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

An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

theaiunderwriter.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 927 posts

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#551

Post by KronisLV »

I think the cat is out of the bag when it comes to generative AI, the same way how various LLMs for programming have been trained even on codebases that they had no business using, yet nobody hasn’t and won’t stop them. It’s the same as what’s going to happen with deepfakes and such, as the technology inevitably gets better.

> Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese animation company, Studio Ghibli, produces beautiful and famously labor intensive movies, with one 4 second sequence purportedly taking over a year to make.

It makes me wonder though - whether it’s more valuable to spend a year on a scene that most people won’t pay that much attention to (artists will understand and appreciate, maybe pause and rewind and replay and examine the details, the casual viewer just enjoy at a glance) or use tools in addition to your own skills to knock it out of the park in a month and make more great things.

A bit how digital art has clear advantages over paper, while many revere the traditional art a lot, despite it taking longer and being harder. The same way how someone who uses those AI assisted programming tools can improve their productivity by getting rid of some of the boilerplate or automate some refactoring and such.

AI will definitely cheapen the art of doing things the old way, but that’s the reality of it, no matter how much the artists dislike it. Some will probably adapt and employ new workflows, others stick to tradition.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#552

Post by anhner »

planb wrote: post #498
rdtsc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones, Sure, assuming the artist has the proper license and franchise rights to make and distribute copies. You can go buy a picture of Indy today that may not be printed by Walt Disney Studios but by some other outfit or artists. Or, you mean if the artist doesn't have a license to produce and distribute Indiana Jones images? Well they'll be in t…

> Or, you mean if the artist doesn't have a license to produce and distribute Indiana Jones images? Well they'll be in trouble legally. They are making "copies" of things they don't own and profiting from it. Ok, my sister can draw, and she gifts me an image of my favorite Marvel hero she painted to hang on my wall. Should that be illegal?

straight to jail /s

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#553

Post by [deleted] »

planb wrote: post #510
noduerme wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, precisely. What then is the AI company's justification for charging money to paint a picture of Harrison Ford to its users? The justification so far seems to have been loosely based on the idea that derivative artworks are protected as free expression. That argument loses currency if these are not considered derivative but more like highly compressed images in a novel, obfuscated compression format. Layers and…

> Well, precisely. What then is the AI company's justification for charging money to paint a picture of Harrison Ford to its users? Formulated this way, I see your point. I see the LLM as a tool, just like photoshop. From a legal standpoint, I even think you're right. But from a moral standpoint, my feeling is that it should even be okay for an artist to sell painted pictures of Harrison Ford. But not to sell the sam…

[deleted]

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#554

Post by jl6 »

benwad wrote: post #538
jl6 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I’m sure you’re right for individual authors who are driven by a creative spark, but for, say, movies made by large studios, the length of copyright is directly tied to the value of the movie as an asset. If that asset generates revenue for 120 years, then it’s slig…

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of Peter Jackson's LOTR movies released in 2001, made $887 million in its original theatrical run (on a $93 million budget). It would absolutely still have been made if copyright was only 20 years. And now it would be in the public domain!

The success that we can now measure through hindsight wasn’t assured at the time of greenlighting the film. They took a huge gamble:

https://variety.com/2021/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-peter-j...

It would have been an even bigger gamble if they weren’t able to bank on any long term revenue (I’m certain Netflix continues to pay for the rights to stream the trilogy after 2021).

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#555

Post by kubanczyk »

Davidzheng wrote: post #398
flessner wrote: post #384

Everyone is talking about theft - I get it, but there's a more subtler point being made here. Current generation of AI models can't think of anything truly new. Everything is simply a blend of prior work. I am not saying that this doesn't have economic value, but it means these AI models are closer to lossy compression algorithms than they are to AGI. The following quote by Sam Altman from about 5 years ago is intere…

[flagged]

Oliver Cromwell, a letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 3 August 1650

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#556

Post by barrkel »

jl6 wrote: post #508
djoldman wrote: post #332

I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws. That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for t…

> There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I’m sure you’re right for individual authors who are driven by a creative spark, but for, say, movies made by large studios, the length of copyright is directly tied to the value of the movie as an asset. If that asset generates revenue for 120 years, then it’s slig…

If movies had a payoff curve like rents, this would be more true, but they're cultural artifacts that decay in relevance precipitously after release, and more permanently after a few decades, where they become "dated", outside a few classics.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#557

Post by barrkel »

jl6 wrote: post #554
benwad wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of Peter Jackson's LOTR movies released in 2001, made $887 million in its original theatrical run (on a $93 million budget). It would absolutely still have been made if copyright was only 20 years. And now it would be in the public domain!

The success that we can now measure through hindsight wasn’t assured at the time of greenlighting the film. They took a huge gamble: https://variety.com/2021/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-peter-j... It would have been an even bigger gamble if they weren’t able to bank on any long term revenue (I’m certain Netflix continues to pay for the rights to stream the trilogy after 2021).

This argument works against you. The probability of a long tail of revenue is even less likely than a major hit, so it necessarily has less weight in any decision to swing for the fences.

Producers don't invest in movies for hypothetical revenues in 20 years time. If it doesn't pay off soon after release, it's written off as a loss. Revenues in 100 years time are completely irrelevant.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#558

Post by stavros »

jl6 wrote: post #508
djoldman wrote: post #332

I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws. That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for t…

> There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I’m sure you’re right for individual authors who are driven by a creative spark, but for, say, movies made by large studios, the length of copyright is directly tied to the value of the movie as an asset. If that asset generates revenue for 120 years, then it’s slig…

OK? So we wouldn't have $100m movies, the vast majority of which are forgotten about in a few months. I don't think a $100m movie is ten times better than a $10m one, so I think I'd be fine with movies with much smaller budgets, if they meant that LotR (the books) are now in the public domain for everyone to enjoy.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#559

Post by mytailorisrich »

KronisLV wrote: post #551

I think the cat is out of the bag when it comes to generative AI, the same way how various LLMs for programming have been trained even on codebases that they had no business using, yet nobody hasn’t and won’t stop them. It’s the same as what’s going to happen with deepfakes and such, as the technology inevitably gets better. > Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese animation company, Studio Ghibli, produces beautiful and famously…

> It makes me wonder though - whether it’s more valuable to spend a year on a scene that most people won’t pay that much attention to

In this case, yes it is.

People do pay attention to the result overall. Studio Ghibli has got famous because people notice what they produce.

Now people might not notice every single detail but I believe that it is this overall mindset and culture that enables the whole unique final product.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#560

Post by legulere »

jl6 wrote: post #508
djoldman wrote: post #332

I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws. That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for t…

> There are approximately zero people who decide they'll create something if they're protected for 95 years after their death but won't if it's 94 years. I’m sure you’re right for individual authors who are driven by a creative spark, but for, say, movies made by large studios, the length of copyright is directly tied to the value of the movie as an asset. If that asset generates revenue for 120 years, then it’s slig…

This line of reasoning doesn't make sense for retroactive lengthening of copyright though, as the author is not gaining anything from that anymore.
Post reply on HN