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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

#931

Post by visarga »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #256
Aeolun wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

Humans sell books and music by the millions. Streaming and copying/printing is mass production too

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

#932

Post by visarga »

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…

Just the people in this discussion thread, devs and antrepreneurs, have probably automated a huge amount of work. But here we are bickering about AI and copyrights like its a new thing.

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

#933

Post by c0pium »

freejazz wrote: post #722
c0pium wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vast majority of art used by midjourney is not public domain Is that true? How did you establish that?

OpenAI has basically admitted it. Is OpenAI even disputing that it ingested all the works its being sued over? Not as far as I can tell.

Huh? You’re aware that midjouney and OpenAI are different things, right?

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

#934

Post by c0pium »

OOPMan wrote: post #684
c0pium wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the response more carefully. Generative models are just tools. If I use one to write a story it’s no less a story that I wrote than if I’d chiseled it into a Persian mountainside.

It pretty clearly is. Less of a story that is.

Careful, you’re saying the quiet part out loud.

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

#935

Post by c0pium »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #816
c0pium wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just gatekeeping. Art is not better because it was made by hand as opposed to with technology. If I use a generative model to make art then I’m an artist.

I would argue art is better when it's the result of the effort and vision of an individual prompting a search engine to stitch images together on your behalf might result in an image you can call art, but imo all the art generated wholecloth like this sucks. necessarily derivative. put into the world without thought. My favorite critique of LLM work: "why would I bother to read a story that no one bothered to write"

This is just the fallacy of the Protestant work ethic with different words. Things don’t need to be difficult to be good. You can’t tell how hard an artist worked just by looking at the piece. There’s a lot of truly terrible art that has had a ton of work put into it.

It’s very easy to make bad art quickly with powerful tools. It’s also possible to carefully craft prompts which generate amazing results that win awards. Source: I’ve done this. You should see the reactions when people have heaped flowery accords on a drawing and then find out it’s Dall-e. The irony of the transition from “art is rebellion” to pearl-clutching is almost the best part.

That critique says more about your understanding than it does about the work.

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

#936

Post by c0pium »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #730
c0pium wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just gatekeeping. Art is not better because it was made by hand as opposed to with technology. If I use a generative model to make art then I’m an artist.

Seriously asking: if I customize my order at a fast food joint am I a chef? How is that different from prompt engineering to generate art?

Saying seriously asking and then asking an unserious question is like saying no offense before telling someone to fuck off.

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

#937

Post by c0pium »

OOPMan wrote: post #681
c0pium wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just gatekeeping. Art is not better because it was made by hand as opposed to with technology. If I use a generative model to make art then I’m an artist.

Plenty of people would disagree so clearly this is not a settled matter

Good thing it’s not up to them then. They don’t get to say that something isn’t art.

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

#938

Post by c0pium »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #678
c0pium wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just gatekeeping. Art is not better because it was made by hand as opposed to with technology. If I use a generative model to make art then I’m an artist.

> If I use a generative model to make art then I’m an artist. You are free to think so, but it really doesn't make you an artist any more than wearing a medal you bought second hand makes you a war hero. Something else did the work and you're just claiming credit. It's honestly kind of sad.

Thank you for providing such an excellent example of how easy it is to dismiss things without understanding them.

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

#939

Post by KingMob »

mlrtime wrote: post #853
KingMob wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've never asked artists to "properly compensate" each other for learning/inspiration in the past. LLMs are collections of GPUs crunching numbers. "Inspiration" doesn't really apply to them. A better analogy is sampling, and musicians remixing music are very much required to pay for the samples they use.

Only if the "use" where use means distribute. If I sample a track and play it in my home I don't properly compensate anyone. If I ask GPT to create a cool new comic based on the article and then delete or use it privately it, same applies.

Assuming that's true, GPT is the one "distributing" in your second example, so that still applies to them (if not you).

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

#940

Post by visarga »

halostatue wrote: post #403
philomath_mn wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I don't think anyone disagrees with that. The question is about someone/something writing a book _influenced_ by Harry Potter -- do they owe JK Rowling royalties?

That depends on a variety of factors. You may find yourself in trouble if you write about a wizard boy called Perry Hotter going to Elkwood school of magic and he ends up with two sidekicks (a smarter girl and a redhead boy). It could be argued quite convincingly that stories like Brooks's Shannara and Eddings's Belgariad are LOTR with the serial numbers filed off — but there is more than enough difference in how var…

> Humans can be influenced by writers, artists, etc. LLMs cannot.

This is literally wrong, LLMs are influenced by their users. And people can input new ideas, facts and explore new directions by choosing how they interact with the LLM.

A LLM writing a book all on its own start to finish would be a different story, the output would be derived 100% from its training set. A LLM being prompted with a book chapter would risk borrowing too much.

But if you prompt a LLM without copy pasting protected content in the prompt, then you are the main influence. And LLMs can explore outside their training distribution in this way, helped by humans.

Many people think a trained LLM is frozen, but they do in-context-learning, they can even acquire new concepts/words and properly use them in the same session. They don't keep the memory of this until retraining, but that doesn't mean they are locked up. There is plenty of space in the buffer you can use to add new material after training.

This kind of thinking is like saying you can't drive a nail unless you own a licensed hammer, if someone is using his shoe to drive a nail will be in infringement. Maybe the shoe is also a hammer if the user so says.

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