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

catandgirl.com

591–600 of 957 posts

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

#591

Earlier 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.

Descartes told us that animals are mere soulless automatons, not entities given the same rights and same consideration as humans.

Well ok, that was 300 years ago and views have changed dramatically since then.

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

#592
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the somewhat necessary followup question: if Midjourney or ChatGPT includes a license in front of its model weights or access to its model that forbids using those weights or output from its model to create a competitor, is it fair use to ignore that license? In both cases, we're relying on copyright. The companies are saying that you can access the models under a license. It's not too hard to circumvent that lice…

I think companies like openAI, meta and midjourney (if they say you can't train on output) are hypocrites, and probably have no standing to enforce some of the restrictions they try and make. That doesn't change fair use. There are also many truly open source models that explicitly give the users freedom to use them as they want, and I'd prefer more providers license their's like that, ie Apache 2.0 or MIT.

Definitely it doesn't change the fair use argument, but it should change the way we talk about these companies and the way we contextualize what they're arguing and the way we talk about the surrounding debate. We should be up-front that there are plenty of examples where people are not granted these fair use rights and that fair use is often unequally applied to IP law.

And we should be pushing hard for the entire package (not to say that you're not, more just pointing out that this is a package deal) -- I am not a copyright maximalist, but I especially don't want a model where only artists and individuals are subject to copyright restrictions. I'm of the opinion that it is good for these companies to take a credibility hit for their hypocrisy and for us to make it clear that the fair use argument has to be something that applies to everybody. I hope that this hypocrisy is something that comes up in court if these lawsuits go through, and ideally I'd like it to become a sticking point where trying to have their cake and eat it too does hurt these companies' legal arguments.

I want limited copyright across the board, but a system with maximum fair use for companies like OpenAI and minimal fair use for consumers and individuals is worse than a system with expansive copyright for everyone. I think it's a good thing for companies like OpenAI to be unable to make selective arguments. We shouldn't treat their end goals as irrelevant.

It's also very true that there are open models that take a permissive approach, but those models are in my experience usually not the primary target of most criticism (outside of the "open models are dangerous" FUD). The linked comic explicitly calls out "profit-making companies that own the most-used channels of communication." I'm not sure the artist would phrase it this way, but I think reading between the lines the artist is very likely coupling together ownership with their complaint -- they are talking about the injustice of having their work appropriated into a form that is locked down and controlled and that exists for the benefit of the profit-making companies who want to own yet another channel of communication (in this case artistic communication itself). I suspect that part of that feeling of injustice does directly come from an understanding that as an individual anyone would be sued into oblivion if they tried to make the same arguments in the opposite direction.

Does that get rid of the fair use argument? No. But it is impossible to actually talk about the fair use debate in a useful way while ignoring the context of that debate. To just mention fair use and nothing else is leaving out a ton of context about why artists are mad, and about why this feels unjust to so many people, and about the regular inconsistencies in how these arguments are often applied. We don't have to get rid of fair use arguments, but I personally think it's more responsible to include that context. I worry that leaving that context out is playing directly into the hands of companies that are trying to create an outcome of selective enforcement for IP.

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It's a bit of a sidenote, but on the subject of truly open models, I will say that it is great that those models are licensed the way that they're licensed, but I'd still rather have legal recognition that algorithmically generated weights are not subject to copyright at all. It's nice when companies are permissive, but it also subtly implies that they have a choice whether to be permissive. As someone who favors expanding fair use, I would prefer that they not have that choice. I disagree with the application of any license to model weights, permissive or not. I think at best those model weights could be subject to a database license, maybe, but I'm honestly a little skeptical of even that: I think that model weights are a factual and reproducible artifact of training, not a creative work.

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

#593

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.

> but I don't believe they have made a profit

Wrong way to evaluate and you're missing the complaint from the artists. It doesn't matter what the company makes or loses, it matters if people end up with money in their pockets. I don't know ML counts as derivative or not, but I don't think that's important here. Regardless it is a fact that an artist does work, that work isn't paid for, and then that work is used by someone else in some way to sell a product. The complaint is specifically that they have no control over deciding if their work can be used in that way or not.

At the end of the day, everyone working at OpenAI ends up with lots of money in their pockets. Regardless of the company profits or revenue, this money is connected to the work that these artists do, who do not make any or any substantial amounts of money. That's the underlying issue and we must read between the lines a bit to understand the difference between a specific point and the general thesis.

Also, remember Stability does have revenue as well. OpenAI is being pointed at because they are top dog, but it's not like there aren't others doing the same thing. So even a very specific justification may not refute the original complaint.

