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Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

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

#171

Post by protocolture »

tovej wrote: post #163
oreally wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are my opinions ofc. > Is it transformative if I take all the pages in Hanya Yanagiharas A Little Life and use a thesaurus to change every second word? If you meant it literally.. I'd think that such a version would be a sort of parody. It'd be up to lawyers doing their cross-examinations to prove the work was intended for such a purpose though.. > Or a more realistic scenario: what if I translate it to Spanish…

You cannot claim that a formulaic thesaurusing of a text is parody, not unless the process is related to the message of the original text itself. Even then, that's a dubious claim. Especially if it was done automatically. I can just as well say that a translated work contains "linguistic observations". In fact a translator has to do a lot of transformative work in order to translate a text. An LLM just takes a set of…

>It is quite literally a fuzzy way of copying.

Even if it involved copying that isnt immediately an issue. Its the distribution of a copy thats an issue. And if you look at the data side by side, you can see that while copying might be part of the process of creating an LLM, the LLM is not a copy of its source material.

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

#172

Post by protocolture »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #90
protocolture wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>IP laws can stay the same, but they should have purchased a license to use my art before including it in their training data. But including your art in the training data is fair use (or otherwise exempt) by most standards, as no reproduction occurs. You are advocating for a change to IP law to make it more restrictive.

> But including your art in the training data is fair use The four factors of fair use in the US: > the purpose and character of your use Commercial, for-profit. Not scholarship, not research, not commentary, not parody, etc. > the nature of the copyrighted work Absolutely everything. Artistic, creative, not purely factual. > the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and All of it, from everyone. > the effe…

>Directly competing with those whose data was copied.

An LLM doesnt compete with Art the same way that Photoshop doesnt compete with Art.

>All of it, from everyone.

With the result that anything produced by the LLM does not reproduce any single source in its entirety (and where compelled if they are able to do that is a bug not a feature)

Fair use is too specific tbh, rather than ruling it fair use (which seems to be where things are going) it should just be ruled "use". There's nothing wrong with building a mathematical model using available data.

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

#173

Post by JoshTriplett »

protocolture wrote: post #172
JoshTriplett wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But including your art in the training data is fair use The four factors of fair use in the US: > the purpose and character of your use Commercial, for-profit. Not scholarship, not research, not commentary, not parody, etc. > the nature of the copyrighted work Absolutely everything. Artistic, creative, not purely factual. > the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and All of it, from everyone. > the effe…

>Directly competing with those whose data was copied. An LLM doesnt compete with Art the same way that Photoshop doesnt compete with Art. >All of it, from everyone. With the result that anything produced by the LLM does not reproduce any single source in its entirety (and where compelled if they are able to do that is a bug not a feature) Fair use is too specific tbh, rather than ruling it fair use (which seems to be…

> An LLM doesnt compete with Art the same way that Photoshop doesnt compete with Art.

Yes, it does. Many people are using AI-generated works in places where they originally would have either paid an artist, programmer, or other creative professional, or done without. Many companies are claiming to reduce staff because of AI (whether that's true or an excuse). There is plenty of evidence that AI is directly competing with various individuals, businesses, and industries.

> With the result that anything produced by the LLM does not reproduce any single source in its entirety

You do not have to reproduce sources in their entirety to produce derivative works.

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

#174

Post by csallen »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #91
csallen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company is profiting off of other people's work! That's not right. What's wrong with it? We live in an interconnected world. Every company or individual who profits off anything does so, in very large part, thanks to work left behind by others that they don't directly compensate each other for. Stated differently, if we look at the other side of the coin, it's one thing to create value, and another thing to cap…

I'd love to see copyright abolished. As long as it continues to exist, however, AI should not get an exemption; that would directly advantage a few large companies over everyone else, giving them a special privilege to violate licenses that nobody else gets.

What's the exemption? To me it seems like we're trying to do the opposite, make the laws even more stringent for AI than we do for people.

Imagine a genius person went out, trained himself by studying all the great art, and in doing so gained the ability to paint or draw in just about any style. That wouldn't be a copyright violation. In fact, plenty of people do this, or some version of it. But we say it should be illegal for AI... why, exactly? Because artists don't like it? Because it's "too good"?

If we're going to keep copyright around, then imo what should be illegal here is using the AI as tool to create copies of people's work. Like, if I go out and use AI generate a book of poetry and it's got a bunch of Beatles lyrics in it, fine, sue me.

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

#175

Post by csallen »

sciencejerk wrote: post #66
csallen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company is profiting off of other people's work! That's not right. What's wrong with it? We live in an interconnected world. Every company or individual who profits off anything does so, in very large part, thanks to work left behind by others that they don't directly compensate each other for. Stated differently, if we look at the other side of the coin, it's one thing to create value, and another thing to cap…

Do we really want the entire world to be endlessly full of cookie-licking rent seekers who demand profit every time anyone does anything? Because they failed to capture the value they created, and thus demand a piece of the pie from those who are better at capturing value? The starving artists I know would be extremely happy to get even one cookie to lick. I know an artist prodogy that paints on canvas and has work i…

To the extent that you care about deriving money from your art, you aren't just an artist, you're a business. And that's fine. I love businesses and the people who start them.

But, sadly, art isn't an easy business. There is a tremendous supply of art, and not enough demand for it. In other words, it's very competitive.

So, just like every other competitive industry on earth, if you're going to be in the art business, then simply making a good product/service isn't enough. You have to think about marketing and sales and differentiation and distribution and strategy and the whole big picture.

There are plenty of starving artists who make incredible art that nobody pays for, just like there are plenty of starving startup founders who build well-coded apps that nobody pays for.

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

#176

Post by fennecfoxy »

NateEag wrote: post #126
fennecfoxy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 artf…

I don't think mass production cheapens the handcrafted experience. Just because a factory can pump out cheap shoes doesn't mean it's no longer enjoyable to buy, own and experience a handmade pair of leather shoes; it's only that the reason for buying them becomes different (necessity vs. luxury).

The Ghibli thing is a great example; who's still actually doing that? It was a passing fad.

But let's not pretend that that passing fad has changed the fact that Ghibli's films are absolute masterpieces that will continue being enjoyed by generations to come. Because they are and still are.

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