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Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

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Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#101

Post by Kye »

wincy wrote: post #50
signa11 wrote: post #2

to paraphrase: You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a television. You wouldn't steal a DVD. Downloading someone's content for AI training is stealing. Stealing is a crime. really, really happy that someone is calling out data-harvesting for what it really is.

Hah, hilarious this is being unironically used, this was a lame ad old people they put out against piracy, and widely mocked by Millenials in the early 2000s. We've have always known we should harvest the internet for absolutely everything. If we don't, it's fine, we can squabble about our IP and China will just ingest the entire Internet, make a model out of it, then release the Ghiblifier and we'll all download it…

Reefer Madness. Satan in vinyl. DnD panic. Downloading as piracy.

I was once accused of being a pirate back then because I was talking about downloading in a chatroom.

What was I downloading? Linux. Probably Debian. It's the same kind of nonsense as people going around accusing everyone whose process they don't understand of using AI. I'm surprised no one has come after me for making flame fractals.

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#102

Post by quxbar »

polotics wrote: post #100
sshine wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe the case is that you're welcome to paint a picture perfectly copying Studio Ghibli, but you cannot sell it. Technically, you can't, but there's no way to enforce copyright infringement on private work. You can paint a Studio Ghibli-style painting -- the style isn't protected. These rules assume that copying the style is labor intensive, and righteously rewards the worker. When an LLM can reproduce thousan…

I think we can put your last sentence in a more compact form: If your entire livelihood depends on your art, get a stronger business. or even better: if you make art, get a stronger business or maybe simply: stop making art

A lot of people will need to stop identifying as 'someone who makes art with enough value to trade it for the decent wage'. Millions of egos destroyed, not a dollar of GDP lost.

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#103

Post by quxbar »

belorn wrote: post #61
conception wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t copyright a style, e.g look at the fashion industry.

But do not look at the music industry, because a lot of what people would think of as style is a melody, score, composition and so on.

vanilla ice would like a word

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#104

Post by thankyoufriend »

quxbar wrote: post #102
polotics wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can put your last sentence in a more compact form: If your entire livelihood depends on your art, get a stronger business. or even better: if you make art, get a stronger business or maybe simply: stop making art

A lot of people will need to stop identifying as 'someone who makes art with enough value to trade it for the decent wage'. Millions of egos destroyed, not a dollar of GDP lost.

So I guess you don't read books/comics, watch TV/Movies/plays, play video games or listen to music? People aren't born skilled artists, that takes time and effort. Being able to prompt GenAI well just makes you a skilled prompter, not a skilled artist. Over time, we will lose a lot of skilled artists and that is something worth thinking more deeply about, instead of giving a callous hot take. Artists are trained to view the world critically, and I want more critical thinkers - not less.

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#105

Post by sireat »

OpenAI has ridiculous guardrails for illustrations covering any public domain subject that has been covered by Disney or any other major public corporation.

So by that benchmark Japanese companies have a case.

Try generating a 19th century style illustration of Snow White. You can't at least not on OpenAI platform.

Try generating a picture "of flying boy fighting a pirate on a ship".

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#106

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

sshine wrote: post #90
signa11 wrote: post #2

to paraphrase: You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a television. You wouldn't steal a DVD. Downloading someone's content for AI training is stealing. Stealing is a crime. really, really happy that someone is calling out data-harvesting for what it really is.

You wouldn't download a car. Ironically, that whole anti-piracy campaign used a pirated font: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/you-wouldnt-steal-a-... The difference is: You're making copies of something: Scenario 1: I take your baguette. Your hand is empty. You starve. Scenario 2: I take your baguette recipe. You still have a baguette recipe. You continue to live. Scenario 3: I take your baguette recipe and p…

I don’t get it. Did you men that “It seems totally right to protect people's intellectual property” follow from “your financial model depends on you being the only distributor of copies of something”?

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#107

Post by steveBK123 »

mafriese wrote: post #5

I am still torn on this issue. On the one hand, it feels like a copyright violation when other people's works are used to train an ML model. On the other hand, it is not a copyright infringement if I paint a picture in the Studio Ghibli style myself. The question is whether removing a ‘skill requirement’ for replication is sufficient grounds to determine a violation.

I am mostly ok with these copyright crackdowns in AI in the spirit of - if a human were to do it commercially, it would be illegal.

We can argue if that should be the case or not, which is a different issue.

However, it should not be legal to automate something at scale that is illegal when done by an individual human. Allowing it just tips the scale against labor even more.

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#108

Post by _DeadFred_ »

mafriese wrote: post #5

I am still torn on this issue. On the one hand, it feels like a copyright violation when other people's works are used to train an ML model. On the other hand, it is not a copyright infringement if I paint a picture in the Studio Ghibli style myself. The question is whether removing a ‘skill requirement’ for replication is sufficient grounds to determine a violation.

You are not a for profit software product. You are a human. If you make a drawing, that drawing MIGHT be a for profit product.

If I make a for profit AI, that AI is a product. And if that product required others' copyrighted works to derive it's deliverable, it is by definition creating derivative works. Again, creating a small human, not creating a product. Creating a for profit AI, creating a product.

If my product couldn't produce the same output without having at some point consumed the other works, I've triggered copyright concerns.

If I make and train a small human, I am not creating a for profit product so it doesn't come in to play at all. The two are not similar in any way. The human is not the product. If THEY create a product later (a drawing in this case) then THAT is where copyright comes in.

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#109

Post by _DeadFred_ »

quxbar wrote: post #102
polotics wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can put your last sentence in a more compact form: If your entire livelihood depends on your art, get a stronger business. or even better: if you make art, get a stronger business or maybe simply: stop making art

A lot of people will need to stop identifying as 'someone who makes art with enough value to trade it for the decent wage'. Millions of egos destroyed, not a dollar of GDP lost.

Not a dollar lost, and yet all of society is poorer. Less social commentary via art. Less beauty. Less novelty and less new forms invented. Less entertrainment (entertainment that has some human values imbued into it, but there will be more 'entertainment', just now devoid of intentionality/humanity/novelty, a firehose of images/noises/colors with nothing behind it, a firehouse of slop). Less personal discipline trying to master something. Less seeing through the eyes of another person, so less relation, less empathy, less humanity. Less, less, less. AI is an inertia machine.

No dollars burned, just huge huge amounts of cultural capital. Just a reduction to a more primitive, less cultured/developed version of what it means to be human. Less thinking out loud, sharing of thoughts, exposure to new thoughts. More retreating into (a now lesser developed, now culturally atrophied) self.

Re: Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP

#110

Post by esalman »

data-ottawa wrote: post #76
nrjames wrote: post #33

In the world of tattooing, it’s frowned upon for a tattoo artist to take another tattoo artist’s original work and replicate it without permission, yet it’s common practice to take well known IP (Pokémon, Studio Ghibli, etc) and tattoo that on a client. The ethical boundary seems to be between whether the source artwork was created by an individual vs. a corporation.

That is a huge oversimplification. In the tattoo case, tattooing pikachu on a person does not harm Nintendo’s business, but copying another tattoo artist’s work or style directly takes their business. Tattoo art is an industry where your art style largely defines your career. I can see the argument LLMs are transformative, but when you set up specific evaluation of copying a company/artist and then advertise that you…

Very well put. It boggles my mind that some people cannot separate individual from corporations. As if their mind are not able to comprehend how corporations can cause harm at scale.
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