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An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

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Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#211

Post by thereisnospork »

dns_snek wrote: post #178
km3r wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to scribes is a perfect analogy. The 'scribing' of translating the idea of painting to an actual painting is being made more efficient. The actual creativity is what the original idea is, not the skill to put it on paper.

None of that addresses anything I've said.

It does though:

The value will flow to society via the cheap books (art). Value will also flow to authors (artists)[0] due to the facilitation of creation/distribution/replication. Where that value will come from is from the scribes (painters, sculptors, etc.)[1] whose contribution is rote.

[0]The intentional distinction here is that the value is in the conception of art, not in the execution of it in media.

[1]Imagine how much more productive Mozart or Beethoven could have been had an AI-powered orchestra existed in their time.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#212

Post by layer8 »

> future releases of Stable Diffusion will comply with any artist’s requests to remove their images from the training dataset.

How does this work? Do they retrain the model from scratch every week? Or is it somehow possible to retroactively remove specific training-set items from the already-trained model?

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#213

Post by cycomanic »

l33tman wrote: post #132
haswell wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the image is freely viewable (say you can browse to it), and you just look at it, are you violating any rights? The fundamental issue with this line of argument is that it equates the process of human vision and the consequences of that with that of a computer program ingesting that image and the consequences of that . This anthropomorphization seems like a form of deep fallacy when considering the nature and im…

The processes seem pretty alike to me (as a neuroscientist and AI researcher). Things will only move on from here, the next generation of these tools won't use a training set of 5B images and complicated month long training procedures, they will allow the "ingestion" of a style by you showing it a single instance once of a target image and it will immediately know the style (just like a human artist would). I'm not p…

I find this take interesting. So would you also argue that saving an image into computer memory is the same as memorizing an image for a human? Those processes are viewed very different by the law, but if we anthropomorphize computers should we not view them the same?

Also I wonder where you get the view that future ML systems will not require large amounts of learning? I don't see any development in current systems that would allow that, or do you mean you have a network trained on large amounts of data which can then adjust to a style from a single image? If that's the case we are still at the same question, how was the original model trained.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#214

Post by theRealMe »

haswell wrote: post #154
l33tman wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The processes seem pretty alike to me (as a neuroscientist and AI researcher). Things will only move on from here, the next generation of these tools won't use a training set of 5B images and complicated month long training procedures, they will allow the "ingestion" of a style by you showing it a single instance once of a target image and it will immediately know the style (just like a human artist would). I'm not p…

What I meant by the content/context of processes was that one is a biological process that includes all of the context and constraints of evolution, while the other is still ultimately a man-made machine, operating with an entirely different set of constraints, ultimately at the direction of other humans. If we could develop literal eyeballs that could look at these images and translate the information the way humans…

I’ll be honest, this sounds like you have made a decision on your stance and now you’re building false distinctions to reinforce your own bias.

You said a lot of words, but I believe your argument comes down to “computers are super powered compared to humans doing the same thing”? Is that accurate? Because magnitude of ability, to me, makes no difference at all. It’s perfectly acceptable for a human to study the artwork of a specific person and then create their own works based on that style. Why wouldn’t it be the same for an automated process?

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#215

Post by ROTMetro »

cwkoss wrote: post #197
simiones wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not going to be that hard to argue that the company is infringing the copyright of those whose images they are using. Especially once the judge is show how similar the output of SD can be to a particular artist's images with the right prompts (proving that SD has memorized a significant amount of those images).

Some artists images just don't contain much entropy though? If an AI art engine outputs a frame of solid blue, is it infringing the copyright of Yves Klein's solid blue "IKB 79"? I think that some artists' styles can be accurately replicated without training on any of their work: because the artists' style is generic enough that it can be exhaustively encoded via the works of others. This seems like a bad test becaus…

This example has already been countered multiple times. You can not copyright a solid blue painting, you can only copyright an 'installation' of such. People in these discussions act as if copyright only came into being and hasn't been legislated/litigated for quite a while now. But then, these people can't even be bothered to look at copyright requirements that there be at the least an 'anonymous artist' that created the work to be copyrighted (and hint, a prompt writer does not count as such, anymore than a machinist inputting CAD requirements suddenly owns copyright to each factory part their machine spits out).

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#216

Post by williamcotton »

jacquesm wrote: post #186
williamcotton wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And this is exactly what this court case is about, whether or not Stable Diffusion ultimately is just another - complex - form of mechanical transformation or whether it creates original work. No, it's not at all. This court case is about: Plaintiffs Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz (“Plaintiffs”), on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, bring this Class Action Complaint (the “Comp…

I've been the plaintiff in a case like this in Dutch court where the counterparty first tried to argue that since my code is 'visible to all' a fair use exemption should be granted, when that fell through they tried to argue that they did not take my code from my site but from another site which presumably took it from my site and which didn't have any attribution so that they were free to use it. Then that fell thro…

What makes "commercially significant non-infringing use" such a great doctrine is that it lets there be some objective measurement of how generally useful a given practice is towards the benefit of the public good. The doctrine does this by establishing that the tool can be used for a myriad of ways that in no way directly compete with the original work in the marketplace. For example, when Stable Diffusion is being used for inpainting to remove a stranger from the background of a wedding photograph it is clear that Sarah Anderson is not being impacted in any way shape or form despite the fact that her works were temporarily copied as part of the data ingestion process.

