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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

#271

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

ta8645 wrote: post #218
tapoxi wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI doesn't get inspired. It's not human. It adds everything about it to its endless stream of levers to pull, and if you pull the right ones, it will just give you the source verbatim as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing where it was just outputting unaltered copywritten NYT article text.

That's a matter of perspective. AI's do not make a copy of the source material. It very much just adjusts their internal weights, which from a broadminded perspective, can be seen as simple inspiration, and not copying. Of course, just like a human artist, it could probably closely approximate the source material if it wanted to, but it would still be its own approximation, not an exact duplicate. As for plagiarism,…

Based on the comment you replied to, it seems they are indeed producing verbatim copies.

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

#272

Post by brigadier132 »

0xf00ff00f wrote: post #43
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?

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?

Why would anyone play chess? Also, why did we all assume that art of all things was the pinnacle of human achievement?

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

#273

Post by kghe3X »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #82

My 2 cents - people often compare this AI to automation that came before say the printing press, or automatic fabric production . But it’s actually far worse. If all the calligraphers drop dead, the printing press still works. If everyone who hand makes fabrics drops dead, the automatic fabric machines continue to develop. But midjourney doesn’t work without artists, it depends on them like a parasite depends on its…

I think the analogy holds. Printing presses can't produce hand-drawn calligraphy just like Midjourney can't produce art outside some boundary on it's training set. Both are limited in capability compared to humans, both have inhuman capabilities. Both required humans to initially produce value. Neither requires humans to continue to produce value.

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

#274

Post by bayindirh »

gedy wrote: post #258
bayindirh wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that, we should stop pursuing art and prose? Because when you fine tune midjourney with 30 or so images of an artist, it can create any image with the artist's style. You removed the value and authenticity that artist in 30 minutes, you applauded it, and defended that it should be the norm. OK then, we can close down all entertainment business, and generate everything with AI, because it can mimic st…

> Because when you fine tune midjourney with 30 or so images of an artist, it can create any image with the artist's style. Artists style is not copyrightable, at least in the US. And if they changed that because of "AI"? My word, the lawsuits that would arise between artists...

Doesn't matter. You pay the artist for their style of rendering things. Consider XKCD, PHD Comics, Userfriendly, etc. At least 50% of the charm is the style, remaining 50% is the characters and the story arc.

You can't copyright style of a Rolex, but people pay a fortune to get the real deal. Same thing.

> My word, the lawsuits that would arise between artists...

Artists imitate/copy artists as a compliment, at least in illustration and comics world. Unless you do it in bad faith, I don't think artists gonna do that. Artists have a sense of humor to begin with, because art is making fun of this world, in a sense.

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

#275

Post by rideontime »

twism wrote: post #244
rideontime wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And now even that nominal opt-in option is gone. They just take it."

you've given it to them

Much in the same way I've "given" my wallet to a thief by leaving it my unlocked car.

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

#276

Post by munchler »

ska wrote: post #228
munchler wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair use is not copyright infringement! It’s a limitation placed on copyright to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest.

Of course this all depends on jurisdiction, but e.g. in the US for example fair use does not show up [oops, see note] in the limitations and exceptions in the copyright definition (like e.g. government use does), but relies on case law, the "fair use doctrine". This means quite literally it is a framework for understanding the defence of a particular use based on precedent: the defendant(s) argued it. It's a bit of a…

I think it makes a difference, because it shifts the burden of proof. If fair use is a kind of infringement, then it’s up to the “infringer” to prove fair use. I think that’s ethically and legally backwards: the copyright holder should have to prove that the use was not fair.

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

#277

Post by Vvector »

Osmose wrote: post #139
sandworm101 wrote: post #118

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…

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.

> ...reason enough to consider it unethical.

But unethical =/= illegal, unfortunately.

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

#278

Post by freejazz »

mondrian wrote: post #197
sandworm101 wrote: post #118

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.

No, copyright law prohibits that. The best example so far is Google's image search being considered a fair use, notably there, its not commercial in as far as they do not sell the derivative work, though they might sell ads on the image search results. OpenAI sells their service which is the result of the copies, i.e. the a derivative work. It's also probably true that the AI weights themselves are derivatives of the works they are based from.

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

#279

Post by xyproto »

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 remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from a human's training, what value does the human have, in connection with work?

When is AI good enough that the contents it contains can be comparable to human brain content, copyright wise?

And conversely, now that we can read signals from neurons in a human brain, and create images from dreams and audio from thoughts, would not that also break the copyright of the content?

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

#280

Post by madeofpalk »

cmiles74 wrote: post #231
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…

They might be a for-profit company, but I don't believe they have made a profit. I wasn't even thinking of the murkey non-profit status.
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