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Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

nytimes.com

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Re: Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

#2

Post by codazoda »

This is not at all surprising to me.

Just this week I asked for a picture of a cartoon Car. It produced an image so similar to Pixar Cars that I was surprised. I was hoping for something a bit more creative. I asked the AI a few follow-up questions about the first use of the windshield for eyes. That might not be a copyrightable thing but Pixar Cars have a certain look to them and these tools seem to produce a very similar look.

I didn't read the article due to the paywall.

Re: Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

#5

Post by beardyw »

Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for creatives, seeing (or hearing) other people's work has been a source of new work since forever. In many ways AI is doing the same but way more efficiently. What it is not doing is adding something new. The existing rules don't acknowledge that part of "being inspired by ...".

Re: Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

#7

Post by waffletower »

beardyw wrote: post #5

Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for creatives, seeing (or hearing) other people's work has been a source of new work since forever. In many ways AI is doing the same but way more efficiently. What it is not doing is adding something new. The existing rules don't acknowledge that part of "being inspired by ...".

I disagree with it (generative AI) being incapable of adding new works. I have seen machine generated prompts rendered by image models create decidedly, in my opinion, new art works. A significant fraction of them I even liked.

Re: Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

#8

Post by elpocko »

codazoda wrote: post #2

This is not at all surprising to me. Just this week I asked for a picture of a cartoon Car. It produced an image so similar to Pixar Cars that I was surprised. I was hoping for something a bit more creative. I asked the AI a few follow-up questions about the first use of the windshield for eyes. That might not be a copyrightable thing but Pixar Cars have a certain look to them and these tools seem to produce a very s…

When you simply ask for "a picture of a cartoon car" and nothing else, these models will give you a bland and generic depiction of a cartoon car, something like the lowest common denominator among cartoon car images according to their training data. Pixar's Cars is a popular depiction of cartoon cars.

If you want something more sophisticated and creative then you have to be the source of creativity, you have to describe details of the cartoon car, the setting, and the style, whatever you can think of to describe the thing that you actually want. "Picture of a car" doesn't cut it. If you can't describe it in words, then you make a scribble instead (I don't actually know if Midjourney supports this, I only use ComfyUI + local models and tools).

Most people don't know how to use these tools properly and they don't care, all they want and all they know is a "Make image" button. More sophisticated users (dare I say "artists"?) use it like a renderer for their ideas, sometimes literally integrated into Blender or other creative software.

Re: Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

#9

Post by ls612 »

waffletower wrote: post #6

Fair use. Let's not live in a pay-per-thought society.

Oh don’t worry, once BCIs get developed you’ll live in a pay per thought society, and if you think negatively of it, boy will you ever pay. It’s science fiction today but I doubt it will remain so for our lifetimes.
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