This doctrine gives the lower courts a clear test that doesn't require diving deep into arguments about what it means for "computers to learn ideas" or for "language models to author".

The problem with an opt-in model is that it puts enough of a burden on a language model that it discourages non-infringing commercial creation. The opt-out-on-request model, which would need some form of legislation and probably informed by both the DMCA and right-to-be-forgotten in Euro area, would be preferable as it would have much less of a burden on model creators.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#217

Post by scotty79 »

haswell wrote: post #181
scotty79 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fame has a very short half-life and unless you have all the licensing/contractual machinery in place beforehand, you probably won't be able to cash on that boost. I'm not sure how did you manage to miss thousands of artists able to capitalize on sudden and accidental fame for decades without any prior arrangements. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's possible. Also to put this in context compare this with how…

> If AI people were forcing artist to create new art and paying them with the promise of exposure in their generated works I'll be completely on your side. However it requires zero work from artist to have their already published work to be used as learning material. This seems like an odd way to frame this. The reality is closer to "artists were never included in the conversation to begin with". Arguing that "no one…

> The problem is the assumption that artists are or should be universally fine with this.

I don't think anybody assumes all artists will be fine with it. But being disgruntled doesn't automatically mean you should be the one who makes the decisions. Virtually every human has a stake in this because nearly everybody consumes some art. It's time we put stronger emphasis on the rights of everybody else, instead of just mostly people who bought copyright, and artists those people think have the right to exploit.

> "Tools like Stable Diffusion aren't infringing because xyz technical reasons"

I don't think I'm saying there's some technical reasons those tools aren't infringing. Just overwhelming moral, practical and economical reasons that they should be allowed to operate and treated just like human artists who too can mimic and mix styles and nobody can deny them authorship unless they copy specific complex elements nearly verbatim.

Btw if human artist think AI got to close to one of his works he can prove it beyond all doubt by registering their creations on some blockchain with his key and timestamp and I wouldn't be against banning this specific AI artwork that got too close.

Banning use of all published art as teaching material by default is not the way to go in my opinion. Banning imitating specific style is bad too. Imagine portrait painters banned photography from using classical portrait compositions to protect their jobs. Or denied photographers even looking at portraits so they can never learn to imitate.

> I think it'd be helpful to be clearer about arguments for/against the spirit of the rules themselves vs. arguments about why generative AI tools do or do not create content that infringes those rules as currently designed or require an entirely new framework of thinking about the problem.

Maybe, but AI is the wonderful opportunity to discuss the spirit of horrible rules we currently have. Best opportunity we had since creation of social networking sites that chipped those rules away a bit.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#218

Post by cycomanic »

I don't really understand the argument about danger mouses grey album being different from just a random "mash up" because the artistic merit behind the grey album. Sure the grey album is likely much more pleasant to listen to and would likely be considered worthy of copyright itself, where a random mash might not be. That doesn't change the fact that danger mouse had to ask permission to use Jay Zs and the Beatles work (and likely had to pay), or otherwise would have violated copyright. So how is that argument relevant. Nobody is arguing that composing images via stable diffusion prompts (like making some collage) is not a creative process. The argument is does one have to have permission/licence of the original creators.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#219

Post by Maursault »

theRealMe wrote: post #214
haswell wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I meant by the content/context of processes was that one is a biological process that includes all of the context and constraints of evolution, while the other is still ultimately a man-made machine, operating with an entirely different set of constraints, ultimately at the direction of other humans. If we could develop literal eyeballs that could look at these images and translate the information the way humans…

I’ll be honest, this sounds like you have made a decision on your stance and now you’re building false distinctions to reinforce your own bias. You said a lot of words, but I believe your argument comes down to “computers are super powered compared to humans doing the same thing”? Is that accurate? Because magnitude of ability, to me, makes no difference at all. It’s perfectly acceptable for a human to study the artw…

I think you're both barking up the wrong tree. A person, and even an animal, possibly even a plant or members of other kingdoms and domains, sees. A computer does not see any more than a lens sees, or to the extreme, a computer can not see any more than an empty paper towel roll can see. The computer, lens and empty paper towel roll have no "I," no ego. In order to see, there must be something, or more accurately, someone, seeing. AI is just a complex program, which is ultimately an algorithm, and to be very simplistic, a recipe. A recipe can never be conscious, can never have a sense of self nor a sense of anything. Just because a photocopier can reproduce an image doesn't remotely mean that it or anything within it could ever see anything.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#220

Post by lofaszvanitt »

xeyownt wrote: post #101

I don't understand how using an image as input to a model is a copyright infringement. If the image is freely viewable (say you can browse to it), and you just look at it, are you violating any rights? It seems that violation would only come if you would use the model to produce images that are derivative of that original image, the same way a counterfeiter would make a copy of it. Have the skill to copy is not the s…

Think of it as this way:

in order to create 5 very different illustrations you need to talk with 5 people. in the end 5 people will get money when they finish with their work.

an AI consumes these artists past output and instead of paying to these artists it will gather income to the owner. So by using the output of 5 people who have spent decades on perfecting their craft, the AI generates income by stealing their work, and the money flows to the owner only, who doesn't give back anything to these people.

so in essence AI in this form kills income stream for humans, since it gives back nothing.

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