On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by MacsHeadroom » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:04 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #610

ls612 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright only makes any sense for goods with a high fixed cost of production and low to zero marginal cost. Any further use beyond solving that problem is pure rent seeking behavior Also, with computers being functional copyright has become a tool of social control; any function in a physical object can be taken away from you at a whim with no recourse so long as a computer can be inserted into the object. Absent a…

> Copyright only makes any sense for goods with a high fixed cost of production and low to zero marginal cost. If that's the case, then novels, news articles, digital images, etc. are things that copyright absolutely makes sense for. If you think that they have a "low cost of production", you are sadly misinformed about the artistic process. Some of these have vanishingly low marginal costs when it comes to reproduct…

Novels maybe. News articles, with rare exception, and digital images absolutely do not have high fixed costs of production.

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

#712

Post by tracerbulletx » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:12 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #118

madeofpalk wrote: post #36

> 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…

Copyright is just made up for pragmatic purposes. To incentive creation. It does not matter if training models is not the same as reproducing something exactly if we wish to decide that it's unfair or even just desirable for economic incentive to disallow it, then we are free to make that decision. The trade offs are fairly profound in both directions I think and likely some compromise will need to be made that is fair to all parties and does not cripple economic and social progress.

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

#713

Post by MacsHeadroom » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:15 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #605

derangedHorse wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly use the blurb in search results at times to get an alternative to the original author (especially if the blurbed content is paywalled).

In the US, that blurb is covered by fair use. Google doesn't regurgitate the entire published work. These many AI lawsuits will likely settle whether training LLMs falls under fair use.

> Google doesn't regurgitate the entire published work.

Wrong. Here's Google's cache of an entire paywalled article currently on the front page of HN: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c-xOMj...

You can get these by clicking the three dots next to any search result, expanding the options in the pop-over, and then clicking "cached."

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

#714

Post by MacsHeadroom » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:19 AM UTC

lp0_on_fire wrote: post #447

ben_w wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They ingested the entirety of the internet. Everyone who has ever written anything, including our (implicitly copyrighted) HN comments and letters written 400 years ago, which is online was used to train GPT-4.

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

#715

Post by MacsHeadroom » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:33 AM UTC

Vegenoid wrote: post #289

Jasper_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The bottom line is this," the firm, known as a16z, wrote. "Imposing the cost of actual or potential copyright liability on the creators of AI models will either kill or significantly hamper their development." > The firm said payment for all of the copyrighted material already used in LLMs would cost the companies that built them "tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year in royalty payments." https://www.bus…

There are many areas of research, technological advancement, and construction which would proceed much more quickly than their current pace if we didn't force them do things in the way that society has decided is correct and just.

The constitution is clear that copyright is not "just;" it is a concession for the sole purpose of promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," whose "unnatural restriction of natural rights must be carefully balanced."

The fact that "research, technological advancement, and construction would proceed much more quickly" without copyright is exactly why abolishing copyright is the just and correct thing to do.

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

#716

Post by eslaught » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:44 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #118

madeofpalk wrote: post #36

> 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…

> ... as it didn't kill off the fashion industry.

Clothes are inherently consumable goods. If you use them, they will wear out. If you do not use them, they still age over time. You cannot "copy" a piece of clothing without a truly astonishing amount of effort. Both the processes, and the materials, may be difficult or impossible to imitate without a very large investment of effort.

Compare this to digital art: You can copy it literally for free. Before AI, at least you had to copy it mostly verbatim (modulo some relatively boring transforms, like up/down-scaling, etc.). That limited artist's incomes, but not their future works. But in a post-AI world, you can suck in an artist's life's work, and generate an unlimited number of copycats. Right now, the quality of those might be insufficient to be true replacements, but it's not hard to imagine we'll be in a world not so far off when it will be sufficient, and then artists will be truly screwed.

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

#717

Post by freejazz » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:47 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #599

freejazz wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

what am I dismissing? I think these AI companies are stealing these works. Nerds here are equivocating the creation of art with what LLM output, simply out of their own inexperience making art. It's terrible and I hate it.

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

#718

Post by Animats » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:48 AM UTC

eslaught wrote: post #716

sandworm101 wrote: post #118

Earlier 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…

> ... as it didn't kill off the fashion industry. Clothes are inherently consumable goods. If you use them, they will wear out. If you do not use them, they still age over time. You cannot "copy" a piece of clothing without a truly astonishing amount of effort. Both the processes, and the materials, may be difficult or impossible to imitate without a very large investment of effort. Compare this to digital art: You c…

> You cannot "copy" a piece of clothing without a truly astonishing amount of effort.

Sure you can. There's a whole industry making knockoffs.

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

#719

Post by freejazz » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:50 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #464

Ajedi32 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, we already have doctrine that starts to encompass some of these concepts with fair use. The four pronged test in US case law: - the purpose and character of use (is a machine doing this different in purpose and character? many would say yes. is "ripping-off-this-artist-as-a-service" different than an isolated work that builds upon another artist's art?) - the nature of the copyrighted work - the amount…

The problem with this conversation is that its being had by people that make the top level comment here stating that clothing is not copyrightable. It is. Clothing design is copyrightable. This was a huge recent case, Star Athletica. They know nothing about copyright law and they just build intuitions from the world around them, but the intuitions are completely nonsense because they are made in ignorance of the actual law and what the law does and why the law does it. I find it exhausting.

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

#720

Post by jwells89 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 4:52 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #477

kansface wrote: post #455

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.

Humans usually add their own style to things, and it’s hard to discuss copyright without that larger context along with the question of scale (me making copies of your paintings by hand is not as significant a risk to your livelihood as being able to make them unimaginably faster than you can at much lower cost). Just as rules about making images of people in certain ways or places only became critical when photograp…

Humans can also come up with their own styles and can draw things they’ve never seen, which ML models as they currently exist are not capable of (and likely will never be). A human artist who has lived their entire life in the wilderness and has never trained themselves with the work of another artist will still be able to produce art with styles produced entirely by personal experimentation.

ML models have a long way to go before comparisons to humans make any kind of sense.