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On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

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Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#531

Post by unnamed76ri »

madeofpalk wrote: post #347
unnamed76ri wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now the guy who started Napster is on the board of Spotify who just decided they weren’t going to pay small time artists for their music anymore. Go figure.

Spotify and the rights holders come together and agree on the right price. Unfortunately, since long before Spotify ever existed, it's usually the record labels who owns the rights to the music and the actual creators still get shafted.

Except in this case, 10s of thousands of rights holders are just getting nothing as of the start of 2024 and I can tell you, Spotify certainly did not “come together” with any of us.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#532

Post by jprete »

nulld3v wrote: post #223
madeofpalk wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not as interested in making a technical/legal argument, as I'm just sharing my feelings on the topic (and eventually, what I think the law should be), but during training copies are made of copyrighted material, even if the model doesn't contain exact copies of work. Crawling, downloading, storing (temporarily) for training all involve making copies, and thus are subject to copyright law. Maybe those copies are f…

Assume I agree that copyright holders should be compensated for their works (because I do in some sense). How would this compensation work? Let's say a portion of profits from LLMs that were trained on copyrighted work should be sent to the copyright holders. How would we allocate which portion of the profits go to which creators? The only "fair" way here would be if we could trace how much a specific work influenced…

This is what licensing negotiations are for. One doesn't get to throw up their hands and say "I don't know how to fairly pay you so I won't pay you at all".

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#533

Post by whamlastxmas »

davemp wrote: post #192
enjo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if Gabe over at penny-arcade would be upset if his comics were used in an art class to train a new generation of artists.

>> If my interlocutor isn't prepared to make any distinctions between a human being and a machine designed to mimic one, I think that I can't meaningfully discuss this with them. I hate that this is the case; it must be seen as a personal failing. I can't do it, though. These models aren't people. They don't know anything. They don't want anything. They don't need anything. I won't privilege it over a person. And I c…

Seems lazy to differentiate between types of intelligence without providing any substance as to why you believe one type is more worthy of learning than another and criticizing others for the same laziness

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#534

Post by munificent »

kansface wrote: post #455
tedivm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward. I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn't) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. C…

> The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people's work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. Ah, just like humans who train against the output of other humans. AI models are not fundamentally different in kind in this regard, only scope, and even that isn't perfectly obvious to me a priori.

AI models are fundamentally different because a computer is a lump of silicon which is neither a moral subject nor object. A human author is a living sentient being that needs to earn a living and is deserving of dignity and regard.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#535

Post by bluefirebrand »

Humdeee wrote: post #456
bluefirebrand wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without giving bias to humanity No, we should absolutely be giving bias to humanity. Flesh and blood humans matter, their lives matter, their thoughts matter and their work matters. Machines are tools for them to use not entities given the same rights and same consideration. I reject your whole premise.

Exactly; their flesh, blood, energy, etc. does matter. This is my argument for it, not for your argument against it, lmao. There's nothing more remarkable about my planted potato row vs the tractor planted rows, and my energy can be spent elsewhere. I am not entitled to making a living hand planting potatoes if there's not a market for it. People have the choice to continue making stories and they'll have a fanbase f…

> For transparency, I am an advocate for human made art,

If you believe AI tooling is an artform then you categorically are advocating against human made art as far as I am concerned.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#536

Post by johnnyanmac »

KuriousCat wrote: post #475
kansface wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people's work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. Ah, just like humans who train against the output of other humans. AI models are not fundamentally different in kind in this regard, only scope, and even that isn't perfectly obvious to me a priori.

Going by this logic, why is OpenAI forbidding use of the content it generates for training other models?

Well, mostly because of corporate greed of ownership. But the underlying issue is that Ai training in AI is a recipe for ruining the entire training set. At least in these early stages.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#537

Post by throwup238 »

KuriousCat wrote: post #475
kansface wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people's work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. Ah, just like humans who train against the output of other humans. AI models are not fundamentally different in kind in this regard, only scope, and even that isn't perfectly obvious to me a priori.

Going by this logic, why is OpenAI forbidding use of the content it generates for training other models?

They can write whatever they want in their Terms of Service. That's the logic.

That doesn't mean that courts will meaningfully enforce it for them.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#538

Post by chx »

tedivm wrote: post #177
sandworm101 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can't use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content. But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to copy copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it. If one doesn't want anyone to see/consume or be influenced by one's…

I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward. I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn't) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. C…

> I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use

There's a hell lot of money to be made from this belief so of course the HN crowd will hold it.

Some of us here who have been around the copyright hustle for a little longer laugh at this bitterly and pray that the courts and/or Doctorow's activism saves us. But there's so much money to be made from automatized plagiarism and the forces against are so weak, the hope is not much.

The world will be a much, much poorer place once all the artists this view exploits will stop making art because they need to make a living.

See https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1744422377113501998 and https://i.imgur.com/zOOcPCi.jpg

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#539

Post by wrsh07 »

freejazz wrote: post #299
wrsh07 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But sometimes your work is put on Instagram without your knowledge or consent (eg by an Instagram aggregator account) And this whole ecosystem of credit (or not sharing credit) is undoubtedly encouraged by Instagram (because it's valuable to me to have an Instagram account with many followers)

>But sometimes your work is put on Instagram without your knowledge or consent (eg by an Instagram aggregator account) That's copyright infringement. You can't claim to own other people's work and then give license to others to use when you don't own the work.

Of course it is! It being illegal doesn't mean Instagram is incentivized to crack down on it

And if you're a tiny independent artist you also aren't well-resourced to do anything about it.

(Afaict the best thing we can do is maintain a culture that demands attribution)

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#540

Post by Kye »

isoprophlex wrote: post #516
shadowgovt wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Jerry's "thing." Jerry Holkins has always enjoyed how weird English is and what you can do to someone's brain with a few precisely-chosen words aligned in the right order; it's his writing style. If he applied his approach to Python coding, he'd be one of those folks who isn't happy until their entire program is a single `do()` method that executes by using decorators to synthesize classes and metaclasses out…

Which is all fun and game until you want to get some actual shit done, or in this case, communicate...

They're into their second half century doing this. Would they have made it this far without being a little weird? Maybe, but it's hard to A/B something like that. I understand it well enough after following the comic that long.

It's not for you.

(this is a reference to an ancient Penny Arcade bit: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24/the-adventures...)

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