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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

#441

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Sorry, this was a joke about the decline of "Gabe's" artistic output. I'd find midjourney's output repulsive no matter what it looked like.

Got it. Though Midjourney can certainly be pushed beyond its fingerprint, so you might not be aware that a given image you've seen was generated by it or not

Let me be clear: it is the knowledge that an image was created with midjourney that repulses me, not the visual appeal of the image itself.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... but I don't think it's an actual list of artists that were used? Here's a relevant comment from the last discussion of this on HN: "Looking at the source tweet[1], this isn't a list of artists specifically used to train Midjourney, but instead is a list of artists used to pre-render additives that can be added to an existing prompt much faster than an arbitrary addition." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

You raise a good point. Why doesn't Midjourney release the list of plagiarized artists?

Isn't that the LAION dataset? It's publicly available.

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

#443
post #166
post #121

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> Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. I see it differently. To me, if you post your work online as an artist, it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by. As long as nobody copies it verbatim, don't think you've been hurt by any other usage. If another artist views it, and is inspired by it... so be it. If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done.

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.

If you pull the right levers, you can also copy the NYT article fully.

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

#444
post #185

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> Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI's products have? 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 Couldn't we say the same thing about search engines? What value would google have without content to search for? Is the conclusion we should ma…

Search engines don't replicate the content, they index and point to it. When search engines have been caught replicating content they have been sued or had to work out licenses.

I mean, generative AI basically involves turning content into vectors in order to try and find related content. If that's not an index structure i don't know what is.

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

#445
post #128

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> I'm always reticent to fully engage in "The Dialogue," regardless of its momentary configuration. It's a smoothie made from shibboleths; you have to be able to detect them at only a few parts per million because once these things metastasize, they stop being about whatever they were about and instead become increasingly loud recitations of various catechisms and loyalty oaths. Boy does that ring true.

Side comment: I respect the author’s right to choose words that ring well to them, but jeez, as a non native english speaker, reading this, i am happy my device has a dictionary function.

That's Jerry's "thing." Jerry Holkins has always enjoyed how weird English is and what you can do to someone's brain with a few precisely-chosen words aligned in the right order; it's his writing style.

If he applied his approach to Python coding, he'd be one of those folks who isn't happy until their entire program is a single `do()` method that executes by using decorators to synthesize classes and metaclasses out of thin air, that themselves generate the Python code as strings, that itself gets `eval()`'d to execute the intended program.

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

#446
post #227

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If they don't link to you, but instead take the content of the link and show it alongside ads, they do owe you money, at least in some jurisdictions.

but google doesn't do that ... they only show you a list of links (and granted some tidbit content you the web site can specify) pertaining to the search ... the product from google are those pages of list of links which is really not dissimilar to what midjourney is giving you which is a result from an array of public(?) works if i understand (not an AI/ML expert)

Google used to do more of that sorta stuff: amp pages, google images would not link to the original page, full summaries in the "rich results" box etc. but got in trouble with lawsuits from Getty Images & others.

My impression of generative AI is that yes, it is not any one specific result, which is in some ways even worse because artists cannot get any credit or compensation whatsoever despite the end result depending at least partially on their work.

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

#447
post #416

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> As the IP owners are approximately "everyone" in law That makes no sense. If I write a book by myself, post part of it on my website and OpenAI ingests part of it - how does that make anyone besides me myself and I an "owner" of the IP?

I don't understand why you're confused, but I think it's linguistics. If you write a book by yourself and post parts on your website and they ingest it, you are the copyright holder of that specific IP , and when I post this specific comment to Hacker News I am the copyright holder of this specific IP. In aggregate you and I together are the copyright holders of that book sample and this post, and I don't know any ot…

I don't think you're trying to claim ownership. It sounded like you were suggesting that the only recourse for OpenAI would be to fund a UBI program as a form of payment instead of directly paying the people who own the IP it ingested?

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

#448

> 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 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…

Let's say I'm an artist. I have, thus far, distributed my art for consumption without cost, because I want people to engage with and enjoy it. But, for whatever reason, I have a deep, irrational philosophical objection to corporate profit. I want to preclude any corporation from ever using my art to turn a profit, when at all possible. I have accepted that in some sense, electrical and internet corporations will be turning a profit using my work, but cannot stomach AI corporations doing so. If I cannot preclude AI corporations from turning a profit using my work, I will stop producing and distributing my work.

Do you think it's reasonable for me to want some legal framework that allows me to explicitly deny that use of my work? Because I do.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any humans that can produce artwork without ingesting inspiration from other art? Do you know any artists that lived in a box their whole life and never saw other art? Do you know any writers who'd never read a book? Are they any human artists who can't, if requested, draw or write something that's a copy of some other person's drawings or writings? Also, FYI, you can't steal digital artwork. You can only c…

> Are there any humans that can produce artwork without ingesting inspiration from other art? Do you know any artists that lived in a box their whole life and never saw other art? Do you know any writers who'd never read a book? > Are they any human artists who can't, if requested, draw or write something that's a copy of some other person's drawings or writings? This still is pretending that humans and AI models are…

This isn't about giving "rights" to machines. Machines are just tools. The question is about what humans are allowed to do with those tools. Are humans using AI models and humans not using AI models equivalent actors that should have the same rights? I'd argue emphatically yes they should.
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