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OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

petapixel.com

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Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#71

Post by jsheard »

pj_mukh wrote: post #59
toddmorey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t entirely agree. For example, it’s a very popular scheme on Etsy right now to use LLMs to generate posters in the style of popular artists. Any artist should be able to say hey I don’t want my works to be part of your training set to power derivative generations. And I think it should even apply retroactively so that they have to retrain their models that are already generating works from training data consume…

Dumb question: Why does Etsy allowed clearly reproduced/copied works? AI or not. Like selling it for money seems like a clear line crossed, and Etsy is the perfect gatekeeper here.

Etsy stopped caring a while ago, it was supposed to be a marketplace specifically for selling handmade items but they allowed it to be overrun with mass produced tat dropshipped direct from the factory. Turning a blind eye to plagiarism with or without AI is just the next logical step from there.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#72

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

llm_trw wrote: post #40
toddmorey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t entirely agree. For example, it’s a very popular scheme on Etsy right now to use LLMs to generate posters in the style of popular artists. Any artist should be able to say hey I don’t want my works to be part of your training set to power derivative generations. And I think it should even apply retroactively so that they have to retrain their models that are already generating works from training data consume…

Should any artist be able to tell another artist: hey don't copy my work when you're learning, I don't want competition? It seems like they are deeply upset someone has figured out a way for a machine to do what artists have been doing since time immemorial.

There are two major differences between art generators and human artists:

1) human artists are legal persons and capable of being held liable in civil court for copyright infringement; having a machine with no legal standing do the copyright infringement should be forbidden because it is difficult to detect, impossible to avoid, and a legal nightmare to unravel.

2) human artists are capable of understanding what flowers, Jesus on the cross, waterfalls, etc actually are, whereas DALL-E is much dumber than a lizard and not capable of understanding these things, so using the verb "learning" to describe both is extremely misleading. DALL-E is a statistical process which is barely more sophisticated than linear regression compared to a human brain. It is plain wrong to say stuff like this:

> It seems like they are deeply upset someone has figured out a way for a machine to do what artists have been doing since time immemorial.

when nobody has even come close to figuring that out! If DALL-E worked like a human artist it would know what a bicycle is: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... But it doesn't. It is a plagiarism machine that knows how to match "bicycle" with millions images having a "bicycle" tag, and uses statistics to smooth things together.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#73

Post by CamperBob2 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #70
CamperBob2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, coupled with the obvious ideological motivations. Success could alter the course of human history, maybe even for the better. If you feel that what you're doing is that important, you're not going to let copyright law get in the way, and it would be silly to expect you to.

I can't say I believe that. If that were the case, they'd focus more on results and less on hyping up the next underwhelming generation.

For one thing, they are focused on money because they need lots of it to do what they're doing.

For another, the o1-pro (and presumably o3) models are not "underwhelming" except to those who haven't tried them, or those who have an axe to grind. Serious progress is being made at an impressive pace... but again, it isn't coming for free.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#74

Post by soared »

munchler wrote: post #65
oraphalous wrote: post #8

I don't even understand why it's everyone elses problem to opt-out. Eventually - for how many of these AI companies would a person have to track down their opt-out processes just to protect their work from AI? That's crazy. OpenAI should be contacting every single one and asking for permission - like everyone has to in order to use a person's work. How they are getting away with this is beyond me.

Copyright doesn't prevent anyone from "using" a person's work. You can use copyrighted material all day long without a license or penalty. In particular, anyone is allowed to learn from copyrighted material by reading, hearing, or seeing it. Copyright is intended to prevent everyone from copying a person's work. That's a very different thing.

There is an argument to be made that ChatGPT mildly rewording/misquoting info directly from my blog is copying.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#75

Post by recursivecaveat »

toddmorey wrote: post #6

No way OpenAI will ever “good citizen” this. Tools to opt out of training sets will only come if they are legally compelled. Governments will have to make respecting some sort of training preference header on public content mandatory I think. The fact that photographers have to independently submit each piece of work they wanted excluded along with detailed descriptions just shows how much they DONT want anyone exclu…

100%, like most opt-outs this exists as a checklist feature that proponents can point to and hopefully convince bystanders. You muddy the waters by allowing someone to with great effort technically possibly achieve the thing they want, maybe, for now, until you close it in 2 years and everyone says "well that makes sense nobody used that feature anyways".

