I wonder, did they pay for the artists whose art they took without paying or asking to train that LLM model they are promoting? I guess we know the answer :)
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Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
121–130 of 176 posts
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people can't even imagine the complexity required to build an LLM. But here we are. We throw plenty of smart people at plenty of hard ideas. If a company really wanted to, they would find a way to make this feasible.
Funny thing is that building an LLM isn't as complex as you might think. But the problem of attribution is easily understandable to any human with a modicum of intelligence. Imagine that you have a trillion input images, with every single one having a source associated. When training they go through lots of processes and every single image contributes a varying degree to a subset of 8billion parameters. That alone wo…
Insults aside, you chose a very expensive way to solve the attribution problem. But my rebuttal is simple: we are literally commenting in a thread about an AI image generator that paid people. It didn't work, but if a company I've never heard of can try an experiment like this, I'm sure our billion dollar AI overlords could if they wanted to.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
"extremely successful business decision" and "inherently disliked" can both be true. Increasing fees quite often works out for the business too, but consumers don't generally like it.
> consumers don't generally like it I'd prefer looking at what (potential) consumers actually do rather than what they say . "Saying" is a really weak signal.
Yes, and, op's point stands.
I am one of those people: 1. Absolutely despise the lightroom being subscription and 2. Haven't switched yet.
There are moats and capabilities and friction. Not every vote with your wallet is a ringing endorsement. I have 15 years of lightroom databases over 100k photos so switching is hard. At the same time those are from the time I did a photography side gig, now I don't so monthly cost for no monthly gains really peeves me.
So it absolutely is a successful business decision and it absolutely is widely despised by customer base. Both are true :-)
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#124> The timing wasn’t right. We depended on artists helping us to promote the platform, and they didn’t. There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy: * "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats" * "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service" * "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"…
Speaking in generalities, we underestimate how many things fail due to circumstances like "the market wasn't read for it." (In contrast to the more dramatic and common "all great success stories are due to leaders singularly imbued with unique and ineffable Greatness and Genius.")
Yeah, ten or so years ago, Google glass flopped spectacularly. Now for whatever reason, Meta Raybans are actually somewhat successful, much to the world's dismay.
Bad timing can be to a number of factors, some can be good, some can be bad.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#125> The timing wasn’t right. We depended on artists helping us to promote the platform, and they didn’t. There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy: * "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats" * "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service" * "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"…
I agree, to an extent. It reminds me of the Simpsons meme[1]: it's the children who are wrong!
But sometimes timing is indeed wrong, not because of anything you did, but just because no one wanted it _yet_. Google Glass from a few years ago comes to mind. Now Meta has a similar idea and it does seem successful, much to society's dismay.
But sometimes it is worth asking, "does the idea actually suck and that's why no one likes it? Or is it actually a good idea that is muddied with other issues that no one likes?"
The article doesn't make it clear that they were that introspective.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#126> Surveys consistently showed that consumers believed artists deserved payment when AI generated content in their style. It's interesting that "consumers" are generally for the expansion of IP laws. At at the moment, I'm fairly certain that "style" is not something protected by Copyright. I personally do not want this, and I'm sure there are likely many like me. Poorly thought out IP laws lead to chilling-effects, DR…
Yeah as a furry (exposed to commission scene a lot) the number of commissions available for "Disney" or "Pixar" or whatever style art even before the whole AI era really tells you that they're hypocrites.
As others have pointed out in this discussion, there's a big difference between some humans producing drawings in a given style and a machine producing millions of illustrations per day in that style.
I have rarely been as disheartened as I am by the transformation of Studio Ghibli's beautiful art style, painstakingly developed over decades, into a heap of slop-trash that actively erases the human connections so artfully depicted in Hayao Miyazaki's work.
All that sorrow and it's not even my style.
So, no - a human who's willing to draw an illustration in a particular style, perhaps one they live and admire, is not necessarily a hypocrite for seeing genAI's ability to produce billions of images in that style.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#127> The timing wasn’t right. We depended on artists helping us to promote the platform, and they didn’t. There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy: * "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats" * "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service" * "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"…
> What is known is that the majority believe that if artists were to be copied, they should at least be compensated.
I get the emotional side of this argument - artists going hungry while someone else cashes in on their ideas. But compensation is a dangerous premise, because derivative art is an established type of artistic freedom. Artists routinely mimic styles, or work within the bounds of styles established by masters, but they've never been expected to compensate those styles' pioneers. Imagine it as a precedent:
"Your stuff borrows from Warhol? Guess what buddy, you owe the Warhol estate x% of your sale."
Perhaps you're arguing things change when commercial interests are involved? But again, this has never been the case for advertising companies (with their hired artistic guns) or any kind of graphic design leaning on established artistic styles for effect and making a killing in the process.
In the case of AI, even if it has a commercial master, it seems much closer to the borrowing of an ordinary artist. It's a trained entity, with deep understanding of styles, capable of making new works. On top of that, it works under the instruction of a user with their own ideas, whose guidance is crucial in deciding the work's final state. The user is the artist here - like one of the visionaries who delegate the nitty gritty of production to helpers. In this case the helper is leased from the AI company, which is more like an agency supplying those helpers.
All in all it's hard to see how any compensation model wouldn't end up constricting the artistic freedom most of these artists depend on.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking in generalities, we underestimate how many things fail due to circumstances like "the market wasn't read for it." (In contrast to the more dramatic and common "all great success stories are due to leaders singularly imbued with unique and ineffable Greatness and Genius.")
Yeah, ten or so years ago, Google glass flopped spectacularly. Now for whatever reason, Meta Raybans are actually somewhat successful, much to the world's dismay. Bad timing can be to a number of factors, some can be good, some can be bad.
Google Glass looked dorky, Meta Ray-Bans look cool.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#129> The timing wasn’t right. We depended on artists helping us to promote the platform, and they didn’t. There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy: * "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats" * "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service" * "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"…
I agree, to an extent. It reminds me of the Simpsons meme[1]: it's the children who are wrong! But sometimes timing is indeed wrong, not because of anything you did, but just because no one wanted it _yet_. Google Glass from a few years ago comes to mind. Now Meta has a similar idea and it does seem successful, much to society's dismay. But sometimes it is worth asking, "does the idea actually suck and that's why no…
yeah I agree -- There are countless examples with almost every invention of someone else who got there first but couldn't market it successfully at least partially because of timing.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#130> The timing wasn’t right. We depended on artists helping us to promote the platform, and they didn’t. There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy: * "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats" * "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service" * "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"…
> What is known is that the majority believe that if artists were to be copied, they should at least be compensated. I get the emotional side of this argument - artists going hungry while someone else cashes in on their ideas. But compensation is a dangerous premise, because derivative art is an established type of artistic freedom. Artists routinely mimic styles, or work within the bounds of styles established by ma…
You can’t derive works at scale manually. We’re talking about a machine here.