Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

oneusefulthing.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 373 posts

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#361

Post by globnomulous »

> The past couple years have been spent trying to figure out what text AI models are good for, and new use cases are being developed continuously.

In other words, people who care about money and only money are pushing for these tools because they're convinced they'll reduce labor costs and somehow also improve the resulting product, while engineers and creative professionals who have these tools foisted upon them by unimaginative business people continue to insist that the tools are a solution in search of a problem, that they're stochastic parrots and plagiarism automata that bypass all of the important parts of engineering and creativity and make the absolutely, breathtakingly idiotic mistake of supposing it's possible to leap to a finished product without all the work and problem solving involved in getting there.

> The line between human and AI creation will continue to blur

This is utter nonsense, and hype-man prognosticators in the tech world like the author of the article turn out pretty much 100% of the time to be either grifters or saps who have fallen for the grifters' nonsense.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#362

Post by __loam »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #337
__loam wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not aware of any legal precedent forbidding me to (internally) do as I please with public content that I scrape. Because all the litigation is currently ongoing. > A fully legal endeavor that is very strongly rewarded by the market. Yes let's sacrifice all production of cultural artifacts for the market. This is honestly another thing that's being litigated. So far these companies have lost a lot of money on ma…

Precisely. So when you say they used the images without permission, you are knowingly making a false implication - that it was known to them that they needed permission and that they intentionally disregarded that fact. In reality that has yet to be legally established. Who said anything about sacrificing production? The entire point of the tooling is to reduce the production cost to as near zero as possible. If you…

You might be surprised to learn that ethics and legality are not always the same and you can do something that's technically legal but also extremely shitty like training AI models on work you didn't create without permission.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#363

Post by justinator »

sfn42 wrote: post #333
justinator wrote: post #142

But the annotations are still wrong, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_... (nice URL btw) The room, the door, the ceiling are all of a scale to fit many sizes of elephants.

The lines don't really make sense either, like the one above the sofa should probably go along the corner between the floor and wall.

Just like text results from AI, when images like this get better, the more and more subtle yet absolute wrongness is going to be a nightmare to deal with.

Imagine a ask AI to show me a sewer cap that's less than a foot wide (or whatever, I dunno, watch TMNT right now). And it does, just by showing a sewer cap that looks photorealistic and a ruler, that has markings from one end to the other that only go up to 8 inches. That doesn't mean sewer caps come in that size, it just means you can produce a rendered image to fit what you asked for.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#364

Post by xmprt »

Vvector wrote: post #352
xmprt wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main concern with AI is that in a capitalist society, wealth is being transferred to companies training these models rather than the artists who have defined an iconic style. There's no doubt that AI is useful and can make many people's lives better, easier, more efficient, however without properly compensating artists who made the training data we're simply widening the wealth gap further.

Whats your definition of "properly compensate" when dealing with hundreds of millions of artists/authors and billions/trillions of individual training items? Just a quick example, what's my proper compensation for this specific post? Can I set a FIVE CENTS price for every AI that learned from my post? How can I OPT-IN today? I'm coming from the position that current law doesn't require compensation, nor opt-in. I'm n…

I don't think there's a good way to structure it in our current economic system. The only solutions I can't think of are more socialist or universal basic income. Essentially, if AI companies are going to profit off the creations of everyone in the world, they might as well pay higher taxes to cover for it. I'm sure that's an unpopular opinion but I also don't think it's fair to take an art style that a creator might spend an entire life perfecting and then commoditize it. Now the AI company gets paid a ton and the creator who made something super popular is out on the streets looking for a "real" job despite providing a lot of value to the world.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#365

Post by drdaeman »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #349
Taek wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "movies and other great works of art that used to cost tens of millions of dollars to make now cost tens of dollars to make" a bad thing? It means art can get more ambitious. Ghibli made their mark, and made their money. Now it's time for the next generation to have a turn.

> How is "movies and other great works of art that used to cost tens of millions of dollars to make now cost tens of dollars to make" a bad thing? It's bad because you will never get an original visual style from now on. Everything will be copy-paste of existing styles, forever.

Can you please explain how did you jump to this conclusion?

I fail to see how artistic expression would cease to be a thing and how people will stop liking novelty. And as long as those are a thing, original styles will also be a thing.

If anything, making the entry barriers lower would result in more original styles, as art is [at least] frequently an evolutionary process, where existing ideas meet novel ones and mix in interesting ways. And even for the entirely novel (from-scratch, if that's a thing) ideas will still keep appearing - if someone thinks of something, they're still free to express themselves, as it was always the case. I cannot think of why people would stop painting with brushes, fingers or anything else.

Art exists because of human nature. Nothing changes in this regard.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#366

Post by drdaeman »

mrdependable wrote: post #275
drdaeman wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's going to happen when someone can make a competing movie in their style with just a prompt? Nothing? Just like how if some studio today invests millions of man-hours and does a competing movie in Studio Ghibli's aesthetic (but not including any Studio Ghibli's characters, branding, etc. - basically, not the copyrightable or trademarkable stuff) nothing out of ordinary is going to happen. I mean, artistic styl…

You are missing the point entirely. If you can make a movie with just a prompt, who is going to invest the money creating something like a Ghibli movie just to have it ripped off? Instead people will just rip off what has already been done and everything just stagnates.

I'm sorry, but I do not think I understand the idea why and how Studio Ghibli is being "ripped off" in this scenario.