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#76

Post by nicbou »

dylan604 wrote: post #16
toddmorey wrote: post #6

No way OpenAI will ever “good citizen” this. Tools to opt out of training sets will only come if they are legally compelled. Governments will have to make respecting some sort of training preference header on public content mandatory I think. The fact that photographers have to independently submit each piece of work they wanted excluded along with detailed descriptions just shows how much they DONT want anyone exclu…

> The fact that photographers have to independently submit each piece of work they wanted excluded along with detailed descriptions just shows how much they DONT want anyone excluding content from their training data. That's bloody brilliant. If you don't want us to scrape your content, please send us your content with all of the training data already provided so we will know not to scrape it if we come across it in…

The tech industry’s understanding of consent is terrifying.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#77

Post by paranoidrobot »

tiahura wrote: post #51
griomnib wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napster had a moment too, but then they got steamrolled in court. Courts are slow, so it seems like nothing is happening, but there’s tons of cases in the pipeline. The media industry has forced many tech firms to bend the knee, OpenAI will follow suit. Nobody rips off Disney IP and lives to tell the tale.

If your business model depends on the Roberts' court kneecapping AI, pivot. Training does not constitute "copying" under copyright law because it involves the creation of intermediate, non-expressive data abstractions that do not reproduce or communicate the copyrighted work's original expression. This process aligns with fair use principles, as it is transformative, serves a distinct purpose (machine learning innova…

I believe there are some other issues other than just "is it transformative".

I can't take an Andy Warhol painting, modify it in some way and then claim it's my own original work. I have some obligation to say "Yeah, I used a Warhol painting as the basis for it".

Similarly, I can't take a sample of a Taylor Swift song and use it myself in my own music - I have to give Taylor credit, and probably some portion of the revenue too.

There's also still the issue that some LLMs and (I believe) image generation AI models have regurgitated works from their training models - in whole or part.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#78

Post by [deleted] »

soared wrote: post #74
munchler wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright doesn't prevent anyone from "using" a person's work. You can use copyrighted material all day long without a license or penalty. In particular, anyone is allowed to learn from copyrighted material by reading, hearing, or seeing it. Copyright is intended to prevent everyone from copying a person's work. That's a very different thing.

There is an argument to be made that ChatGPT mildly rewording/misquoting info directly from my blog is copying.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#79

Post by munchler »

soared wrote: post #74
munchler wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright doesn't prevent anyone from "using" a person's work. You can use copyrighted material all day long without a license or penalty. In particular, anyone is allowed to learn from copyrighted material by reading, hearing, or seeing it. Copyright is intended to prevent everyone from copying a person's work. That's a very different thing.

There is an argument to be made that ChatGPT mildly rewording/misquoting info directly from my blog is copying.

Sure, but that's a different claim and a different argument.

Re: OpenAI fails to deliver opt-out system for photographers

#80

Post by richardw »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #63
llm_trw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should any artist be able to tell another artist: hey don't copy my work when you're learning, I don't want competition? It seems like they are deeply upset someone has figured out a way for a machine to do what artists have been doing since time immemorial.

This analogy seems to be made every time this comes up on HN, but I don't think it really holds water. First of all, when a human artist learns from another, it's inherently a level playing field for competition; the junior and senior are both human, neither are going to be 1,000,000x more productive as the other. So the senior artist really doesn't have that much to worry about. And the senior artist recognizes that…

Surely all this applies to code and the written word in general?

People allowed (and encouraged) read access to websites so Google would index and link. Now Google et al summarise and even generate. All of that is built on our collective output. Surely everyone deserves a cut? The free sharing licenses that were added to repos didn’t account for LLM’s, so we should revisit it so all creators get their dues, not just those who traditionally got paid.

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