161–170 of 282 posts
Why? Don’t do this. Society is built on an implicit assumption of trust. You will erode the foundation that enables any success you might have in the short term.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They won the long game. Everything is rented and DRM now. Very little of what most people buy digitally is truly owned.
they didn't win by attacking piracy head-on though, they made capitulation easy & nice enough for us to happily go along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assigning emotions to people based on what you'd like them to feel, not on reality. For example, most americans probably don't feel shame about being american. But it's still a good decision not to go around showing off a bunch of american flags abroad, unless you want people to look at you in a certain way.
So letting people know you’ve used AI is not a good thing? Best used in covert is what you’re saying?
Should people be scared of their food containing Red Dye 3? Yes. Aspartame? Maybe. MSG? Probably not. Dihydrogen Monoxide? Nope.
Should you feel "shame" for using AI to generate fake news? Yes. Art? Not really. See the numerous examples of people disliking famous human-made art just because it was presented as AI.
There's an underappreciated comment in the other thread about SynthID and OpenAI [0] that captures what (IMO) the hacker ethos on this should be. We care about privacy, we should not accept tools that barcode our every digital move. (note that the counter of "well, they don't do that yet " is not particularly convincing) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200060
but I also live in a society that requires trust to function. making a tool the obliterates that trust(genAI imagery pipelines) then creating a tool that makes it trivial for normal people to remove any hint of controls over said trust eroding system is, toxic.
I get the argument about not putting in fingerprints that identify users, Good I agree. But this also removes the things that identify this as an AI image.
Now, what are the legitimate uses of that?
No really, why would I _need_ to remove a watermark for _legitimate_ purposes? Assuming that watermark is generic, rather than a fingerprint of a specific person
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO you cannot base your trust on something that is so easy to work around. Trust should be between people, not a person and some data. So showing how easy to generate "false" data, this makes it more obvious for people focus on other people. Trusting people makes life much easier in my experience, while focusing on data, again in my experience, is a game of cat and mouse.
> Trusting people makes life much easier in my experience Sure, but how do you apply that to a society at large where powerful people are interested in making everybody distrust all reliable sources of information? AI watermarks are no panacea, but at least they are a clear signal of what not to trust.
Only people with resources will be allowed to make content that is AI generated passed off as real.
Pandora's box is open. Instead of making a multi-tiered privileged society, we need to fundamentally restructure society to adapt.
Before that restructuring occurs it is critical to keep the playing field level. These are not tools that should be controlled by a minority authority, they are far too dangerous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assigning emotions to people based on what you'd like them to feel, not on reality. For example, most americans probably don't feel shame about being american. But it's still a good decision not to go around showing off a bunch of american flags abroad, unless you want people to look at you in a certain way.
This is more akin to having a fake passport and pretending you're not American when asked.
No, there's no law requiring disclosure of AI use yet, as far as I know.
> pretending you're not American when asked
Many people do so for various reasons, for example saying you're Canadian when on vacation. Do you count that as evidence that they're "ashamed" of being american? Or that being american is automatically a bad thing, because sometimes people hide it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO you cannot base your trust on something that is so easy to work around. Trust should be between people, not a person and some data. So showing how easy to generate "false" data, this makes it more obvious for people focus on other people. Trusting people makes life much easier in my experience, while focusing on data, again in my experience, is a game of cat and mouse.
> Trusting people makes life much easier in my experience Sure, but how do you apply that to a society at large where powerful people are interested in making everybody distrust all reliable sources of information? AI watermarks are no panacea, but at least they are a clear signal of what not to trust.
Isn't that the scenario the watermarks are useless against? Adversarial governments or anyone with enough money will be the ones who can generate images without watermarks even if you force them on the proles.
> AI watermarks are no panacea, but at least they are a clear signal of what not to trust.
Which seems like it only makes the actual problem worse? If most of them have watermarks, that only encourages people to put more trust in the ones that don't, even though those are the ones "powerful people" can still forge to manipulate everyone. What good is something that increases the credibility of adversarial government forgeries?
Why? Don’t do this. Society is built on an implicit assumption of trust. You will erode the foundation that enables any success you might have in the short term.
I know of at least one music GenAI service whose ToS forbid me from using their productions in ways that are incompatible with my local rights. If Google decides, as they did with YouTube, that they'll enforce this company's watermark even though I have a right to use their results then I've passively accepted that a (foreign) company decides which of my legal rights I can exercise.
For a more pessimistic outlook: for the GenAI companies that work for the military, are those pictures also watermarked? Because if watermarks only apply to one group then the "implicit trust" argument doesn't work.
I'm in favor of watermarking the same way I am in favor of paying artists for their work. But just as with youtube-dl and DVD decryption libraries, tools like these are necessary to level the playing field.
There's an underappreciated comment in the other thread about SynthID and OpenAI [0] that captures what (IMO) the hacker ethos on this should be. We care about privacy, we should not accept tools that barcode our every digital move. (note that the counter of "well, they don't do that yet " is not particularly convincing) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200060
I'm not entirely sure how hiding that something is GenAI fits in here. It surely doesn't have anything to do with Privacy though.
There's an underappreciated comment in the other thread about SynthID and OpenAI [0] that captures what (IMO) the hacker ethos on this should be. We care about privacy, we should not accept tools that barcode our every digital move. (note that the counter of "well, they don't do that yet " is not particularly convincing) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200060
"we care about privacy" Yes, yes I do. but I also live in a society that requires trust to function. making a tool the obliterates that trust(genAI imagery pipelines) then creating a tool that makes it trivial for normal people to remove any hint of controls over said trust eroding system is, toxic. I get the argument about not putting in fingerprints that identify users, Good I agree. But this also removes the thing…
When removing the watermark is easy, a very legitimate purpose of making the code to do it publicly available is to make a public demonstration that it's easy to do.
As for content use cases, suppose someone is using AI to modify their appearance because they're being unjustly targeted by an oppressive government. That government naturally bans doing that because they want to be able to identify and arrest their critics, so now if you make videos with your real face you get arrested but if you use a generated avatar then the watermark enables automated censorship because the government orders anything with the watermark to have its reach automatically restricted.