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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

#31

Post by tshadley »

"[The complaint] argues that the Stable Diffusion model is basically just a giant archive of compressed images (similar to MP3 compression, for example) and that when Stable Diffusion is given a text prompt, it “interpolates” or combines the images in its archives to provide its output. The complaint literally calls Stable Diffusion nothing more than a “collage tool” throughout the document. It suggests that the output is just a mash-up of the training data."

As noted in OP, this is an outstandingly bad definition of Deep-Neural-Networks, and the lawsuit should fail when the court hears an explanation from any competent practitioner.

However, a correct definition would make the lawsuit far more interesting, imo. Diffusion models can be compared to a superhumanly talented artist that can be cloned in unlimited fashion by anyone having the software and hardware means. How does this entity affect social well-being, how should existing laws be modified--if at all-- with the welfare of humanity in mind, etc?

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

#32

Post by scotty79 »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #23
scotty79 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disheartening because it's a great loss to everybody. Almost none of the people that were generating images in a style of some artist will contact this artist and pay to have an image created. So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. Now barely anyone will ever have a…

> So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. I think it's quite presumptuous to unequivocally state that artists lose with this. Is it a complicated situation? Yes, of course, too complicated for such certainty. That's a wonderful thing to believe, but it's just as plausible…

> but it's just as plausible (I'd argue far, far more plausible as the tech improves) that clients who would formerly pay for their work no longer have to.

With the volume of AI art generated was an even single actual case of that?

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

#33

Post by TylerE »

Kiro wrote: post #6
RandomLensman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent seeking by owners of AI machines is OK, but not by copyright owners?

Yes. Abolish all copyright. Are we hackers or not?

You understand that completely kills OSS as a concept, right?

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

#34

Post by haswell »

t433 wrote: post #12
healsdata wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Its disheartening that artists can opt-out of having a computer algorithm make derivative versions of their creations? I'm probably on the opposite side of the fence. I do find it disheartening that it's opt-out instead of opt-in. The training set should be limited to public domain and CC-0 until such a time it can comply with attribution; then other CC works could b…

All art is derivative.

The definition of “derivative” and its historical context look nothing like the new reality created by generative AI.

To continue blindly applying historical understanding to fundamentally new technologies creates huge blind spots, and I’d argue similar to pretending that the creation of ever more destructive weaponry requires no changes to the rules of engagement in warfare.

The game has changed.

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

#36

Post by matheusmoreira »

tshadley wrote: post #31

"[The complaint] argues that the Stable Diffusion model is basically just a giant archive of compressed images (similar to MP3 compression, for example) and that when Stable Diffusion is given a text prompt, it “interpolates” or combines the images in its archives to provide its output. The complaint literally calls Stable Diffusion nothing more than a “collage tool” throughout the document. It suggests that the outp…

> the lawsuit will fail when the court hears an explanation from an expert

So how often does this happen? Somehow I'm too cynical to believe that a judge would rule against the intellectual property industry. The whole thing is based on absurd concepts to begin with, concepts that can be reduced to the ownership of unique numbers. Once a society accepts that, what difference do explanations make?

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

#38

Post by Karunamon »

rafale wrote: post #35

I hope the law will converge to this: As a human, I don't need a license to look and get inspired by art. But I am not allowed to feed that same data to a machine as a training dataset without proper authorization from the owner.

I hope the exact opposite. AI, including AGI if we ever get there, cannot be allowed to be strangled in its crib by artificially limiting the information it can learn from in the name of IP maximalism. IP law already goes way too far, the line should be drawn here.

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

#39

Post by krapp »

TylerE wrote: post #33
Kiro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Abolish all copyright. Are we hackers or not?

You understand that completely kills OSS as a concept, right?

Free and open source software licenses are redundant in a world where copyright and intellectual property laws don't exist, and no form of media (including software) can legally be owned by anyone.

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

#40

Post by hooverd »

haswell wrote: post #25
scotty79 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's disheartening because it's a great loss to everybody. Almost none of the people that were generating images in a style of some artist will contact this artist and pay to have an image created. So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work from the people who tried the AI commercially and got results that weren't completely satisfactory. Now barely anyone will ever have a…

This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. > So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work I’ve seen this sentiment, bu…

On top of that, deliberately training models to copy an artists work and antagonizing the artist about it.
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