Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

catandgirl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 957 posts

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

#371

Post by Ukv »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #350
csallen wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not? It shouldn't be. As soon as someone makes an AI that can produce it's own artwork without requiring ingesting every piece of stolen artwork it can, then I'm on board. But as long as it needs to be trained on the work of humans it should not be allowed to displace those people it relied on to get to where it is. Simple as tha…

> But as long as it needs to be trained on the work of humans it should not be allowed to displace those people it relied on to get to where it is. Simple as that.

Do you feel the same way about tools like Google Translate?

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

#372

Post by croes »

ipsum2 wrote: post #358
croes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Commercial use does not automatically make the use copyright infringement, but it is an important deciding factor.

https://saltiellawgroup.com/2021/10/%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bcan-yo...

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

#373

Post by Wissenschafter »

bayindirh wrote: post #225
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.

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…

"So you're saying that, we should stop pursuing art and prose?", no, it becomes a hobby like any other. People still sew for fun.

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

#374

Post by derangedHorse »

voidhorse wrote: post #283
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…

Sorry, but these arguments by analogy are patently ridiculous. We are not talking about the eons old human practice of creative artistic endeavor, which yes, is clearly derivative in some fashion, but which we have well established practices around. We are discussing a new phenomenon of mass replication or derivation by machine at a scale impossible for a single individual to achieve by manual effort. Further, artist…

So your argument is predicated on the scale of inspired work being the problem?

> They are not human beings and they do not participate in the social systems of human beings the way human beings do

I don't think this adds anything to the argument besides you using this as a reason analogies with humans can't be used to compare the specific concept of inspired works? I don't think this holds up.

Algorithms participating in social systems has nothing to do with whether inspired works have a moral claim to existence for some. The fact that your ethics system values the biological classification of the originator of inspired works is something that can't be reconciled into a general argument. I could make the claim that the prompt engineer is the artist in this case.

> capital concentrates even further into the hands of a few technological elite who make their money off of flouting existing laws

That can be said by the development of any technology. Fear of capital concentration is more a critique on capitalism than it is on technological development.

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

#375

Post by s1artibartfast »

niceice wrote: post #288
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.

It's not simple since you can't ban it everywhere. China, India, et al. You can't ban it for open source either.

I agree that it isnt that simple, but you could still ban it.

Real world policy is rarely black and white, all or nothing. An inability to prevent every instance of something is not a reason to forgo any action

Just because country X has slavery, doesnt mean the US can't ban it. There may be some consequences, and disadvantages to doing so, but that is a trade off, not a show stopper.

Same thing with open source. There is lots of illegal and bootlegged content that is shared on the internet, and cant be eradicated. That doesnt mean it can all be freely bought at Walmart.

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

#376

Post by [deleted] »

derangedHorse wrote: post #327
nullptr_deref wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#377

Post by spicybbq »

niceice wrote: post #311

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…

> Sure you could ban it in the US and Europe, but you can't in China, et al.

The same can be said for enforcing intellectual property rights, and we do enforce IP in western countries despite other countries not respecting those rights. We could end up where models can only be legally trained with public domain IP, enforced by regulation, royalties, private causes of action, etc.

You may like things the way they are, but it's false that "nothing" can be done to change it.

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

#378

Post by jrflowers »

madeofpalk wrote: post #280
cmiles74 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is an important distinction. The difference between making a boatload of money on the cheap and making a boatload of money after spending an even bigger amount should matter to this cartoonist becau

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

#379

Post by sandworm101 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #241
fragmede wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not pay them when you bought their book to read it in the first place? That dead trees don't lend themselves to that sort of payoff is a limitation of the technology. In music, sampling is a well-accepted mechanism for creating new music, and the original authors of the music they used do get paid when the new one is used.

No, I bought the books used for 25 cents at a local booksale, and the authors did not benefit from my secondary market transaction.

>> the authors did not benefit from my secondary market transaction.

But they did. The presence of a secondary market for used books increased the value of some new books. People buy them knowing that they might one day recoup some costs by selling them. Would people pay more, or less, for a new car if they were told they could never sell or trade it away as a used car?

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

#380

Post by ska »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #296
ska wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe there's some nuance of your description that I'm missing, but fair use is codified as a limitation to copyright in US statute (although not until 1976) [1]. Application of it to any given situation is still heavily dependent on case law, though. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

Fair enough - I had forgotten that quirk in the US situation, it was added to statute in a way that doesn't really define it, so you are back to case law.
Post reply on HN