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Stable Diffusion is a big deal

simonwillison.net

331–340 of 488 posts

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#331
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the word "stolen" applies here, at least not any more-so than I stole from him when I looked at that image. I'm not sure about that website rehosting his image, but in terms of the model people are running on their computers, it's not like it literally includes the image that can be pulled back out of it. A computer looked at that image, and tweaked a very small amount of numbers within ~5GB of numbers…

> not any more-so than I stole from him when I looked at that image I spoke with the author, the author disagrees with you. The reason he consider that stealing is because they took that image from the online shop where the disclaimer specifically states "2022 © Magnetic Press LLC by Arenathemes. All Rights Reserved" without even trying to contact the copyright holder. https://store.magnetic-press.com/products/viewpo…

It seems like you didn't understand my point

> took that image from the online shop

They didn't take the image. They looked at it and learned a few datapoints from it. It's not like they compressed the image and added it into the model, able to be reversed by anyone who downloads it. In fact it's likely there's other completely distinct images that could have contributed the exact same tweaks to the model, like a hash.

>I can enter a bookshop and look around, open a book, read some pages and maybe learn something.

>It doesn't give me the right to republish a similar book putting together what I saw, unless the license specifically grants me that right or I obtained a license that does.

No, but the analogy would be if you learned something from the blurb you read - like a word, or a factoid, or an expression - and it influenced some writing you did later. You didn't steal from that book's author.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#332
post #211

My son is an artist and we have conversations around AI generated art almost every week these days. Our general consensus has been: 1. Artists that use SD etc., will save a lot of time and have a big edge. Example: Generating references instead of searching for them, Generate random inspiration(s) for abstract ideas, Variations of a particular idea to compare and contrast. 2. Non artists who have powerful imagination…

So I just tried beta.dreamstudio.ai, and am a bit underwhelmed.. It's compositions generally look silly or completely ignore the instructions, even if I turn cfg way up. I was generally generating 9 compositions at a time, here's some of the things I've tried: "An elf fighting an orc in a forest" Half the images had christmas elves so it's obviously bad at context, half looked like miniatures (models like games works…

I'll link to my other recent comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32634074#32661992

This isn't supposed to be used the same as Dall-E mini. You're supposed to be very detailed in your prompts.

Also the online demos tend to not let you tweak parameters. You get more options if you run the model yourself

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to provide another image as a prompt for SD? For example, could you provide a simple drawing of a house and expect it to render a house?

Yes: https://andys.page/posts/how-to-draw/

Thank you for this! I've been playing with the optimizedSD for a while but couldn't get what I wanted out of it. This guide makes sense to me. Gonna give it another shot on the weekend!

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#334

One day, images generated with these AIs will become ubiquitous online, and new AIs training on data will wind up with feedback problems because they got trained on photos that are AI generated, possibly even ones they themselves generated! This tech is a huge deal. Huge. Ubiquitous unique, beautiful art. Entire movies made by machines. Too many to even watch them all. Actor models that aren't real people owned by th…

Although it's likely that the images that appear online will be peoples' favourites of many candidates, also likely developed through many steps of AI tweaking. So that's still a useful signal for another AI to consume.

I agree. It may well speed up convergence to the 'ideal' inner vision we have from a prompt.

But maybe the feedback will make marginal defects/artefacts worse. (Which could be manually corrected before re-entering this loop).

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#335
post #225
post #175

> Stable Diffusion has been trained on millions of copyrighted images scraped from the web. My brain has been trained on even more copyrighted material. Every book I read, every tv show I watch, the toys I played with as a child. It's hard to imagine that I could come up with anything that is not inspired by copyrighted work.

Two objections: 1: you cannot produce thousands of detailed pictures in a day, this program can. The argument gets pretty clear if you transpose it to other objects, ie why is it fair to ride a bicycle in the sidewalk but not drive a car? 2: copyright laws. You may not see a picture and imitate it. How do you know this AI didn't just imitate one of the million pictures it saw? And if you distribute it and the author…

If someone crashes into your house, do you sue the car or the person?

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#336
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the word "stolen" applies here, at least not any more-so than I stole from him when I looked at that image. I'm not sure about that website rehosting his image, but in terms of the model people are running on their computers, it's not like it literally includes the image that can be pulled back out of it. A computer looked at that image, and tweaked a very small amount of numbers within ~5GB of numbers…

> not any more-so than I stole from him when I looked at that image I spoke with the author, the author disagrees with you. The reason he consider that stealing is because they took that image from the online shop where the disclaimer specifically states "2022 © Magnetic Press LLC by Arenathemes. All Rights Reserved" without even trying to contact the copyright holder. https://store.magnetic-press.com/products/viewpo…

I would venture to guess that the author doesn't have a full understanding of what the AI is doing or how it works.

There are a gazillion artist who take clear inspiration from other artists, and there is no copywrite violation in doing so. The AI viewing his work isn't any different.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#337

I’m more trying to see what the utility of stable diffusion (or just the text to image problem) in the long term. Right now people can play around with making weird art pieces and maybe it will be integrated into design tools...but then what? Eg with other AI problems out there I can see a potential application to medicine, self driving cars etc, but I just don’t see what the bigger goal of this is going to be.

[deleted]

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#338
post #50

I am a contrarian by nature. Wearing my investor hat, I continue to be unimpressed with AI tools, including the latest image generation enhancements. I do find stable diffusion interesting, but I don't see the disruption. Similarly, I don't see the disruption from Github Copilot considering I run a company full of highly paid and extremely skilled developers and not one of them uses copilot. How often have you wanted…

[deleted]

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not any more-so than I stole from him when I looked at that image I spoke with the author, the author disagrees with you. The reason he consider that stealing is because they took that image from the online shop where the disclaimer specifically states "2022 © Magnetic Press LLC by Arenathemes. All Rights Reserved" without even trying to contact the copyright holder. https://store.magnetic-press.com/products/viewpo…

I would venture to guess that the author doesn't have a full understanding of what the AI is doing or how it works. There are a gazillion artist who take clear inspiration from other artists, and there is no copywrite violation in doing so. The AI viewing his work isn't any different.

> I would venture to guess that the author doesn't have a full understanding of what the AI is doing or how it works.

Actually he does.

> There are a gazillion artist who take clear inspiration from other artists

Inspiration is not the same thing Stable Diffusion does.

We can't even define inspiration in a proper manner, but for sure we can say that if someone wants to draw comics in the way Tezuka made them, they have to study, exercise, rinse and repeat for at least a few years.

No human can scrape billions of images and take inspiration from all of them, not even in 10 life times.

Also, no human will make something similar to something else seen for the first time in 10 seconds.

Not even if it's "La Linea" from Cavandoli.

Re: Stable Diffusion is a big deal

#340
post #307

Is it just me, or do the comments in this thread seem to be the exact opposite of the sentiment in the comments on similar Github Copilot threads? I just find it a bit ironic that programmers are irate about Github Copilot using their copyrighted material to train. However, if it's an ML model training off of copyrighted artists material, clearly its a transformative work. I just find the opposing sentiments for thes…

Maybe you’re referring to a different thread, but I see plenty of people arguing both sides here and in the copilot one.
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