it's certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities…

I thought this was more of a reference to Facebook, etc. I could be wrong, though, it's pretty vague.

[deleted]

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#75

Post by munk-a »

dtrailin wrote: post #45
spookie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it applies here. Midjourney's use intends to substitute the artists' work, and is commercial.

Unless it's a 1 for 1 replica I don't see how it's a substitute in the copyright sense.

We already have laws covering close derivatives - in this case it might not be clear who is the inspiration but there is no novel creativity... everything these networks produce is derived from artists - there is no added novelty.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#76

Post by thaumaturgy »

Minor49er wrote: post #42
rideontime wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would explain why I find midjourney art so hideous.

I think a better explanation is that the vast majority of users don't try any prompt parameters or different styles and just rely on its default settings

Nah. Even the "good" stuff feels cheap. It's the art version of ho-hos and twinkies. Every once in a while I see one and think, "oh, neat, wonder how they got it to do that?", but usually I'm just left slightly queasy and with a bad taste.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#78

Post by Minor49er »

rideontime wrote: post #46
Minor49er wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better explanation is that the vast majority of users don't try any prompt parameters or different styles and just rely on its default settings

Sorry, this was a joke about the decline of "Gabe's" artistic output. I'd find midjourney's output repulsive no matter what it looked like.

Got it. Though Midjourney can certainly be pushed beyond its fingerprint, so you might not be aware that a given image you've seen was generated by it or not

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#79

Post by rideontime »

csallen wrote: post #70
rideontime wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixed, should have specified "unpaid labor." Hopefully that makes it clear.

Going out of your way to voluntarily choose to post your work on the internet, and on social media specifically, in order to market yourself and connect with new readers, is unpaid labor? No it's not. It's being sour that you live in an interconnected world where others might find a way to benefit as a side effect of your own efforts.

That's your opinion; the creator of the comic disagrees.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#80

Post by encomiast »

eigenket wrote: post #55
encomiast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It applies. If only saying it would make it so. Unfortunately, it's not easy to make this legal argument given how copyright law only protects fixed, tangible expressions, not ideas, concepts, principles, etc. and has a gaping hole called 'fair use.'

The new York Times has examples where GPT will reproduce world for word exactly paragraphs of their (copyrighted) text if you ask it to. That's a pretty fixed tangible expression I think.

For sure, that could be an instance of infringement depending on how it is used. But that's a minuscule percentage of the output and still might be fair use (read the decision in Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.). But even if that instance is determined to be infringement, it doesn't mean the process of training models on copyrighted work is also infringement.
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