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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

#481

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.

For sure, that could be an instance of infringement depending on how it is used. But that's a minuscule percentage of the output and still might be fair use (read the decision in Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.). But even if that instance is determined to be infringement, it doesn't mean the process of training models on copyrighted work is also infringement.

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

#482

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, that could be an instance of infringement depending on how it is used. But that's a minuscule percentage of the output and still might be fair use (read the decision in Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.). But even if that instance is determined to be infringement, it doesn't mean the process of training models on copyrighted work is also infringement.

I can see 3 ways that you can guarantee that the output of a model never violates copyright 1. Models are trained with 100% uncopyrighted or properly licensed input data 2. Every output of the ML model is evaluated to make sure it's not too close to training data 3. Copyright law is changed to have a specific cutout for AI #1 is the approach taken by Adobe, although it generally is harder or more expensive to do. #2…

The much more likely scenario is that there is a precedent-setting court case. This is how it happened with practically every other instance of copyright bumping into technology.

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

#484

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.

Some of the public data may still have license attached, so there are still challenges in provenance, attribution, and copyright. To draw a parallel in software, we have MIT licenses that allow for-profit, private use of source code in the public. The copyleft license might be more aligned to what you are envisioning?

You can draw parallel with many things, ie. student who is learning on copyrighted work in a library.

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

#485
post #410

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? This still is pretending that humans and AI models are…

> Emphatically no they shouldn't. The capabilities are vastly different. Fair use should not apply to AI. Fair use applies even to use of traditional algorithms, like the thumbnailing/caching performed by search engines. If I make a spam detector network, why should it not be covered by fair use?

Fair use applies to humans and the things they do (including AI). It is not something that applies to algorithms in themselves. AI's are not people, the people who use them are people and fair use may or may not apply to the things they do depending on the circumstances of whatever it is they do. The agent is always the human not the machine.

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

#486

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#487

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.

For some reason the people complaining don’t agree with that either.

You can't make everybody happy at the same time.

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

#488

> 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…

Copying is not illegal, but publishing. You can have as many private copies as you wish for any content.

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

#489
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just BS. If people weren't replacing artists, there would be no need to prompt with "in the style of ___". are you honestly saying that only artistX is using the prompt "in the style of artistX"?

Making a picture in the style of an artist is not replacing them. I don't know why anyone could get that idea. I can sing in the style Janice Joplin, pretty sure I'm not replacing her and that nobody thinks I am.

Nobody cares what you think you sound like in the shower. Nobody

If I can make a voice over that sounds like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, why would I pay him to make the voice over for me? If I can make artwork in the style of X why would I commission X to make that artwork instead? Nobody cares if it actually was made by them as long as people think it was made by them. So "them" gets screwed because nobody will use them. We're obviously talking in very strict ones and zeros here with "nobody". Except for the nobody caring what you think you sound like

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

#490

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…

> 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.

Ah yes, the Nirvana Falacy. [0]

Microsoft, Google, etc are corporations that operate within a legal framework. You can quite readily claw back some of their profits from such ill-gotten gains and redistribute them to the creators who they currently intend to put out of work.

"Oh, but some pirate will do it! Oh, but China will do it! So why not let those poor megacorporations do it, too!"

So what. The megaorporations who nominally answer to and respect the rule of law are the lion's share of this problem. They can be made to stop. Solve them and you're 90% there, don't get bogged down in the other 10%.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

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