As I've said, art styles are not considered copyrightable. You say I'm missing the point but I fail to see why. I've used lack of copyright protection as a reality check, a verifiable fact that can be used to determine the current consensus on the matter. Based on this lack of legal protection, I'm concluding that the societies have considered it's not something that needs to be protected, and thus that there is no "ripping off" in replicating a successful style. I have no doubts there are plenty of people who would think otherwise (and e.g. say that current state of copyright is not optimal - which can be very true), but they need to argue about copyright protections not technological accessibility. The latter merely exposes the former (by drastically lowering the cost barriers), but is not the root issue.

I also have doubts about your prediction of stagnation, particularly because you seem to ignore the demand side. People want novelty and originality, it was always the case and always will be (or at least for as long as human nature doesn't change). Things will change for sure (they always do), but I don't think a stagnation is a realistic scenario.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#367

Post by exodust »

lupusreal wrote: post #338
exodust wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3-5 prompts doesn't get you a professional restaurant website. The key word is professional . A good restaurant website begins with taking good photos of the premises and the food. AI won't come around to your business and take professional photos. There's a lot of bits and pieces to a website for bookings, content management, menu updates, etc. HTML templates and themes have been around for a long time. AI can basic…

Most restaurant websites don't have photos of the food. Certainly not professional ones. Pan around randomly on google maps then zoom in and find the nearest strip mall, then go down the line checking the websites of restaurants there. Most are generic crap and you'll be lucky if the menu online is even complete. If they have food photos it's probably smartphone pictures taken by the owner's kid. I do this a lot, far…

You've evaluated a tiny sample of restaurant websites and extrapolated to make claims about the overwhelming majority - in the millions, across the globe.

"Most are generic crap" doesn't mean restaurants aim for that benchmark when they decide to get a website.

I'm not sure if you're refuting the point I was making, which I'll clarify. "Restaurant website" could be a stand-in for any basic small business website. The claim was that AI threatens small web dev agencies who make small business websites. I don't think it will, as millions of small businesses want something better than "generic crap" or cookie-cut AI copy paste; AND we've had site-building services, social media pages, and template-driven approaches for a long time.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#368

Post by fc417fc802 »

globnomulous wrote: post #359
fc417fc802 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viewing it in a web browser requires a local copy. Saving it to my downloads folder requires a local copy. That is very obviously legal. Why should training be any different? You've yet to present a convincing argument regarding the ethics. (I do believe that such arguments exist; I just don't think you've made any of them.)

> Why should training be any different? If you really can't think of a reason, I don't think anybody here is going to be able to offer you one you are willing to accept. This isn't a difficult or complex idea, so if you don't see it, why would anybody bother trying to convince you? > (I do believe that such arguments exist; I just don't think you've made any of them.) This is lazy and obnoxious.

Yet strangely a similarly simple explanation is not forthcoming. Curious.

The idea I expressed is also quite straightforward. That the act of copying something around in RAM is a basic component of using a computer to do pretty much anything and thus cannot possibly be a legitimate argument against something in and of itself.

The audience on HN generally leans quite heavily into reasoned debate as opposed to emotionally charged ideological signalling. That is presumably sufficient reason for someone to try to convince me, at least if anyone truly believes that there's a sound argument to be made here.

> This is lazy and obnoxious.

How is a clarification that I'm not blind to the existence of arguments regarding ethical issues lazy? Objecting to a lazy and baseless claim does not obligate me to spend the time to articulate a substantial one on the other party's behalf.

That said, the only ethical arguments that immediately come to mind pertain to collective benefit similar to those made to justify the existence of IP law. I think there's a reasonable case to be made to levy fractional royalties against the paid usage of ML models on the basis that their existence upends the market. It's obviously protectionist in nature but that doesn't inherently invalidate it. IP law itself is justified on the basis that it incentivizes innovation; this isn't much different.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#369

Post by fc417fc802 »

__loam wrote: post #362
fc417fc802 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. So when you say they used the images without permission, you are knowingly making a false implication - that it was known to them that they needed permission and that they intentionally disregarded that fact. In reality that has yet to be legally established. Who said anything about sacrificing production? The entire point of the tooling is to reduce the production cost to as near zero as possible. If you…

You might be surprised to learn that ethics and legality are not always the same and you can do something that's technically legal but also extremely shitty like training AI models on work you didn't create without permission.

I'm not surprised by that at all. It just seems that we disagree about the ethics of the matter at hand.

I'd like to suggest that you might be better received on HN if you were a bit more direct about making an argument of substance regarding the ethics.

Re: No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation

#370

Post by thwarted »

smusamashah wrote: post #208
thwarted wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have alt text for images, you want alt images for text. You can see other people's interpretation of Zaphod's two heads by watching the BBC HHGTTG show (Mark Wing-Davey) or the movie (Sam Rockwell), among other renditions, which offer completely different interpretations, none of them canonical (not the least of which is because there was no canonical version of HHGTTG according to DA). I'm sure there are multitud…

I agree that people interpret things differently and visualise differently and that is my point. I want to see the concept from my head in a solid visual form. Some concepts that are not clear, like those that I mentioned having trouble with, I want to see any kind of visual representation at all. I will probably not like some of those, but there these tools can help generate a bunch of variations tailored specifical…

> If someone can show me exactly what I am thinking of, won't that be amazing.

I suppose it would be amazing if someone could read minds, but is that what you're asking for? In an earlier comment, you opened with:

> I am waiting for when I could provide these a scene snippet from "Hitchhiker's Guide To Galaxy" (or any book) and it could draw that for me.

This is asking for an illustrator, not showing you what you're thinking. The illustrator, even if it is a machine, will show you their interpretation.

Post reply on HN