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Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

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Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#271

Post by chii »

Retric wrote: post #257
JamesBarney wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't a prompt output be copyrightable?

Because prompts lack sufficient creative control. Typing a search sting into Google doesn’t provide copyright over its output.

> lack sufficient creative control.

the prompts have become somewhat creative these days. If you have a look at the prompts on https://civitai.com for example, you can argue they are a form of creative expression. Just like hand rolling assembly code might be.

Edit: an example one - https://civitai.com/images/2268828?collectionId=107&period=A...

and the associated prompt:

  High detail, dynamic action pose, masterwork, professional, fantasy, neo classical fine art, of a beautiful, primordial and fierce, ((angel-winged-woman,:1.9)), archangel, (MiddleEastern:1.6), with very long, flowing, wavy white hair, peach colored streaks, with a sexy, slender, fit body, wearing an ethereal, light violet, light aqua, faded gold, tie-dye, linen and Chantily lace, (knee length:1.5), strapless dress with a tattered hem, a Platinum and gold Cuirass, platinum vambraces, platinum and lace Gladiator Boots,  long broadsword in a Baldric, at night, in a metropolis warzone, during a thunderstorm, dimly lit, thin, vibrant streaks of crimson light, outlining her body, fantasy illustration,  in the style of Osamu Tezuka, George Edward Hurrell, Albert Witzel, Hiromitsu Takeda, Clarence Bull, Gil Elvgren, Ruth Harriet Louise, Takaki, Milton Greene, Huang Guangjian, and Cecil Beaton,, High detail, dynamic action pose, masterwork, professional, fantasy, neo classical fine art, of a beautiful, primordial and fierce, ((angel-winged-woman,:1.9)), archangel, (Columbian:1.6), with very long, flowing, wavy white hair, peach colored streaks, with a sexy, slender, fit body, wearing an ethereal, light violet, light aqua, faded gold, tie-dye, linen and Chantily lace, (knee length:1.5), strapless dress with a tattered hem, a Platinum and gold Cuirass, platinum vambraces, platinum and lace Gladiator Boots,  long broadsword in a Baldric, at night, in a metropolis warzone, during a thunderstorm, dimly lit, thin, vibrant streaks of crimson light, outlining her body, fantasy illustration,  in the style of Osamu Tezuka, George Edward Hurrell, Albert Witzel, Hiromitsu Takeda, Clarence Bull, Gil Elvgren, Ruth Harriet Louise, Takaki, Milton Greene, Huang Guangjian, and Cecil Beaton,

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#272

Post by gwd »

Nevermark wrote: post #54
rickmode wrote: post #14

I believe we first need to answer the question of whether the copyright of the AI model’s source text or images affects the output. My opinion — and note I’m a software engineer, not a lawyer — is that an AI, being a statistical model and not generally intelligent, should not be allowed to disregard the copyright of its source material. This would, I think, require the AI’s creator to secure a license for all of its…

I don’t think it makes sense for both model builders and the model’s users to separately obtain licenses for the same works used in the training set. A model trained on several copyrighted data sources cannot somehow be used in a way depending on a subset of those sources. So all parameters of usage and compensation should be settled by contract between the model builder and copyrighted data supplier, before the copy…

> Or to put it simply: using copyrighted material to create a model would NOT be considered fair use.

The more I think about it, the more something along these lines seems like it might be the right way to think about it.

When you play a DVD, for example, you copy the bits off the DVD, into the memory of your DVD player, and onto your screen; this is all explicitly considered "fair use" copying. But if you then copied those fair-use bits off the screen onto a thousand other screens, that violates copyright.

When you, as the human watch the DVD, bits of it get copied into your brain; but you don't then copy the bits of your brain to millions of other people -- they each have to make their own copy.

We could make the law for LLMs follow a similar logic: That having an LLM watch a video or read a text is similar to having a DVD player read a DVD or a web browser copy information from a website. It's good for that limited use case, but the resulting copy cannot be copied again without a license.

This would allow (say) researchers, or even individuals, to do their own training and so on without a license; but when anyone wanted to create something that they wanted to scale up, they'd have to get licenses for everything.

That would fundamentally keep things balanced as they are now with creators and other creators. The big problem isn't that a handful of other creators may be copying their style; that growth in competition is limiting because of the expense of duplication. It's that millions of electronic engines can copy their style.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#273

Post by Retric »

chii wrote: post #271
Retric wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because prompts lack sufficient creative control. Typing a search sting into Google doesn’t provide copyright over its output.

> lack sufficient creative control. the prompts have become somewhat creative these days. If you have a look at the prompts on https://civitai.com for example, you can argue they are a form of creative expression. Just like hand rolling assembly code might be. Edit: an example one - https://civitai.com/images/2268828?collectionId=107&period=A... and the associated prompt: High detail, dynamic action pose, masterwork,…

That’s a perfect example, they said “during a thunderstorm” does that image look like it’s in a thunderstorm? Sure, the output of the prompt relates to what was said, but they influenced the output rather than controlled it.

