Things are about to get worse for generative AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#581

Post by Zpalmtree » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

MeImCounting wrote: post #557

asylteltine wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true and I see it with cops and free speech as well. Everyone loves to hate cops… until they need them. Everyone wants to defund the police… until they are a victim of crime. Everyone wants to enforce certain speech patterns… until it affects them

This isnt a great take at all. Copyright is certainly an important part of our society upon which like the parent said, Open Source Software and other incredibly valuable things lie. Cops on the other hand solely exist for the reason of locking people in cages. Why you ever feel like you need to have someone else locked in a cage is beyond me. When I have been the victim of a crime the cops have not shown and when th…

> Why you ever feel like you need to have someone else locked in a cage is beyond me

Uh, maybe if they murder people?

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#582

Post by Too » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:39 PM UTC

TheRoque wrote: post #405

koliber wrote: post #286

The responsibility for ensuring that copyrights were not violated fall on the person publishing the work. Whether they drew something themselves, hired an apprentice artists with no legal training to draw something, took a photograph of something, or used AI to create an image should not matter. Why does anyone assume that ChatGPT or other tools would NOT produce previously-copyrighted content? I can see a naive assu…

So it makes generative AI essentially unusable, because you don't know if the output is plagiarism or not, so you'd just doubt it always and never use it.

It’s usable for internal content, maybe even a small public blog where you sprinkle in some generated pictures instead of stock photos. Nobody will care if your school project contains a Mario holding a Coca Cola.

It’s once you start monetizing and publishing on bigger scale, without appropriating, it gets interesting.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#583

Post by spondylosaurus » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

bnralt wrote: post #124

keiferski wrote: post #39

These don't seem all that difficult to fix to me. Most of the examples are not really generic, but are shorthand descriptions of well-known entities. "Video game plumber" is practically synonymous with "Mario" and anyone that has the slightest familiarity with the character knows this. Likewise, how difficult is it to just use descriptive tools to describe Mario-like images [1] and then remove these results from anyo…

It seems like a somewhat dystopian thing to fix. Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters (even if it was just a fan drawing you did). This reminds me of the early days of the internet where people wanted to remove free fanfiction for violations of copyright laws. Trying to a…

> Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters

Photoshop does this already, but only if it detects that you're trying to print/create counterfeit money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#584

Post by pardoned_turkey » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

ctoth wrote: post #470

Everybody just buying into the corporate narrative that anyone can actually own these sorts of things. Who truly owns the tales of Snow White and Cinderella? These stories didn't originate with Disney; they are part of a rich tapestry of folklore passed down through generations. Disney's success was partly built on adapting these existing narratives, which were once shared and reshaped by communities over centuries.…

Oh come on. Copyright is a fairly ancient concept that benefits normal people as much as it benefits big corporations. Most book authors, songwriters, and so on aren't fat cats, and they would be harmed if we had zero protections for the duplication of their work. They'd need to depend on state sponsorship or charitable private patronage, both of which are problematic for obvious reasons and limit the range of artistic expression more than the market does.

Instead, we came up with a system where you can actually derive fairly steady revenue by creating new works and sharing them with the world. And critically, I think you misinterpret it as calling dibs on shared culture or on stories. Copyright is usually interpreted fairly narrowly, and doesn't prevent you from creating inspired works, or retelling the same story in your own words.

Generative AI is a problem largely because it destroys these revenue streams for millions of people. Yeah, it will be litigated by wealthy corporations with top-notch lawyers, for self-interested reasons. But if we end up with a framework that maintains financial incentives to artistic expression, it's probably a good thing.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#585

Post by shkkmo » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

It seems like this article makes a basic copyright mistake. I don't see any evidence that these are " reproductions" of source material like since no source image is linked to compare.

Instead, these are derivative works. We already have a flourishing culter of derivitave works, such as fan art that exist in various shades of legal greyness.

Some derivative works are fair use, some are not.

The position of the Author here seems to be that generative AI should not be capable of creating any derivitave works, or should only be able to do so it it can accurately identify which are fair use and which aren't (which seems like an impossibly tall bar.) This stance seem like a giant attack on fair use that significantly expands the power of copyright.

To me, the takeaway from this is different. This makes clear that there is currently a risk when using AI generated art that you could end up unintentionally creating and publishing a derivative work unintentionally and thus without evaluating if that work constitues fair use.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#586

Post by greenthrow » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:44 PM UTC

ctoth wrote: post #470

Everybody just buying into the corporate narrative that anyone can actually own these sorts of things. Who truly owns the tales of Snow White and Cinderella? These stories didn't originate with Disney; they are part of a rich tapestry of folklore passed down through generations. Disney's success was partly built on adapting these existing narratives, which were once shared and reshaped by communities over centuries.…

This reply is so incredibly out of touch with reality. Copyright law is very clear. If anything the "corporate narrative" here is that "AI" is somehow something new and different and these laws don't apply. Which is nonsense.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#587