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

#594
post #96
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair use. Licenses like that are enforced under copyright, if the use is not subject to copyright, the license terms are irrelevant.

Fair use is a defence you can use when you infringe copyright [edit for clarity] or in other words the action you take would otherwise infringe. It's not fair use because you want it to be, and it's not at all legally clear if this defence is valid in the case of AI training. But it's not clear it isn't, either. This is basically what all the noise and PR money is about, currently, in hope that shaping the narrative…

The fair use defense in this situation is the equivalent of the YouTuber who puts "No copyright intended! I own nothing!" in the caption.

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

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, hold on, I'm calling Hollywood to tell that all they do is a hobby now. ...and the writers' guild, too.

Well obviously AI isn't at the level of replacing Hollywood yet. But once it is? I mean, yeah, it'll replace Hollywood. People will tell Netflix, "hey I want a move about X in the style of Y and I want Z to star in it", and bam -- your own bespoke movie. I mean, once the capability's there, it's just inevitable. And yeah -- acting will become a hobby, just like sewing is today.

Then people will see how empty and inferior it is and want movies with actual people and writers again.

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

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Oh, right. It just reads a million books in a couple of days, removes all the source information, mix and match it the way it sees fit and sells this output $10/month to anyone comes with a credit card. It's the same thing with GitHub's copilot. A book publisher would seize everything I have, and shot me at a back alley if I do 0.0001% of this.

Yeah, fair use implicitly uses the constraints of typical human lifetime and ability to moderate how much damage is done to publishers with it. That wasn’t an issue before recently, as humans were the only ones who could create output based off fair use laws.

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

#597
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a reference to Instagram, et. al., where distributing your illustrations there implicitly allows thier Ad machine to profit from your work

This seems like a strange criticism to me - if you're posting your illustrations on social media, it's presumably because you feel that you're getting value out of doing so. Who cares if they're also getting value out of you doing it, particularly when that value comes at no cost to you? If you sell your art, then art marketplaces and printers and shipping services all profit from your work, but I don't imagine she's…

> This seems like a strange criticism to me

On the contrary, I think it is very natural. The environment changed, and thus the deal. There's no clear way to negotiate the terms of the deal. It may be easy to say to just drop off the platform, but we've seen how difficult it can be to destroy a social media platform. Sure, Myspace and Google+ failed, but they didn't have the network base that Facebook and Twitter do which have also fallen into this trap (I'd even add Amazon here for the more general context. Certainly none of these companies are optimizing for the public because there's difference between who their customers are and the public). Network effects are powerful.

So I see complaints like these as attempts to alter the deal and start a coalition. The deal was changed under them, so why do they not have a right to attempt to negotiate? It is quite clear that there is a very large power differential. It's quite clear that unless you're exceptionally famous (which means the alteration is less impactful) that abandoning the platform comes at risking your entire livelihood unless you can garner a large enough coalition. It's like quitting a shitty job without a new job and not knowing who would hire you. Most people are going to stick around and complain __while__ looking for a way out.

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

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An easy way to tell is to instruct Midjourney to create something “in the style of ______ “ I don’t currently have a MJ subscription or I’d try it.

Well, I tried it, and MJ gets thrown off by the name of the style being two generic words "cat and girl." It basically thinks you want a cat and a girl. I tried lots of variations and prompt options and I was giving too many hints. Lesson being: give yourself a name as an artist that cannot be used easily in an AI prompt. I think some musicians did this with artist names and track names that meant they couldn't easil…

Is the artist anonymous or something? Use their real name…

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

#599
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But sometimes your work is put on Instagram without your knowledge or consent (eg by an Instagram aggregator account) And this whole ecosystem of credit (or not sharing credit) is undoubtedly encouraged by Instagram (because it's valuable to me to have an Instagram account with many followers)

>But sometimes your work is put on Instagram without your knowledge or consent (eg by an Instagram aggregator account) That's copyright infringement. You can't claim to own other people's work and then give license to others to use when you don't own the work.

Sure, but it is quite difficult to prove your work was used in the models and it is also quite expensive legally while being very time consuming. So in practice does it matter? I still believe in presumption of innocence, but that isn't to say that it can't be exploited and that the system itself is expensive (monetarily and temporally). I think you're just oversimplifying the issue and dismissing before considering any nuance.

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

#600

The argument here seems more mad at the decline of the ability of an individual to promote their work on social media channels (which is indeed a problem that's getting worse for reasons unrelated to generative AI) rather than losing money to people making AI art with Midjourney.

That’s a single panel. The point is they don’t care ultimately but don’t like being exploited.
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