Further, it’s well known that simply telling an artist what you want even including quite detailed descriptions isn’t enough to get copyright over the resulting image.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#274

Post by [deleted] »

chii wrote: post #270
Retric wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? A photoshop user controls what data photoshop uses, a DALLE user doesn’t. Even a prompt as generic as “Cat” could be producing an obviously derivative work if you compare it to the original. This is true for all prompts.

> A photoshop user controls what data photoshop uses the point was that the user of the program is making their declaration, whether it's photoshop or DALLE. How does the business verify that their staff artists aren't producing copyright infringing material, just from memory? The liability falls to them to verify the copyright status of the output they're asked to make. A business paying a photoshop user to produce…

[deleted]

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#275

Post by trgdr »

Zuiii wrote: post #190
showerst wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So i'm not sure how I feel, but to play Devil's advocate -- If I know anything I create is just going to be hoovered up and input into somebody's AI model so I do 99% of the work and they get 99% of the profit, perhaps I'm much less likely to progress Science and useful Arts by creating content in the first place. I fear an internet of signup walls and TOC agreements for everything, just to prevent crawlers that feed…

> If I know anything I create is just going to be hoovered up and input into somebody's AI model so I do 99% of the work and they get 99% of the profit, perhaps I'm much less likely to progress Science and useful Arts by creating content in the first place. Perhaps you wouldn't but I, and apparently most of the scientific community who publish research, would (and do). The entitlement of people here feel towards thei…

I think you should spend some time thinking about the purpose of progress. Progress in and of itself is not useful, nor is it necessarily desirable.

It's very easy to envision a society that is both more advanced than ours and profoundly worse in all meaningful aspects.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#276

Post by Retric »

chii wrote: post #270
Retric wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? A photoshop user controls what data photoshop uses, a DALLE user doesn’t. Even a prompt as generic as “Cat” could be producing an obviously derivative work if you compare it to the original. This is true for all prompts.

> A photoshop user controls what data photoshop uses the point was that the user of the program is making their declaration, whether it's photoshop or DALLE. How does the business verify that their staff artists aren't producing copyright infringing material, just from memory? The liability falls to them to verify the copyright status of the output they're asked to make. A business paying a photoshop user to produce…

This gets complicated, having no reason to know that something is copyrighted is a defense.

So if your employee installed pirated 3rd party software you’re facing strict liability. However, if a third party is reproducing their collage roommates drawing from memory then it’s effectively impossible for you to verify if something is a derivative work.

Dalle is effectively Getty images, if you’re buying works from them you can only assume it’s free of copyright issues.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#277

Post by freejazz »

fluidcruft wrote: post #176
freejazz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of this have to do with creating a new expression?

What makes anything new? Is anything created by "AI" actually new? How much entropy is in a prompt vs in the output?

>What makes anything new?

In copyright law? It's not being a copy

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#278

Post by freejazz »

orbital-decay wrote: post #247
freejazz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it your experience that people's facial declarations cary the day in legal disputes? It's not mine. Rather, it seems like the whole thing is designed to provide scrutiny against bare facial declarations that something is true or false. I see this on HN all the time "someone just has to claim" "someone just has to say". Yeah... that's not how it works. People can say whatever they want, that doesn't mean it satisfi…

Intelligence lacks any legal definition, for starters. And if a law like that will provide an arbitrary line in the sand, it will just disincentivize AI research in general.

Often, when laws are passed, they provide definitions for the terms in the law that require definitions. Regardless, I'm not aware of any proposals for copyright law where "intelligence" is used.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#279

Post by freejazz »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #183
rickmode wrote: post #14

I believe we first need to answer the question of whether the copyright of the AI model’s source text or images affects the output. My opinion — and note I’m a software engineer, not a lawyer — is that an AI, being a statistical model and not generally intelligent, should not be allowed to disregard the copyright of its source material. This would, I think, require the AI’s creator to secure a license for all of its…

It shows you are not a lawyer. You misunderstand how copyright works. Creating copies or derivative works and distributing those is all that matters under copyright. This is not "disregarding" copyright (which is not an actual thing) but something that is either fair use or may require some kind of permission from the creators of the original by those distributing some kind of derived work or copy. That's why it's ca…

This is generally, but I'm surprised you aren't aware that distribution isn't the only right protected by copyright - creating derivative works is protected, display rights are protected.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#280

Post by LegitShady »

stale2002 wrote: post #179
LegitShady wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used words very carefully. It depends on the level of human authorship. If you use a tool to correct some pixels thats directed by a human closely, no thats not a problem. If you remove large parts of the image with the ai erase fill, then you've given up authorship of those parts of the image. You could then go in and author changes to the work that you could further add to your copyright. But you would never chan…

> I used words very carefully. Then I am happy to use your word if that clarifies things. Just replace everything that I said about "human input" with "human authorship". And my point is that there are many things that a human can do using AI art that have large amounts of "human authorship" beyond just the boring case of prompting midjourney with a dumb prompt. > It depends on the level of human authorship. Oh hey!…

Its clear from this post that you aren't at all here in good faith, just to be glib and purposely misconstrue other people's words. good luck with life.
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