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

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

#541

Post by Workaccount2 »

chrisknyfe wrote: post #452
rafaelero wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Training on copyrighted data is not a violation of copyright.

Generating images in the style of an artist is not a violation of copyright.

Generating copies of copyrighted images is a violation of copyright.

AI companies only have to address the last point here, which frankly shouldn't be too hard.

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

#542

Post by s1artibartfast »

scythe wrote: post #320
derangedHorse wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"abusing those rights" is a subjective phrase. What about it is "abuse"? If I learned how to draw cartoon characters from copying Family Guy and released a cartoon where the characters are drawn in a similar style, would that be abuse (assuming my show takes some of Family Guy's viewership)? Is your ethical hangup with the fact it's wrong to use the data of others to influence one's work (which could potentially be a…

>For example, most people wouldn't be against the creation and release of a cure for cancer developed in this way. Intellectual property law does presently restrict the development of cancer treatments and demands in many cases exorbitant royalties from patients and practitioners, so I'm not convinced that this is accurate. If people believed that the loss of opportunities would constrain innovation in the field of c…

>If people believed that the loss of opportunities would constrain innovation in the field of cancer research, I think they'd expect the AI users to pay royalties as well.

This comes down to the product of AI.

If the AI produces a cancer treatment identical to what is already covered by patent, I think commercialization would be contingent on the permission of the IP holder.

If the AI produced a novel cancer treatment, using a transformative synthesis of available knowledge, Most people would not expect royalties.

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

#543

Post by chlorion »

derangedHorse wrote: post #406
mondrian wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does copyright law say you can ingest copyrighted work at very large scale and sell derivates of those works to gain massive profit / massive market capitalizations? Honestly wondering. This seems to be the crux issue here.

Like how Google has parsed webpages of content to develop their page rank algorithm for searching on the web? I'm assuming it does.

Google is not producing something that competes with or is comparable to what it's parsing and displaying, which makes it very different.

Google is displaying the exact content and a link to the source, and is functioning as a search engine.

Copying music (or whatever), and then outputting music based on the copied music is not the same thing as a search engine, it's outputting a new "art" that is competing with the original.

Another way to put it, is that you can't use a search engine to copy something in any meaningful way, but copying music to produce more music is actually copying something.

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

#544

Post by rspoerri »

Aeolun wrote: post #211
tedivm wrote: 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…

If I read a lot of stories in a certain genre that I like, and I later write my own story, it’s almost by definition going to be a mish-mash of everything I like. Should I pay the authors of the books I read when I sell mine?

I hope you payed for the book you read.

If openai would pay usage fees for the training material per user its generating content for - it would never be profitable - artist would be fine off. But even all the shares are owned by people who have given this system none of it‘s knowledge.

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

#545

Post by johnnyanmac »

csallen wrote: post #294
bluefirebrand wrote: post #256

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…

>Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?

Because in this case the art is still necessary for the machine to work. You don't need horse buggies to make a car, nor existing books to make a printing press. You DO need artist's art to make these generative AI tools work.

If these worked purely off of open source art or from true scratch, I wouldn't personally have an issue.

>Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models,

We don't need to kill it. Just pay your dang labor. But if we are treating proper compensation as stifling technology, I'm not surprised people are against it.

Maybe in the 2010's tech would have the goodwill to pull this off in PR, but the 2020's have drained that goodwill and then some. Tech's made so many promises to make lives easier and now they joined the very corporations they claimed to fight against.

>Nobody can really answer these questions.

Well it's in courts, so someone is going to answer it soon-ish

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

#546

Post by ShamelessC »

kevingadd wrote: post #335
PretzelPirate wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing I would be careful in asserting that it's proven until the evidence is heard in court and we have all the data.

You can look at the filing yourself. It is unambiguous.

It’s unambiguous about repeating articles of NY times pieces with hallucinations interwoven occasionally. This isn’t nearly as strong of an argument.

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

#547

Post by KuriousCat »

throwup238 wrote: post #537
KuriousCat wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going by this logic, why is OpenAI forbidding use of the content it generates for training other models?

They can write whatever they want in their Terms of Service. That's the logic. That doesn't mean that courts will meaningfully enforce it for them.

I understand that, only pointing out the hypocrisy

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

#548

Post by ta8645 »

tapoxi wrote: post #521
CrimsonRain wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah and that's copyright infringement. That's why if you're reverse engineering something it needs to be done in a clean room environment, your prior exposure to the copywritten material poisons the well for any derivative you create. This extends to music as well, if someone hears a song and is inspired by that in their work, the original artist gets credit.

> This extends to music as well, if someone hears a song and is inspired by that in their work, the original artist gets credit.

That's only true in a very narrow set of circumstances. Imagine the case where someone listens to 10,000 songs, and then takes the sum total of that experience and writes their own. There's no credit given to the inspiration that each of those 10,000 songs gave. And that is in fact much closer to what AI is currently doing.

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

#549

Post by [deleted] »

csallen wrote: post #519
rideontime wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't understand why somebody would "choose" to be upset that they're struggling to subsist while a company worth billions is using their labor without compensation to generate revenue, you're not worth discussing this with.

I understand it. It's called jealousy. Their struggle to subsist has literally nothing to do with this other party's profits. By their own admission, their struggle to subsist was a choice. It was a choice they made before these social media companies even existed. And they deliberately chose to continue with the same poorly-performing model that didn't make money, because they preferred doing it that way. And now th…

[deleted]

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

#550

Post by rideontime »

csallen wrote: post #519
rideontime wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't understand why somebody would "choose" to be upset that they're struggling to subsist while a company worth billions is using their labor without compensation to generate revenue, you're not worth discussing this with.

I understand it. It's called jealousy. Their struggle to subsist has literally nothing to do with this other party's profits. By their own admission, their struggle to subsist was a choice. It was a choice they made before these social media companies even existed. And they deliberately chose to continue with the same poorly-performing model that didn't make money, because they preferred doing it that way. And now th…

Why do you keep leaving out the part where the "others" are making their money using the unpaid labor of this artist and many, many others, without compensating them for it? Are you seriously suggesting that this artist should stop expressing their upset because they have the option to build a plagiarism machine instead?
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