Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

What's wrong with it?

We live in an interconnected world. Every company or individual who profits off anything does so, in very large part, thanks to work left behind by others that they don't directly compensate each other for.

Stated differently, if we look at the other side of the coin, it's one thing to create value, and another thing to capture value. If you are a business (and artists seeking profit are businesses), you create value then try to capture that value. Creating value and trying to capture (in the form of profit) is the entire name of the game. But no business captures 100% the value they create. If you make a product/artwork/service/whatever and release it to the public, lots of people may use it, view it, be inspired by it, learn from it, and ultimately profit off it in their own way without you necessarily being able to capture some part of it. And what's wrong with that?

Do we really want the entire world to be endlessly full of cookie-licking rent seekers who demand profit every time anyone does anything? Because they failed to capture the value they created, and thus demand a piece of the pie from those who are better at capturing value?

I like the way Thomas Jefferson put it:

> If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea.

There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy:

* "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats"

* "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service"

* "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"

It's a way of talking yourself away from the fact that what you are making may, inherently, be disliked. The cited survey even seems to have been read as favourably as possible:

> Surveys consistently showed that consumers believed artists deserved payment when AI generated content in their style.

This doesn't mean people want artists style to be generated by AI. It could mean they think it's horrible, but if it happens they should at least be compensated for it. In fact, the quotes survey even says 43% believe companies should ban copying artists styles. I could make the exact opposite argument with the same data:

"Many consumers believe companies should ban copying styles, and this may be a more common opinion than measured as most people have no experience with modern AI tools and therefore no chance to have made an opinion yet. What is known is that the majority believe that if artists were to be copied, they should at least be compensated"

edit: formatting, typo