Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

catandgirl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 957 posts

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

#231

Post by cmiles74 »

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…

OpenAI is very much a for-profit company with the same incentives to make money as every other US for-profit company. I understand that there's another company that is a non-profit and that company bosses the for-profit company. In my opinion, that's more of a footnote in their governance story, it doesn't make OpenAI a non-profit. Their website says...

"A new for-profit subsidiary would be formed, capable of issuing equity to raise capital and hire world class talent, but still at the direction of the Nonprofit. Employees working on for-profit initiatives were transitioned over to the new subsidiary."

https://openai.com/our-structure

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

#232

Post by 0xf00ff00f »

the_af wrote: post #138
0xf00ff00f wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's over. Why would a kid want to spend thousands of hours practicing with pencil and paper, when they can get a much more impressive result by typing a couple of words on a web site?

Have you ever taken a pencil or a brush to a blank sheet of paper? Thousands of people do and produce wonderful works of art. Even before the AI craze, not everyone embraced even "plain old" digital art. The physicality of feeling a graphite pencil scratching a blank page is gratifying and cannot be reproduced by typing a prompt somewhere online.

Yes, I like to draw (I'm awful at it though).

The other day I saw a skilled artist on social media saying that it feels pointless after AI, and I found it really sad.

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

#233

Post by freejazz »

sandworm101 wrote: post #118
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…

>> If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content. But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to copy copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it. If one doesn't want anyone to see/consume or be influenced by one's…

>But we are allowed to use copyrighted content

Well, not exactly. Certain uses are fair. The question is does OpenAI's use count as fair. I don't think your immediate response comes close to addressing that question despite your conviction it does otherwise.

Also, clothing designs are copyrightable. The conviction expressed by some participants in this debate is exhausting in light of their familiarity with actual copyright law.

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

#234

Post by nmz »

With that whole harvard plagiarism debacle, I must say this is the new normal, copyright and accreditation is a thing of the past. The only way forward is plagiarism and outsourcing your work, the only ones who will make the money will be the ones who offer the quickest way of offering the work, no matter its quality. A world for AI to AI. As morals erodes, 20 years from now, there will be no instagram/tik tok/facebook, it will be machine generated from current events that may or may not happen, nobody will know a hallucination from reality. You might be able to go to a journalism hub. but those also use AI generation to focus on the most clickbaity title.

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

#235

Post by 8note »

tedivm wrote: post #185
bawolff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI's products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content Couldn't we say the same thing about search engines? What value would google have without content to search for? Is the conclusion we should ma…

Search engines don't replicate the content, they index and point to it. When search engines have been caught replicating content they have been sued or had to work out licenses.

How do they make the index without ingesting a copy of the content?

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

#236

Post by axus »

dmazzoni wrote: post #155
seshagiric wrote: post #97

An independent artist who was already struggling now got bamboozled by Midjourney. Instead of listing the Artist somewhere in the midst of a million attributions, every instance Midjourney draws a cartoon in the Artist's style should at least have a (clickable link) attribution to the artist's website.

But today there are thousands of (human) artists who create original works "in the style of" other famous artists, and my understanding is that this is completely legal. Artists own a copyright to their actual works. Not to a "style". Besides, all artists learned from other artists and borrowed lots of ideas from predecessors. Why should we hold AI to a higher standard than we hold human artists to?

Because it makes some people feel bad, and we care about their feelings?

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

#238

Post by ta8645 »

jmartrican wrote: post #195
ta8645 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. I see it differently. To me, if you post your work online as an artist, it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by. As long as nobody copies it verbatim, don't think you've been hurt by any other usage. If another artist views it, and is inspired by it... so be it. If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done.

> If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. You had me till that^ line. In your example if "inspired" human start competing with you, then there is harm. If the inspired human is replaced by an AI, then it also harms. By harm I am referring to competition. So instead of saying "no harm done", then maybe its more accurate to say "same harm as a other humans being inspired by your work".

> So instead of saying "no harm done", then maybe its more accurate to say "same harm as a other humans being inspired by your work".

I don't disagree with you. But then that is a completely different issue, and has nothing specifically to do with AI, but rather the tradeoff between the benefits of releasing your work to the public, and the potential competition it might inspire.

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

#239

Post by [deleted] »

nmz wrote: post #234

With that whole harvard plagiarism debacle, I must say this is the new normal, copyright and accreditation is a thing of the past. The only way forward is plagiarism and outsourcing your work, the only ones who will make the money will be the ones who offer the quickest way of offering the work, no matter its quality. A world for AI to AI. As morals erodes, 20 years from now, there will be no instagram/tik tok/facebo…

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by rideontime »

runnr_az wrote: post #137
minimaxir wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was in a court filing: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.40...

Yeah... but I don't think it's an actual list of artists that were used? Here's a relevant comment from the last discussion of this on HN: "Looking at the source tweet[1], this isn't a list of artists specifically used to train Midjourney, but instead is a list of artists used to pre-render additives that can be added to an existing prompt much faster than an arbitrary addition." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

You raise a good point. Why doesn't Midjourney release the list of plagiarized artists?
Post reply on HN