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Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

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Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#291

Post by ska »

salawat wrote: post #290
ska wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have been clearer - that was rhetorical to point out that if you and I use the same prompt and pick the same resultant image, it's harder to claim either of us have copyright. This is a gray area. The tools themselves could introduce some stochastic aspect so that outputs are never identical, also. None of this leads to an obviously clear cut legal position wrt copyright.

Your (and the other person's) set pf inputs drive a mathematical function that derives the same output. If we were all honest, we'd give up the idea of copyright altogether where ML is concerned. You can't get much closer to "It's just math, man" than what it is currently.

I think we are saying the same thing, roughly.

Of course, "it's just math, man" isn't precisely a legal argument, either.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#292

Post by shagie »

bergenty wrote: post #269
shagie wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "free samples" are still copyrighted by the artist. Adding a watermark to it doesn't remove the copyright and arguably, adding the copyright doesn't even create a new work. Their business is hosting, indexing, and managing the licensing for art that has been submitted to them and licensed to another party.

So what, me drawing the exact same image based on a Getty image doesn’t violate anything and everything the AI is doing is massively derivative so I don’t see how they could possibly have a case.

Creating a drawing based on an image clearly falls in the existing derivative work.

The "what is a model" and "what is the copyright status of the output of the model" are questions that have yet to be settled from the legal standpoint.

That Getty has images available for viewing with a watermark and that watermark is reproduced kind of in some results from model generated images suggests that the model was trained on images that were not licensed as the people who created the model claimed.

I'll also point to the "I created images from Stable Diffusion that are clearly the cover image from 'Never Gonna Give You Up'" suggests that images aren't as impossible to extract as one would believe from a model.

Copyright and derivative works is ultimately the domain of humans looking at laws - not deterministic machines. The case is argued by humans and before humans. A lawyer can and will make a case that the model itself is a derivative work and that the images produced by it have the possibility of being identified as mechanical modifications of existing works and therefore derivative themselves - just as a photograph of a painting is a derivative work of the painting.

If the output of the ML model can be identified as having major copyrightable elements from an existing original work, then it is derivative - no matter how it got there.

So, returning to your question. If you draw the exact same image based on an image hosted and licensed by Getty - it certainly will be a derivative work and violate copyright.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#293

Post by shagie »

beiller wrote: post #285
shagie wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... ish. On one hand, if you do a "this is the size of the net" and then divide it by the number of training images, its rather small amount of storage per image. On the other hand, when I was playing with stable diffusion on the command line following the instructions of https://replicate.com/blog/run-stable-diffusion-on-m1-mac python scripts/txt2img.py --prompt "wolf with bling walking down a street" --n_samples…

You have the version which filters out NSFW images based on keywords. The code literally replaces images it thinks are NSFW with Rick Astley. Copyright aside (yes it's probably wrong to hard code an image of Rick Astley in the actual stable diffusion git repository) that image is not contained in the weights of the model. - edit - please god tell me this is not an elaborate rick roll :)

It's not... though if

    stable-diffusion % python scripts/txt2img.py --prompt "Rick Astley Never Gonna Give You Up" --n_samples 1 --n_iter 1 --plms
is such that it triggers NSFW sometimes, then... I'm... let's say "confused" about what entails NSFW prompts.

(digging through scroll back)

    Creating invisible watermark encoder (see https://github.com/ShieldMnt/invisible-watermark)...
    Sampling:   0%|                                           | 0/1 [00:00
Apparently you're right... though the "black image" is a poor description of the image.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#294

Post by r00fus »

strangescript wrote: post #232
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clear that such training of AIs requires copying an image onto a computer system in which the training algorithms are performed. Maybe that fits in Fair Use (I doubt it: it's commercial and harms the original creators) but it certainly doesn't fit in Fair Dealing (in UK). I certainly, personally, approve of weak copyright laws that allows for things like training AIs without getting permission; neither USA,…

The AI doesn't actually need the image. It needs a two dimensional array that represents the pixel values. I am sure there are some very clever ways to get around that hurdle if that is where the bar is set.

I'm curious how a "two dimensional pixel array" doesn't correspond to a picture.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#295

Post by tobyjsullivan »

romwell wrote: post #235
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they were humans, a court could deem the outputs copyright infringement I'm not sure I understand how this is self-evident. The closest equivalent I can see would be a human who looks at many pieces of art to understand: - What is art and what is just scribbles or splatter? - What is good and what isn't? - What different styles are possible? Then the human goes and creates their own piece. It turns out, the lega…

>I'm not sure I understand how this is self-evident. The closest equivalent I can see would be a human who looks at many pieces of art ...and then gets told "Hey, go and paint me a copy of that Andy Warhol piece from memory". The model might not violate the copyright, but its output is derivative work if the copyrighted works are included in the training set.

That would be over-fitting which is certainly a failure mode of ML. But it's still a failure mode, not an inherent property.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#296

Post by paxys »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #131

It's always weird to see the contrast between HN's reaction to copyright questions about text/image generation, and HN's reaction when it's code generation. When a model is trained on 'all-rights-reserved' content like most image datasets, the community say it's fair game. But when it's 'just-a-few-rights-reserved' content like GPL code, apparently the community says that crosses a line? Realistically, this tells me…

There's no community consensus on either of them, so not sure how you are trying to draw a contrast. There are people who thing both are wrong and those that think both are right and everything in between.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#298

Post by paxys »

biggerChris wrote: post #19
cantSpellSober wrote: post #6

Email this morning: AI Generated Content Effective immediately, Getty Images will cease to accept all submissions created using AI generative models (e.g., Stable Diffusion, Dall‑E 2, MidJourney, etc.) and prior submissions utilizing such models will be removed. There are open questions with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and there are unaddressed rights issues with respect to the underlying im…

It’s funny because, I can make an image and they wouldn’t know it’s A.i generated.

You can make an image and have it be AI generated (say using Photoshop's content aware fill), and it will be allowed. They are drawing a pretty arbitrary line.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#299

Post by joe_the_user »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #274
joe_the_user wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a model is trained on 'all-rights-reserved' content like most image datasets, the community say it's fair game. But when it's 'just-a-few-rights-reserved' content like GPL code, apparently the community says that crosses a line? A) This is just taking divided opinion and treating it like a person with a contradictory opinion (as others have noted). B) Nothing about GPL makes it "less copyrighted". Acting like a…

> Nothing about GPL makes it "less copyrighted". Acting like a commercial copyright is "stronger" because it doesn't immediately grant certain uses is false and needs to be challenged whenever the claim is made. GPL says "you have a license to use it if you do XYZ." The alternative is "you have no license to use it." How is that not strictly "stronger?"

The GPL is as strong as a commercial license in the sense that the conditions it does specify are exactly as legally binding as those of a commercial license.

Re: Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

#300

Post by paxys »

When your business sees an existential threat on the horizon you have two options – be at the forefront of the change and get ahead of your competitors and any new entrants by adopting the change yourself, or stall/threaten/litigate/raise prices/lower prices and otherwise hold on to your business model at all costs. Those in the latter group don't survive very long.
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