Scans through all the comments… nope not a single person picked up on what the original post was saying… y'all just arguing about whether you can be a fucking cunt and get away with it or not.
On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
451–460 of 957 posts
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Progress is more important than your right to... Hard no. We progress civilization so that we (as humans) may benefit. Progress at any cost is pathological, see universal paperclips as the extreme example.
I don't think we even have a choice here. It's unstopable.
Comcast and AT&T are plenty willing to cut off my internet if I pirate popular shows. Don't see why they can't just cut off infringing AI companies... and nations.
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are using the word "theft" in a way which does not describe conduct that is actually theft. Not all of us participate in the form of thought control that has been euphemistically pushed as "intellectual property."
Hey, sorry, I read your profile briefly before replying... do you play bluegrass as your main gig or as a side hustle? Your new album is a bop. Anyway, I don't think there's much I can say to change your mind - talk to other artists, especially those who are artists as their main hustle.
> do you play bluegrass as your main gig or as a side hustle?
Main gig, although of course the sands are shifting rapidly with regard to what that means, for precisely the reasons this conversation is so stimulating.
> Your new album is a bop.
Jeez man that's a nice thing to say. I'm really proud of it. We worked really hard on it. It has been fascinating to see and hear the responses; the story that I tell is one of "open source" and "traditional" having roughly the same meanings as applied to the intellectual property frameworks surrounding them.
I'm curious to hear what you might think of the album played in this order; I think it gives a darker and more contemplative perspective:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ucmjLc88iZdfKi9zlU5HP
> talk to other artists, especially those who are artists as their main hustle.
As you can see from the ensemble on my record, I've become friendly with a good chunk of the mainstream bluegrass world (which is a fairly tight-knit community). I think that a lot of artists are just very frustrated with the system as it is, where they are pitted against their own fans (or whomever wants to simply download and listen to their music) with the industry acting decidedly as a middle-man.
I am reasonably (but not totally) confident that musicians, and particularly purveyors of what have come to be called "the traditionals", will be among the main forces seeking to dismantle the IP system in the next couple of decades.
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#454Earlier 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…
What about code? Or what about if we eventually robot labourers that is trained on observing human labourers?
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#455Earlier 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…
> The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people's work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that.
Ah, just like humans who train against the output of other humans. AI models are not fundamentally different in kind in this regard, only scope, and even that isn't perfectly obvious to me a priori.
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an interesting predicament. Assuming these stories between person and machine are indistinguishable and of same quality, then the difference here is the ability to scale. Without giving bias because of humanity reasons, why should we give entitlement to output derived from a human over something else of same quality? I hate making analogies, but if we make humans plant rows of potatoes, should that command a hig…
> Without giving bias to humanity No, we should absolutely be giving bias to humanity. Flesh and blood humans matter, their lives matter, their thoughts matter and their work matters. Machines are tools for them to use not entities given the same rights and same consideration. I reject your whole premise.
Exactly; their flesh, blood, energy, etc. does matter. This is my argument for it, not for your argument against it, lmao. There's nothing more remarkable about my planted potato row vs the tractor planted rows, and my energy can be spent elsewhere. I am not entitled to making a living hand planting potatoes if there's not a market for it.
People have the choice to continue making stories and they'll have a fanbase for it and always will, because that's ultimately apart of freedom and choice. Many are less what I'll call purists here, and don't care about how it came to be, they just want a quality story.
What you're loosely proposing is art being a protected class of output, when we have tools that can match and soon with the potential to surpass. Is that not a terrific way to stunt what you're trying to defend?
For transparency, I am an advocate for human made art, but I am against stunting tooling that can otherwise match said creativity. I see that as an artform in itself.
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#457If it is "allowed by copyright law" what about anything non-American they used? Chinese? Russian? Does the AI know and uphold all nation's laws or do they just think the US will protect them?
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you pay them for the finished product. The STYLE is independent. Lots of artists have similar styles. They don't all pay each other for copying their styles.
Every artist has their own style, because it's their way of creating the product. Pixar, Disney and Dreamworks have different styles, same for actors, writers, and designers, too. You can generally tell who made what by reading, looking, listening, etc. I can recognize a song by Deep Purple or John Mayer or Metallica, just by their guitar tone, or their mastering profile (yes, your ear can recognize that), in a coupl…
> Style is a reflection of who you are. You can maybe imitate it, but you can't be it.
Isn't this an argument that AI-generated artwork will never be more than a lesser facsimile? That'd suggest that human-made works will always be more sought-after, because they're authentic.
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are using the word "theft" in a way which does not describe conduct that is actually theft. Not all of us participate in the form of thought control that has been euphemistically pushed as "intellectual property."
I'm just curious if you believe that physical property or real estate is similarly a form of "thought control" that does not actually exist. "Property is theft" is a common saying in some intellectual-political circles, especially about land.
I don't know... I seem to go back-and-forth on the larger property question throughout my life.
But I certainly think that the casting the act of copying bytes from one medium to another as "theft" is propagandistic and dishonest.
Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney
#460Earlier 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…
One could argue that you're paying for the resources required to run the model rather than paying for the using the model.