The list in question:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231231203837/https://docs.goog...
Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
21–30 of 144 posts
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#22Reading the context in the linked Twitter, this is not actually the list used to train.
After the model was already trained, they scraped this list of artist names off Wikipedia and did some optimizations so that prompts using them would render faster.
The actual model was trained on everything, whether it had a Wikipedia page or not.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lockpicking tools are widely available, and designs of locks can be found on the web if someone search hard enough. But entering another's home is illegal. It's why businesses pay for licenses even if cracked softwares exists. I hope that artists win these and make using or creating an illegal model an high-risk activity, not worth it for any commercial activity.
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You'd best hope the day AI comes for your job is a long way away. Karma is, after all, a
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do wonder if its a fruit of the poisoned tree argument and any AI derived work can’t be copyrighted because it used already dubious source material.
No, it's a Butlerian Jihad[0] argument. The Copyright Office's argument holds even for a fully public domain training set. US copyright law is already speciesist[1] - you can't assign authorship to an animal - so computers are also forbidden from authorship. [0] In the Dune universe, the "Butlerian Jihad" refers to a legal ban on thinking machines. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
Seems like that only applies if you anthropomorphize the AI and consider it the author, rather than a tool utilized by the artist. I mean, yes, the AI is doing the bulk of the work, but so is photoshop for a lot of digital art.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lockpicking tools are widely available, and designs of locks can be found on the web if someone search hard enough. But entering another's home is illegal. It's why businesses pay for licenses even if cracked softwares exists. I hope that artists win these and make using or creating an illegal model an high-risk activity, not worth it for any commercial activity.
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A society without art is a society without joy or self awareness. A society with only AI created art is a facsimile of joy or self awareness. If we're trying to remove the parts of society that challenge and inspire us then we'll be left with cultural mush that doesn't challenge, critique, explore, or even play.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#26 > Artists (who have been dehumanized to styles)
Won't matter though, because in modern times ragebait is more important than truth.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do wonder if its a fruit of the poisoned tree argument and any AI derived work can’t be copyrighted because it used already dubious source material.
No, it's a Butlerian Jihad[0] argument. The Copyright Office's argument holds even for a fully public domain training set. US copyright law is already speciesist[1] - you can't assign authorship to an animal - so computers are also forbidden from authorship. [0] In the Dune universe, the "Butlerian Jihad" refers to a legal ban on thinking machines. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
I'm not really sure how this connects to the argument. No one is trying to grant authorship to an algorithm - it would be a ridiculous effort that was never even in the cards. In these copyright disputes, the authorship on AI outputs would be on the person using the AI. Generative AI takes inputs that are provided by a human and transforms it into certain outputs. Legally speaking, I don't see it as different from me getting protection for something I did in Photoshop - trying to somehow give Photoshop authorship would be absurd.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can publish these models in all jurisdictions, including ones that do care about IP law. There's no rulings saying that models trained on datasets of images are direct derivatives of the original images (in a way that's copyright-violating), let alone whatever is produced using these models. Now, this isn't settled law by any means, but it feels like people give too much credence to all the theft accusations by a…
I used to agree with this, but there's been research coming out of Google that has altered my opinion. Specifically, Google's gotten rather good at making AI spit out unaltered training set data[0]. This is only possible if the AI is remembering large portions of the original trained-on works, which would make the weights infringing. [0] In the most egregious case, they found that just asking ChatGPT to repeat a word…
> This is only possible if the AI is remembering large portions of the original trained-on works
which is fine in my books. You could equivalently produce the same works from searching thru the digits of pi.
The only enforcement that's needed is on the end user of the model - if they choose to produce the training set, they are violating copyright. The creator of the model _does not_ violate copyright merely by creating and distributing the weights of a neural network, as long as the space of potential output is vastly larger than the training set.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely unenforceable. How can you even tell if an image was made by AI? What if AI created an outline that was worked on by a human artist (or vice versa)? Who would the burden of proof be on? Steam has a “no AI art” policy, and it’s rapidly turning into a “no obvious AI art policy”. How could they tell?
> Completely unenforceable. Complete wrong. You just flip the defaults--something is AI unless you can prove otherwise. This is done already and has precedent. Producing porn requires that you keep artifacts demonstrating that who the performers were, that they were of age, etc. If you claim a work is not AI generated, you should have to produce some artifacts to back up that claim. In the case of a corporation, that…
> If you claim a work is not AI generated, you should have to produce some artifacts to back up that claim.
So AI (or a simpler, non-statistics-based algorithm) can't produce these artifacts and will never be able to? Why? Are these artifacts "human souls" or something?
> In the case of a corporation, that would be easy as you have payment records.
Outsourcing.
Re: Database of artists used to train Midjourney AI garners criticism
#30One positive aspect of the status quo in the United States is that AI-generated images are not currently eligible for copyright. I think this is a great direction to go in, I highly doubt Wizards of the Coast or whoever is going to want their premium products to lose copyright protections, so they'll need to keep paying artists. I'd love for us to lean into this -- you can make all the AI art you want, but it automat…
> status quo in the United States is that AI-generated images are not currently eligible for copyright.
Aren't they? I thought it was just that the copyright holder has to be a recognized legal entity (so, the copyright would have to belong to the human operator or their employer, not to the ai model itself).