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Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

kapwing.com

131–140 of 176 posts

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#131
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same 'transformative' standards that allow satire, reaction and commentary videos to exist. And those take 100% from the source and add context, whereas good generated AI images that aren't wholesale copying take like less than 10% from the original source. In addition, the idea that you need to pay rent on *your observation* of someone else's work is absurd. No one pays Newton's descendants for making lifts o…

> good generated AI images that aren't wholesale copying take like less than 10% from the original source. So would the model work if it only trained on the top 10% of pixels in every image? Or do they in fact need the entire image before they begin processing it, and therefore use the entire image? > In addition, the idea that you need to pay rent on your observation of someone else's work is absurd. I agree that's…

> So would the model work if it only trained on the top 10% of pixels in every image? Or do they in fact need the entire image before they begin processing it, and therefore use the entire image?

The model works by training on what features humans can make sense out of the image they're presented with, if the image and the observations of the image's feature were clear/observable enough. Then the generation makes use of those observations. I'm just using 10% as an arbitrary number to describe proportions. If the generation were 100% of the observations from the same image, the model would be overfitting, and many would have deemed it to have produced a copy.

> Just because a race car uses kinetic energy, gravity, and friction to propel itself, the same way a human does, doesn't mean it's doing the same thing as a human.

WTF does this even mean? A race car uses concepts from Newton, just as how a human uses gravity to train it's muscles to move be it knowingly or unknowingly. But you don't see them (car makers/humans) paying rent to Newton after he discovered gravity. Come on!

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#132
post #96

Earlier 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.

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Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#133
post #97

Earlier 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.

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Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For most examples you need to squint pretty hard to make them "the same" though. In a world of "x, but for y" these are essentially new inventions, it's only our human brains in hindsight that look for the continuity. It's also an interesting question to ask if you can really seperate the idea from the execution when defining an "invention".

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#135

> 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…

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Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok mr sceptic, where are your numbers showing consumers buy more of a thing after it becomes more expensive?

Was merely commenting on the observed preference vs stated preference issue (aka "the Say/Do Gap"), not the underlying point about raising prices.

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Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ok mr sceptic, where are your numbers showing consumers buy more of a thing after it becomes more expensive?

Apple has done pretty well historically walking the line between mass consumer and Veblen good. Without them I don't believe we'd see the same variety of high-end devices, they somehow convinced a lot of people that the price of a phone is a signal of it's value.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#138
post #34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is so absurd that it will probably genuinely burn down the entire global economy if paid. Where did you get that idea. Global economy is ~200T/year PPP. 0.1% of that split across every artist you want the training data from would be insanely difficult for the vast majority of them to turn down. Which makes sense as art isn’t that big a percentage of the global economy compared to say housing, food, medical care, in…

For all the people represented in the training data to receive royalties would be an incredible wealth transfer to the Extremely Online. My forum posts, StackOverflow answers etc are also contributing to the model outputs. The training data, by volume, mostly belongs to blog authors, redditors, Wikipedia editors, to us!

I object to calling people chatting online artists.

However, ultimately nobody is going to pay them more than the value of their posts to the AI company which puts a severe cap on what that’s actually worth. People who post a great deal of online content might be worth compensating a few thousand dollars, but it would be hard for them to then turn that down.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For most examples you need to squint pretty hard to make them "the same" though. In a world of "x, but for y" these are essentially new inventions, it's only our human brains in hindsight that look for the continuity. It's also an interesting question to ask if you can really seperate the idea from the execution when defining an "invention".

fair point

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#140

> One engineer who left Kapwing in fall of 2025 said that the short-lived Tess investment contributed to burnout. Don’t take this personally. Even if you told this person to work constantly and they believed in you and the business, it’s not totally your fault that they burned out. I say this as someone that has burned out twice, is currently burned out, and blames those that I currently and formerly worked for. I kn…

>Don’t take this personally.

No, they should take it personally. Leadership is 9/10 times the culprit.

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