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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

#921
post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media companies don't care if you think it's replacing her or not. They care that (1) they made something that will sell and that (2) they made it cheaper than they did before. All content will be behind a subscription and the algorithm will say "you like Janis Joplin? Let's autoplay some close-enough AI artists that don't exist that we won't have to pay any royalties to!" You'll get an offer to upgrade to Double Pro…

I know you're really really sad that one person can't hold all similarities to their chosen likeness in copyrighted perpetuity, but it sounds like you have a problem that things are SIMILAR and the artist isn't getting paid for any adjacent likeness instead of content itself being directly stolen. Regarding that topic, you should be able to find my morally, ethically and legally backed response via midjourney by prom…

I don't think you replied to the right comment. Or you forgot to read and comprehend mine and just answered some phantom you were arguing with in the shower.

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

#922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There’s no evidence any of us are making choices either. There is very clear evidence that the humans that operate the computers make the choice on which data the model gets trained on. The discussion is about those choices.

My point is that there’s no scientific way to demonstrate that one has made a choice vs that outcome being determined (perhaps probabilistically) or being random. We can’t “go back” and do it a different way to demonstrate we’ve actually chosen . We don’t understand what it means to be intelligent in the way people generally mean, and we don’t understand (scientifically) what it means to choose. So we can’t use choic…

>My point is that there’s no scientific way to demonstrate that one has made a choice

"I'm sorry, your honor, there is no scientific way to demonstrate that I have made a choice to shoot the victim dead. Therefore, I am not guilty!"

The way that an AI gets a data set to be trained on is via a choice made by humans. You can't reason your way out of the fact that a choice is made, that it's not made by the AI, and that it has consequences.

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

#923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"search engines didn't exist until google" - you might want to, uh, google that

The post you are replying to is poorly-worded. I think the post is making reference to the "thing" which made Google stand out in a sea of existing search engines. " Using the idea of relevancy, they built Google in a way that - in comparison to other search engines at the time - was simply better at connecting users with more pertinent results. " A query typed in Google provided more utility and relevancy than did E…

Why? I dont see any way the ranking algorithm would affect this discussion, and if it did, i think old style (ranking based on keywords) would make the comparison slightly better than google (pagerank) style search engines.

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

#924
post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know what percentage is independent inspiration for a person using the AI to create art. Once upon a time it was a contentious idea that humans had significant authorship in photographs, which merely mechanically captured the world. What % is the camera's independent inspiration? Here, we have humans guiding what's often a quite involved process of synthesis of past human (and machine) creation.

> We don't know what percentage is independent inspiration for a person using the AI to create art The person using the AI doesn't matter in the equation. They aren't an artist, they're a monkey with a typewriter. We're talking about the AI here, because it can generate the same images no matter which monkey with a typewriter is typing the prompts.

Of course the person using the AI matters. It's literally the same as holding a brush. You can give it a prompt, get a result and be unhappy with it, modify it or remove it, and proceed doing that until you are happy with what you have.

No matter how great the AI is, a monkey with an AI will never generate anything useful.

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

#925
post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, did an AI write this? Literally no one buys books because they might one day recoup a fraction of the sticker price on the secondary market. Baffling

They actually do exactly this, they’re just not thinking about it. You buy a book because you want the physical possession, which gives you the ability to sell it or give it to someone or display it. Not because you want to read the contents - else you would just borrow it from a library.

> You buy a book because you want the physical possession, which gives you the ability to sell it or give it to someone or display it. Not because you want to read the contents - else you would just borrow it from a library.

Please back up this statement.

I for one, buy primary market books for the content; and to support creators whom I wish to support. Not to display the book or resell it. That is some capitalist jive.

People typically use libraries because

A) they are too poor to afford the books, and libraries therein provide a valuable community function

B) they are doing research and only need the books for a short time

C) they read more books than they can afford

and other such reasons.

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

#926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“The constitution” is certainly not in favor of abolishing copyright, as it explicitly provides for its legality and usefulness.

I am not sure where the “unnatural restriction” quote comes from, could you illuminate me?

As far as what the constitution says about copyright, it seems only to say that it is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”

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

#927

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…

The artist in the article clearly states that his work was free to use only if it was not used to make a profit, those were the terms of their license. In the artist's opinion, OpenAI violated that license by training their tool on their work and then selling that tool. This artist doesn't complain about work similar to their own being generated, and their artwork is very clearly not clothing.

Her work. (Dorothy Gambrell.)

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

#928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about the fact that these cartoons look like Keith Haring meets Cathy Guisewite meets Scott Adams? These cartoons are artistically derivative. They are obviously not derivative from the perspective of copyright as style is an idea, not an expression. These models were not trained on just the cartoonist in question, nor just their inspirations. The intent was to train on all images and styles. The expression o…

your argument is that it's not infringing because they copied everything at once? I get that there's case law on copying in memory on the input side not being infringing but can't for the life of me understand how they get away with not paying for it. At least libraries buy the books before loaning them out, OpenAI and midjourney presumably pirated the works or otherwise ignored the license of published works and jus…

In sum, we conclude that:

1. Google's unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. Google's commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use.

2. Google's provision of digitized copies to the libraries that supplied the books, on the understanding that the libraries will use the copies in a manner consistent with the copyright law, also does not constitute infringement. Nor, on this record, is Google a contributory infringer.

Focus on the protected aspects of the originals. This would be their expressions. Unless an LLM is reproducing the exact expression and not merely the idea, then there is no market substitute. The market substitute for a Picasso painting is the facsimile of one of Picasso's actual paintings, not just some other cubist artwork.

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

#929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that there’s no scientific way to demonstrate that one has made a choice vs that outcome being determined (perhaps probabilistically) or being random. We can’t “go back” and do it a different way to demonstrate we’ve actually chosen . We don’t understand what it means to be intelligent in the way people generally mean, and we don’t understand (scientifically) what it means to choose. So we can’t use choic…

>My point is that there’s no scientific way to demonstrate that one has made a choice "I'm sorry, your honor, there is no scientific way to demonstrate that I have made a choice to shoot the victim dead. Therefore, I am not guilty!" The way that an AI gets a data set to be trained on is via a choice made by humans . You can't reason your way out of the fact that a choice is made, that it's not made by the AI, and tha…

I mean the interesting bit of this conversation is about intelligence not laws. If you want to debate that talk to someone else I guess.

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

#930
post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure. It's just a tool. That need other people's art to work. So does a human brain. Which brings us to the other side of the reasoning is that tools like Midjourney and OpenAI enable idiots (when it comes to drawing/animating ... that includes me) to create engaging artwork. Recently generating artwork like that went from almost impossible to "great, but easily recognizeable as AI artwork". Frankly, I expect the d…

> So does a human brain. A major difference between a human training himself by looking at art, and a computer doing it, is that the human ends up working for himself, the computer is owned by some billionaire. One enhances the creative potential of humanity as a whole, the other consolidates it in the hands of the already-powerful. Another major difference is that a human can't use that knowledge to mass-produce tha…

No, the beneficiaries of generative AI are the users because they set the prompt and use the outputs. Providers make cents per million tokens. It is a people empowerment technology.
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