Post by schneems » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

tsumnia wrote: post #408

schneems wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounding up a transaction and taking the leftovers wouldn’t be a crime worthy of the FBI for one transaction but it would be for a million or a billion. Scale matters and impact matters. If you’re making an ethical argument “it’s okay because it’s already happening to a lesser degree somewhere else” isn’t the flex you think it is. If you’re talking ethics, talk about impact. Who does it help the most who does it hurt…

> are you teaching the class or taking it? I teach it, my background is located in my profile and my research focuses on CS education. Scale and impact do matter, I wholeheartedly agree. However, I stand by my point that genAI is mirroring how humans learn - repetition of previously observed actions. As part of my dissertation, I argued that humans operate using 'templates', or previously established frameworks / sys…

I took an AI in ethics course from a state backed school (Georgia Tech) and the answer to questions that weren’t “that’s illegal based on protected status” were “well, it depends.” Which, sure, that’s true, but maybe not helpful.

In my view it encouraged nihilism and apathy instead of developing ethical frameworks. From that lens, I feel teaching a course might be more limiting in the range of heuristics you’re willing to accept or endorse. Though happy to accept your personal experience.

A paper that comes to mind often from HCI is “do artifacts have politics” which looks at the impacts of technologies divorced from creator intent. I feel that’s similar here.

You’re not wrong that about the mechanism that it’s created. But I would argue that’s the least important part, ethically anyway.

Saying “strip mining with heavy industrial machines mimics laborers using shovels” is true to a degree, but but perhaps not that important piece of information.

I’m not saying you’re making that argument. I guess im just not totally sure the outcome you were looking for in sharing your original comment. I hear your comparison and agree with it and that it is interesting to view in that lense. I wasn’t sure if there was a deeper intent in sharing it.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#588

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:46 PM UTC

drubio wrote: post #328

WhiteNoiz3 wrote: post #281

As I understood it, the legal precedent for generative AI is the same one that allows google to scrape websites in order to index them for search for the common good. Google also can display cached versions of websites which is the original content of those sites. No one is going to say that google is copyright infringement just because it is showing content from other websites verbatim. So I think this is a weak arg…

> * I don't think generative AI is sustainable in the long term if it ends up killing all the websites/artists that created the original material. * This is the elephant in the room. Every tech wave has had its way of cajoling creators into investing time & money to make original material, then the rules changed. Google, promised reach and new markets for content, it worked. Then they introduced snippets, ads and who…

> Google, promised reach and new markets for content, it worked. Then they introduced snippets, ads and whole lot of other things to keep visitors on their freeway, while avoiding sending visitors to the original site.

Afterward came bots that saturated search results with useless SEO barf that pushed content (original and duplicated) so far down that we're coming back to where we started. Content is increasingly unfindable on the web.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#589

Post by lovecg » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:47 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #561

ctoth wrote: post #470

Everybody just buying into the corporate narrative that anyone can actually own these sorts of things. Who truly owns the tales of Snow White and Cinderella? These stories didn't originate with Disney; they are part of a rich tapestry of folklore passed down through generations. Disney's success was partly built on adapting these existing narratives, which were once shared and reshaped by communities over centuries.…

"Who truly owns the tales of Snow White and Cinderella?" If you want to make your point, you need to choose something that isn't already public domain. Disney already only owns their own interpretations, and, arguably, whatever penumbric emanation they can convince a court is stealing from them, but it still certainly isn't the entire space of Snow White and Cinderella stories. There is some fairly recent stuff being…

I think the world would be completely fine without a copyrighted C3PO or Robocop. George Lucas didn’t have billions of merchandising revenue in mind when working on his wild and thought unlikely to be successful science fiction movie in the 70s. Robocop was also a labor of love. We don’t really need Nth Star Wars sequel powered by those extra profits. The art form could be healthier overall.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#590

Post by josh-sematic » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 7:48 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #260

josh-sematic wrote: post #223

Gary Marcus is growing his subscriber base using images of copyrighted IP (C3PO, Mario, etc.). Fair use? Then why is the tool he used to produce those materials not also fair use of the IP? My take is that either we say the models are like people (do we penalize people for learning from IP and letting that influence what they subsequently produce?) or we say they are like tools (do we penalize Adobe because Photoshop…

Because the fair use clause he's using is about giving commentary. The reason the tool is problematic is because derivative works are also copyrighted. LLMs aren't adding value to their output or using creative functionality. That are smashing multiple works together to produce a response. And, many of them are selling the output which is doubly problematic. Consider this, if I sell a book about gandolf and Dumbledor…

But does the word processor you used to write your Dumbledore/Gandalf fanfic hold liability for being sued because it enabled your misuse? Then neither should Dall-E hold liability because it enabled you to produce an illustration for that book. It is you—the person who tries to sell your derivative work, who holds liability, and not the tools you used to produce it.