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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

#331

Post by lacrimacida »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #141
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 wonder if AI shrinks the economy. Not that such a metric is the most important ruler by which to measure goodness, but it would be ironic to have a massive tech company that produces less value than it removes from the world.

In a way it will remove value but in a way it will add value back in terms of an avalanche of derivative junk, lacking authenticity and context. If you find value in memes for example there will be a lot of that type of content in the future.

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

#332

Post by philomath_mn »

madeofpalk wrote: post #302
Aeolun wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Put differently - if you perfectly memorise Harry Potter, write it down into a book and sell it, you'll get into trouble.

Right, I don't think anyone disagrees with that.

The question is about someone/something writing a book _influenced_ by Harry Potter -- do they owe JK Rowling royalties?

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

#333

Post by nonbirithm »

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,…

> 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.

I think the term "AI" is one of the most loaded and misleading to come up in recent discourse. We don't say that relational databases "pack and ship" data, or web clients "hold a conversation" with each other. But for some reason we can say that LLMs and generative models "get inspired" by the data they ingest. It's all just software.

In my own opinion I don't think the models can copy verbatim except in cases of overfitting, but people like the author of the post have a right to feel that something is very wrong with the current system. It's the same principle of compressing a JPEG of the Mona Lisa to 20% and calling that an original work. I believe the courts don't care that it's just a new set of numbers, but instead want to know where those numbers originated from. It is a color of bits[1] situation.

When software is anthropomorphized, it seems like a lot of criticisms against it are pushed aside. Maybe it is because if you listen to the complaints and stop iterating on something like AI, it's like abandoning your child before their potential is fully realized. You see glimpses of something like yourself within its output and become (parentally?) invested in the software in a way beyond just saying "it's software." I feel as if people are getting attached to this kind of software unlike they would to a database, for example.

A thought experiment I have is whenever the term "AI" appears, mentally replace it with the term "advanced technology." The seeming intent behind many headlines changes with this replacement. "Advanced developments in technology will displace jobs." The AI itself isn't the one coming for people.

[1] https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

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

#335

Post by kevingadd »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #199
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.

> as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing I would be careful in asserting that it's proven until the evidence is heard in court and we have all the data.

You can look at the filing yourself. It is unambiguous.

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

#336

Post by voidhorse »

Before the advent of cameras, and likely still in some cases, several painters would have companies that predominantly reproduced the works of a known artist and sold them so that you could have a nice replica of a famous painting in your home.

One might think that tools like mid journey are much within the same category, but I think there is a key difference. The system of reproduction up to this point has largely been centered on successful and renowned artists—the only way you'd make money is by reproducing something that already had a lot of value to people, and it was also incredibly clear that it was a reproduction. In this case, things have changed. Now, the vast works of largely obscure artists are partially reproduced, and in a fashion that further occludes their source. These artists rightly feel robbed as they endure the treatment of a van gogh without the riches of fame or the palliative of death before fame.

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

#337

Post by bann »

Nowadays life is like this (exploit or be exploited). You need to secure your future with what you have (context: micro, macro). In many situations, you need to break country-related rules or be temporarily anti-ethic to thrive(reduce costs and/or risks), but in the long term comply with what is sold to investors (if any). Authoritarians win today because they have a strong ego-driven 'why' to stay in power, but they are detrimental to the rest of societies or even on the organizational level and the 'why's' of every other individual.

Make the decisions that suit your current needs, including deciding if it is time to go away for good. If you risk too many times but can't reach any relevant material success in a context that is unfavorable. Where you need to be an entrepreneur to make serious money.

Sometimes deciding to give up can be the only way to see. I'm not endorsing suicide to anyone, but it can be part of everyone's life just once, and then it is finished. 'No suffering' can be now or surely later, and you will most likely "rejoin" in the next chapter of an infinite book of human lives depending on your beliefs in this life because nobody knows the truth behind that.

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

#338

Post by sandworm101 »

huimang wrote: post #248
Aeolun wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How many books can you write per second? How how many books per second can you read to influence and change your personal style? I don't think any person who actually has worked on anything creative in their life would compare a personal style to a model that can output in nearly any style at extreme speeds. And even if you're inspired by a specific author, invariably what happens is it becomes mix of yourself + thos…

>> How many books can you write per second?

On my laptop, using modern tools backed by AI? ... many.

>> How how many books per second can you read to influence and change your personal style?

Thanks now to AI, hundreds. I can plug the output of the book-reading AI into the input of the tool I use to write my books and thereby update my personal style to incorporate all the latest trends. Blame the idiots who are paying me for my books.

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

#339

Post by kevingadd »

ta8645 wrote: post #314
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Based on the comment you replied to, it seems they are indeed producing verbatim copies. Well i'll leave it to the legal system to decide if that's true. But in any case, that's no different from a human with a photographic memory doing the same thing after reading a paragraph. We don't blame them for their superior memory, or being inspired by the knowledge. We don't claim they've violated copyright because their…

If I tell you water is wet and the sky is blue, will you be waiting for a court case to grind through the appeals process on that as well? The examples in the filing were unambiguous. You can go look it up and see them, they were also cited in all the news articles I saw about it. The AI regurgitated many paragraphs of text with very, very few small modifications.

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

#340

Post by cmiles74 »

Vvector wrote: post #317
cmiles74 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The artist in the article clearly states that his work was free to use only if it was not used to make a profit, those were the terms of their license. In the artist's opinion, OpenAI violated that license by training their tool on their work and then selling that tool. This artist doesn't complain about work similar to their own being generated, and their artwork is very clearly not clothing.

> "...clearly states that his work was free to use only if it was not used to make a profit" Replace "use" with "copy". No one may copy the work to make a profit. Fair Use has long been an exemption to copyright, with Learning an example of Fair Use. But no one expected AIs to learn so quickly. I don't think it is clear either way, and will end up in SCOTUS. Free and redistribute the material

I disagree that a person learning is the same as an AI model being trained. That aside, typically fair use covers the use of an excerpt or a portion of the material, not reproduction of the work in it's entirety.

Agreed: in the end, courts will make the decision.

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