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An artist fights Midjourney

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#31

Post by sjfjsjdjwvwvc »

vunderba wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this really qualifies as anything new. It's been well known for a long time that many generative AI models are capable of reconstructing copyrighted works (copilot, SD, etc.) from their original training data with nearly 100% fidelity, but until we have a definitive legal ruling it doesn't really matter.

Is a definitive legal ruling even possible? Looking at music for example there are still many cases being fought over stolen melodies and that’s been a thing for generations.

I think it’s going to go a similar way with „AI“ - lots of court cases, lots of different and nuanced rulings converging on a general idea what the legal boundaries are but with many grey areas in between.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#32

Post by usrbinbash »

passwordoops wrote: post #8
buildartefact wrote: post #4

Asks for screenshot from movie. Image generator gives screenshot from movie. Who’s at fault here?

The image generator that provided the screenshot without licensing/permission. This isn't complicated, we have laws on the books, and I hope legislators learned their lesson after the "Uber's not a taxi company, and AirBNBs are not like hotels"

> The image generator

So if someone makes a forgery of, say, a picasso, who do we blame: The forger or the brush?

> This isn't complicated

This concerns copyright law, which is handled case by case, and deals with very fuzzy definitions like "fair use" or what constitutes "transformative works", and things like "impact in the marketplace".

So yes, this is a very complicated topic.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#33

Post by tedunangst »

passwordoops wrote: post #20
fallingknife wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I go to Google and ask for screenshots from a movie, it will also produce copyrighted material. So you're right that it isn't complicated. Tools with the same capability already exist and are perfectly legal, and therefore, so is Midjourney.

Does Google claim the image is it's own? No. Does Google include a message that the image is copyrighted? Yes. Does MidJourney attribute the source of the image? No. Does MidJourney's owners claim the requested image is an original generated by their black box correlation machine? Yes. That's the infringement. Period.

Do midjourney's owners claim everything coming out of the black box is an original image?

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#34

Post by polishTar »

klyrs wrote: post #3
ksjskskskkk wrote: post #2

he's asking for "movie screenshot" those are probably stills from press releases. meh.

When the cops search your car for meth and they find coke instead, they don't merrily send you on your way.

Eh, it depends.

I don't know if this is the case, but if these images were released to press & public as part of a media resource pack with a permissive license used to market the movie (which I believe is commonly done in this industry), I'd have a hard time empathizing with the viewpoint that Midjourney is doing something wicked by including it in their training data.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#35

Post by snickerbockers »

coolhand2120 wrote: post #12

If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise. It should still be on the person that broke the law, not the makers of the tool. If you go down the “can’t use my art as training data” how far do you push it? I watched Batman, does that mean if I draw caped super heroes I am stealing training data? Would…

> If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does!

in order for that analogy to even remotely be applicable, midjourney would have to be a program you run on your own computer and not a service running on midjourney's computers that does what you ask it to.

> In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise. It should still be on the person that broke the law, not the makers of the tool.

that would be midjourney, since they're both the creators and operators of their model.

> If you go down the “can’t use my art as training data” how far do you push it? I watched Batman, does that mean if I draw caped super heroes I am stealing training data? Wouldn’t that apply to all comics after Superman? Isn’t he guilty of derivative work himself?

you just called AI "a tool", that's why it's different.

> Also, nobody is being harmed by this. AI is always derivative. Nobody is interested in copies or impressions of popular art, otherwise the guy selling animes on velvet at the local art fair would be making more money. This just sounds like a Luddite shaking his fist at this perceived enemy.

that's an argument against IP law in general, not an argument against holding companies which create and operate deep-learning models to the same standards as everybody else.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#36

Post by stubish »

Glyptodon wrote: post #18
kingkawn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re making money producing images of IP then…

So if someone sketches Batman do you sue Bic?

If Bic made a pen that came preloaded with unlicenced images of Batman and guided you to reproduce them, then yes.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#37

Post by eru »

coolhand2120 wrote: post #12

If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise. It should still be on the person that broke the law, not the makers of the tool. If you go down the “can’t use my art as training data” how far do you push it? I watched Batman, does that mean if I draw caped super heroes I am stealing training data? Would…

> Nobody is interested in copies or impressions of popular art, otherwise the guy selling animes on velvet at the local art fair would be making more money.

The vast majority of artists make almost no money off their art. Original or otherwise.

Some superstar artists make some money. But that art doesn't have to be original [0], see eg Duchamp's urinal, or the popart people copying comics. Or see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Square,_Milan_(paint...

Gerhard Richter's painting 'Cathedral Square, Milan' is a 'bad' copy of a photograph:

> The source after which Richter executed Domplatz, Mailand was a newspaper photograph that was in focus, from which Richter clipped a section and modified it.

> It was sold by Sotheby's in New York on 14 May 2013 for 37.1 Million dollars, breaking Richter's own record price for an artwork by a living artist, his 1994 32.4 million dollar painting Abstraktes Bild (809-1).

[0] Of course, motivated reasoning can always find some aspect that makes the superstar artists and their art original. But the same amount of mental effort can also make 'the guy selling animes on velvet at the local art fair' original.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#38

Post by Bjartr »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #31
vunderba wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this really qualifies as anything new. It's been well known for a long time that many generative AI models are capable of reconstructing copyrighted works (copilot, SD, etc.) from their original training data with nearly 100% fidelity, but until we have a definitive legal ruling it doesn't really matter.

Is a definitive legal ruling even possible? Looking at music for example there are still many cases being fought over stolen melodies and that’s been a thing for generations. I think it’s going to go a similar way with „AI“ - lots of court cases, lots of different and nuanced rulings converging on a general idea what the legal boundaries are but with many grey areas in between.

Which is genuinely the(US) legal system working as intended

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#40

Post by felipeerias »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #17
kingkawn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re making money producing images of IP then…

Who was making any money in this instance? I’m not super familiar with midjourney but it looks to me like he used the free version

Midjourney is returning copies of copyrighted works while its Terms of Service state that “You own all Assets You create with the Services”.
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