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

catandgirl.com

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

#261
post #18

Yeah, there really needs to be a solution to situations like this honestly.

It's called paying copyright owners -- artists. The economic model can be worked out, but it's not the status quo, where software companies take all the profit and artists are left with nothing.

Amazing how everyone is an intellectual property zealot now.

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

#262
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we are humans and our capability of abusing those rights is limited. The scale and speed at which LLMs can abuse copyrighted work to threaten the livelihoods of the authors of those works is reason enough to consider it unethical.

I don’t think it is. What you describe is similar to any other industry disruption, and I don’t think those are unethical. I’d actually argue that preventing disruption is often (not always) unethical, because you artificially prolong an inefficient or inferior alternative.

Some "disruptions" are unethical, some are not. It's about what they actually consist of. Labelling many things as "industry disruption" abstracts beyond usefulness.

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

#263
post #40

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.'

[flagged]

Maybe the "rat fucks" just wanted to make cool images?

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

#264
post #211
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward. I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn't) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. C…

If I read a lot of stories in a certain genre that I like, and I later write my own story, it’s almost by definition going to be a mish-mash of everything I like. Should I pay the authors of the books I read when I sell mine?

[deleted]

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

#265
post #41
post #5

The sooner anyone making profit from models trained on creators proprietary content start paying for the content they’re using the better for creators, society and even the AI companies. It’s pretty tiring hearing people argue about whether copyright law applies to AI companies or not. It applies. Just get on and sort out a proper licensing model.

> "The bottom line is this," the firm, known as a16z, wrote. "Imposing the cost of actual or potential copyright liability on the creators of AI models will either kill or significantly hamper their development." > The firm said payment for all of the copyrighted material already used in LLMs would cost the companies that built them "tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year in royalty payments." https://www.bus…

What do you expect them to say, "we're cool with making less money and making it harder to make money?"

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that Midjourney itself, the model weights, is possibly a derivative work of all of the works that went into its training. The fact that it can produce almost identical copies of some of them, especially if not carefully prevented from doing so through secondary mechanisms, is obvious proof that it directly encodes copies of some of these works. That already clearly means that they couldn't publish the mo…

> possibly a derivative work of all of the works that went into its training. or… it is possibly a transformative work of the all the works that went into it's training, which would lead to a strong fair use argument. Given how permissive the courts have been with transformative work, this seems like an easier argument to make.

But again, we’ve seen these models spit out verbatim text and images that are copyrighted (many examples throughout this thread). That doesn’t strike me as “transformative work.”

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

#267

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.

If you ask MidJourney to mix the style of a few artists, what should the attribution be? I find the ChatGPT Dall.e solution better: if you name a style from an artist, ChatGPT will attempt to describe the style rather than using the artist name.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

Does copyright law say you can ingest copyrighted work at very large scale and sell derivates of those works to gain massive profit / massive market capitalizations? Honestly wondering. This seems to be the crux issue here.

It does. See app stores and the endless copy-cat games and apps, right down to the art style.

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

#269
post #185

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.

Ya that worked out real well for Genius.

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

#270
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we are humans and our capability of abusing those rights is limited. The scale and speed at which LLMs can abuse copyrighted work to threaten the livelihoods of the authors of those works is reason enough to consider it unethical.

I don’t think it is. What you describe is similar to any other industry disruption, and I don’t think those are unethical. I’d actually argue that preventing disruption is often (not always) unethical, because you artificially prolong an inefficient or inferior alternative.

Yes, that is true. I 100% agree. It is needed without a doubt.

For one moment, let's think it this way. You are a 20-year experienced engineer who is making whatever money you are making. Suddenly, your skills are invalidated because of a new disruption. And you have another friend in, the same situation.

Fortunately for you, luck played out and you could transition! You found a way into life, meaning and value. Your joy and your everyday life continued as it is.

But the other friend enjoyed the process, and liked doing what they were doing and there was no suitable transition for them. Humans are adaptable, but to them, nothing mattered because the whole existence didn't offer any value. The sole act of doing was robbed WITHOUT ANY ALTERNATIVE. The experience and value of a person rendered worthless.

Can you relate to that feeling? If yes, thank you.

If no, your words are empty and hold no value.

Artist went through the similar phase during the invention of photography. Now, it is rather soul-crushing because anything an artist make can easily be replicated, making the whole artistic journey a moot.

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