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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

#351

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.

>> In the artist's opinion, OpenAI violated that license... So? Why does the author's opinion even enter into the equation? Authors cannot claim ownership beyond the bounds of copyright. If what AI is doing qualifies as fair use, the artist cannot do anything about it. I'm sure that lots of artists would not want anyone to lampoon or criticize their work. They cannot stop such things. I'm sure lots of artists would n…

It is not clear that training an LLM falls under "fair use". We are then left with the license of the work, in this case that license forbids re-selling the work for a profit. It is the artist's license for their work at issue, not their opinion.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new York Times has examples where GPT will reproduce world for word exactly paragraphs of their (copyrighted) text if you ask it to. That's a pretty fixed tangible expression I think.

That is evidence that GPT Can violate copyright, not that all of the outputs do. It supports an argument that GPT shouldnt produce outputs that are extremely similar, not that the content can not be used as an input.

I suspect a single verbatim output of sufficient length is enough to poison the entire weight set as a derivative work

as well as all the output it ever generated

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

#353

Whether this is bad or good or should be banned or not is functionally irrelevant. There is nothing that can be done short of terminating the global internet. Sure you could ban it in the US and Europe, but you can't in China, et al. You can't ban it everywhere. You can't ban open source. Art has been democratized. It's not going back in the bottle. A kid with a laptop anywhere on the planet will be able to compete w…

You can't ban torrents, but Netflix still pays rights holders for movies.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't hold individual humans and ML models to the same standards, because ML models themselves are products capable of mass production and individual humans are not even remotely at the same scale. If you write that book, chances are you will gain some fans that are also fans of other authors in that genre. If ML models write that genre, they can flood that genre so full that human artists won't be able to com…

Computers and machines have been capable of mass production for decades, and humans have used them as tools. In the past 170 years, these tools of mass production have already diminished many thousands of professions that were staffed by people who had to painstakingly craft things one at a time. Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not? Why should we kill this techno…

Redacted.

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

#356
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…

> 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.

The poster probably meant "fair use", which is an American term of copyright law. The UK, Canada, and other commonwealth countries have a concept known as "fair dealing" which is similar to, but different than fair use[1]. EU copyright law has explicitly permitted uses[2] which are exceptions to copyright restrictions. Research is one of them, but requires explicit attribution.

[1] https://library.ulethbridge.ca/copyright/fairdealing/#s-lib-... [2] https://www.ippt.eu/legal-texts/copyright-information-societ...

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

#357
post #139

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.

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

Replace loom for printing press etc, you realize you're a luddite?

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

#358
post #44
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, fair use does not preclude making money.

If we talk about the OpenAI magnitude of money it's definitely precluded, that's way beyond fair.

Lol what? That's not how any of this works.

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

#359

AI business model is that of a school bully who a) steals a cup of lemonade from your lemonade stand, b) drinks it, c) pees into the cup, d) sells it to others, e) convinces the cheerleaders to go around telling everyone that you are not going to be able to make or sell your own lemonade anymore.

It's a perfect example of the "if you're making a shitload of money, whatever you're doing to make it must be okay" rationalization that pervades SV and America in general.

Prosperity Gospel. "Everything happens due to god's plan, therefore anyone who does well is blessed by god."

Bleh.

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

#360
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…

> 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.

I would be reasonably confident they mean "fair use" [1] instead.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

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