On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by Spivak » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #203

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…

I'm not as interested in making a technical/legal argument, as I'm just sharing my feelings on the topic (and eventually, what I think the law should be), but during training copies are made of copyrighted material, even if the model doesn't contain exact copies of work. Crawling, downloading, storing (temporarily) for training all involve making copies, and thus are subject to copyright law. Maybe those copies are f…

Calling it copyright today is a misnomer, it's not actually the act of copying the work that's a problem; it should actually be called "Performance Rights" or "Redistribution Rights." The part where this gets complicated is that OpenAI has (presumably, if they haven't that's a different matter) acquired the works through legal means. And having acquired them they're free to do most anything with them so long as they don't redistribute or perform the works.

The big question is where "training an AI on this corpus of works and then either distributing the weights or performing the work via API" fall? Should the weights be considered derivative works? I personally don't think so and although the weights can be used to produce obviously infringing works I don't think this meets the bar of being a redistribution of the work via a funny lossy compression algo like some are claiming. But who knows? Copyright is more political than logical so I think the bend is really gonna be a balance of the tangible IRL harms artists can demonstrate vs. the desires of unrelated industries who wish to leverage this technology and are better for having all this data available.

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

#322

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

poncho_romero wrote: post #266

encomiast wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

it is possible that those works are not transformative, but 99.9% of the output is.

Human artists can also create copies when instructed to.

That doesn't mean that the rest of their work isn't transformative, or that the process of leading isn't fair use.

Similarly, the law doesn't bar artists from learning, but provides recourse, when and if artists create and sell copes.

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

#323

Post by dazed_confused » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #182

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…

> A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. But they are free to use the fruits of the model, same as anyone else. I suppose the difference is they don't care; they already have the talent to transform their labor into visual art, so what use do they have for a visual-art-generation machine? I find strong parallels in the building of web craw…

Or they lost means of income? Like is this a difficult concept? Livelihoods will most likely be lost and probably never really coming back. Sure we can say industries change; however, we had protections in place to prevent artists losing money due to people copying… A company has said “screw the rules, here’s a supercharged printer.”

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

#324

Post by rideontime » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #130

rideontime wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course these are just opinions. It just doesn't seem like a perspective that's serving them well, except to make them feel bad about the art that they've been putting out… in the same way… for years and years… unchanged… with no tangible new issues for them or their readers… except the optional sadness that comes from this optional choice to be upset that other people are making money.

If you can't understand why somebody would "choose" to be upset that they're struggling to subsist while a company worth billions is using their labor without compensation to generate revenue, you're not worth discussing this with.

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

#325

Post by fortran77 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

tedivm wrote: post #177

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…

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…

> I firmly believe that training models qualifies as free use

Can you explain what you mean by "qualifies as free use?" I've never heard that term before.

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

#326

Post by bloopernova » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

Is "training a neural net" an entirely novel legal construct?

At what point does fair use become unfair, and should that question be considered separately from the context of doing it trillions of times?

And the further context of the resulting computer code being used to make a profit?

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

#327

Post by derangedHorse » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

nullptr_deref wrote: post #270

unfamiliar wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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

Being sympathetic towards those people doesn't mean you should bend to their will if you don't believe it's the right thing to do. I can be sympathetic to a child who cries over not being able to ride a roller coaster because they aren't tall enough without thinking the height requirement should be removed.

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

#328

Post by caconym_ » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #119

caconym_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How is OpenAI compensating the owners of IP they trained their models on? Or is that not what you mean? It's certainly how I read the part of the GP comment you quoted.

So far, looks like funding a UBI study. As the IP owners are approximately "everyone" in law, UBI is kinda the only way to compensate all the IP owners. https://openai.com/our-structure

This is a load of bullshit and I sincerely hope you know that as well as I do.

As a thought experiment, let's say I pirate enough ebooks to stock a virtual library roughly equivalent in scope to a large metropolitan library system, then put up a website where you can download these books for free. I make money on the ads I run on this website, etc. This is theft, but as "compensation" I put some percentage of my revenues into funding a UBI study that might, if we're lucky—in half a century or so, in a progressive, enlightened version of the future we are by no means guaranteed to realize—make a fractional contribution to the thrust of a successful UBI movement.

Does that make what I'm doing okay? Should all those authors deprived of royalties on their work now, even deprived of publishing opportunities as legitimate sales collapse, understand my token contribution to UBI as fair compensation for what I'm taking from them?

That to me is a joke, and the only difference between it and what OpenAI is doing is that OpenAI's product relies on a technical means of laundering intellectual property that seems tailor-made to dodge a body of existing copyright law designed by people who could not possibly have conceived of what modern genAI is capable of. We will see what our lawmakers and courts make of it now, but either way, making a promise to pay me back later does not justify you in taking all the cash out of my wallet without my consent. Nor, for that matter, does tearing it up and returning it to me in the form of a papier-mâché sculpture of Shrek's head protruding from the bowl of a "skibidi toilet".

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

#329

Post by amenhotep » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:27 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #67

There is simple way to fix this. Ban private large models trained on public data, require them to be public weights. If a company wants to train large private model, they can do it with their own data.

I don't see many people suggesting this, but I also quite like this way of thinking about it. The idea that it should be illegal for models to learn from artists, or that artists have a right to extract payment from the model, doesn't make much sense to me, it's too much of a radical departure from the way we treat human learning.

But it seems unfair that a company can own such a model. It's not their work, it's a codified expression of basically our entire cultural output as a species. We should all own it.

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

#330

Post by brigadier132 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:28 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #308

brigadier132 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why wouldn't we assume this? What is the pinnacle of human achievement? I guess anything you say, someone else will claim that's not it either.

Why would we assume anything?

What is the pinnacle of human achievement?

Clearly not art if we measure it by how easy it is to automate. Is that why artists took pride in themselves? Because they thought they couldn't be automated? Because some one said that art was important because of feelings?