Here's what Ars got out of GPT-4 a year ago: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york...
An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
31–40 of 927 posts
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's just doing what many human artists would do, if they're not explicitly being paid to create new IP. It isn’t an independent human. It is a service paid for by customers. The moment it provides the image to a paying user, the image has thus been used commercially. In fact, the user may not even necessarily have to be paying in order to infringe copyright. And besides, even amateur artists are ashamed to produce…
If I pay you to tell me the plot of Indiana Jones, privately, because I don’t have time to watch it, and you agree, did you violate copyright laws? If you do it for free, is it different? If I ask a friend to draw me as Indiana Jones? Or pay an artist? In either case I just want that picture to put in my rec room, not to sell.
The answer is yes? The person doing the drawing is violating copyright. I don't know why that is even a controversial question.
You are asking the equivalent question of, if I put a pirated copy of windows on my PC that I only use privately at home am I violating copyright, or if I sell copies of music for people to only listen to in their own home.
But this is even more damning, this is a commercial service that is reproducing the copyrighted work.
Edit: Just to clarify to people who reflexively downvote. I'm making a statement of what is it not a value judgement. And yes there is fair use, but that's an exemption from the rule that it is a copyright violation.
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I pay you to tell me the plot of Indiana Jones, privately, because I don’t have time to watch it, and you agree, did you violate copyright laws? If you do it for free, is it different? If I ask a friend to draw me as Indiana Jones? Or pay an artist? In either case I just want that picture to put in my rec room, not to sell.
Summarization is generally not copyright infringement. Private copying and transference, even once for a friend, is copyright infringement. I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it is true nonetheless.
"Private copying and transference, even once for a friend, is copyright infringement."
Not without money or equivalent trade involved.
I can draw Mickey Mouse all day on my notebook, and hand it to you; no legal issues.
If I charge you a pack of bubble gum - Disney's lawyers will kick my door down and serve me notice.
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#34Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#35the guardrails are probably going to end up being way too close together when the dust settles — imagine if something as simple as "young wizard" would be enough to trip the warnings. someone could be looking to do an image from Feist's early novels, or of their own work, & that will be verboten. it may turn out that we're facing the strongest copyright holders being able to limit everyone's legitimate use of these t…
Unless it can exclude the copyright outputs and provide something else instead of blocking the inputs. I'm sure there's AI that can check if a picture is close enough to something in their database of copyrighted characters built up from some kind of DMCA-like process of copyright holders submitting examples of their work to be blocked.
Indeed, but where does it stop? Looks like Potter? No go. Hmm, looks like an illustration of Pug? No go. Looks like Simon the sorcerer. No go. Hmm, looks like a wizard from Infocom's Sorcers get all the girls. No go.
The problem is that it regurgitates what already exists and if you really want to abide by all the permissions then there is nothing left.
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#36> Still, the near perfect mimicry is an uncomfortable reminder that AI is getting better at copying and closer to I completely disagree. It's not getting "better." It always just copied. That's all it /can/ do. How anyone expected novel outputs from this technology is beyond me. It's highly noticeable if you do a minimal analysis, but all modern "AI" tools are just copyright thiefs. They're just there to whitewash aw…
> It's not getting "better." It always just copied. That's all it /can/ do That's true of all the best artists ever. > They're just there to whitewash away liability from blatantly stealing someone else's content. That's because that's not a thing. Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction invented to give states more control over creativity. Nobody who copies bytes which represent my music is a "thief". To be a thie…
> Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction [...] To be a thief, they'd need to, you know, come to my house and steal something.
That's just a legal fiction invented so people can pretend to own physical objects even though we should all know that in this world you can never truly own anything.
Everything we do or protect is made up. You've just drawn the arbitrary line in the sand as to what can be "owned" in a different place than where other people might draw it.
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#37Oooh those guardrails make me angry. I get why they are there (dont poke the bear) but it doesn't make me overlook the self serving hypocrisy involved. Though I am also generally opposed to the notion of intellectual property whatsoever on the basis that it doesn't seem to serve its intended purpose and what good could be salvaged from its various systems can already be well represented with other existing legal conc…
The problem is people at large companies creating these AI models, wanting the freedom to copy artists’ works when using it, but these large companies also want to keep copyright protection intact, for their regular business activities. They want to eat the cake and have it too. And they are arguing for essentially eliminating copyright for their specific purpose and convenience, when copyright has virtually never been loosened for the public’s convenience, even when the exceptions the public asks for are often minor and laudable. If these companies were to argue that copyright should be eliminated because of this new technology, I might not object. But now that they come and ask… no, they pretend to already have, a copyright exception for their specific use, I will happily turn around and use their own copyright maximalist arguments against them.
(Copied from a comment of mine written more than three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582047>)
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Summarization is generally not copyright infringement. Private copying and transference, even once for a friend, is copyright infringement. I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it is true nonetheless.
"Private copying and transference, even once for a friend, is copyright infringement." Not without money or equivalent trade involved. I can draw Mickey Mouse all day on my notebook, and hand it to you; no legal issues. If I charge you a pack of bubble gum - Disney's lawyers will kick my door down and serve me notice.
> Not without money or equivalent trade involved.
This isn’t generally true. The copyright holder need only claim that the value of their copyrighted work or the profits received by its distribution has been reduced or lost. I’m not sure they even need to make such a claim, as courts have already determined that commerciality isn’t a requirement for infringement. It’s a matter of unauthorized use, distribution or reproduction, not trade.
They of course will likely never know and might not bother to litigate given the private and uncommercial nature, but they still have the right to do so.
They would weigh the financial and reputational cost of litigating against children sharing images and decide not to. Of course if one had 10000 friends and provided this service to them in a visible manner, then they’d probably come knocking.
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's just doing what many human artists would do I really don't think so. If I paid a human artist to make the prompt in the title, and I didn't explicitly say "Indiana Jones" I would think it should be fairly obvious to the human artist that I do _not_ want Indiana Jones. If they gave me back a picture of, clearly, Indiana Jones, I would ask them why they didn't create something original.
I actually don't think it would be obvious. By not explicitly saying Indiana Jones when so obviously describing Indiana Jones, there is an implication present. But I think many human artists would probably ask you, "Wait, so Indiana Jones, or are you looking for something different," before immediately diving in.
So why didn’t the AI ask for clarification?
Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
#40So, no speculation as to why Spiderman and Harry Potter were forbidden but Terminator and James Bond were allowed?