Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#61

Post by falcolas » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

sgc wrote: post #51

dvngnt_ wrote: post #23

looks like the crux is that supposedly ai-generated images don't have copyright protections > When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. > As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed in a registration application. but i think that's only if it's entirely prompt driven. you could argue that m…

According to my communications with the US copyright office, you never get a global copyright by editing. At best you get a copyright on your changes - and that only if they are copywritable on their own. Minor changes to wording or tweaking an image would generally not pass that threshold. It is a case by case judgment as to the status of any individual change.

This is backed up by how they have granted copyright to an AI generated and human edited book. The human only gets to get copyright on the parts they "significantly altered".

There was a news report on it awhile back that was interesting to read.

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#62

Post by falcolas » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

horsawlarway wrote: post #9

croes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case then they are sampling previous artists and need to pay them. You can't have your cake and eat it.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't necessarily agree either. I think the most compelling reference work right now is probably a collage. > a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing. And the law there is actually pretty nuanced and tangled: A collage, while not a compilation, may be a collective or a derivative work. A collectiv…

It's about who created the work (book, painting, code, etc). If it's a human, then it's copyrightable. If it's an AI, then it's not. That's the stance the copyright office has been taking, going so far as to grant partial copyrights if a human substantially changes portions of an AI generated work.

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#63

Post by Manuel_D » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #59

Manuel_D wrote: post #37

The inpainting tool in Photoshop is AI. If you use the inpainting tool, congratulations you're an AI artist. Should copyrighted of any images produced with the inpainting tool be ignored?

Yes. Or rather, it should get the same copyright consideration as all the artwork that went into building the models. So still yes.

But the images that went into building the models are copyrightable. Adobe has a license to use them for AI training, but the authors still have copyrighht.

So as per your logic the answer would actually be "no, these images aren't exempt from copyright."

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#64

Post by falcolas » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #34

croes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case then they are sampling previous artists and need to pay them. You can't have your cake and eat it.

> If that's the case then they are sampling previous artists and need to pay them. Adobe's models are 100% trained on works they own or license the copyright to. Synthetic datasets are being built in Unreal Engine and with automated photo turn tables. This argument is going to lose merit soon.

> This argument is going to lose merit soon.

When midjourney and all other models built upon copyrighted work they had no license to disappears (and any models which were in turn trained on the output of Midjourney et.al.), perhaps.

> Adobe's models are 100% trained on works they own or license the copyright to.

I have to ask, was the license broadly interpreted to include AI training, or was that part of the original license? Because the former is what Google is doing right now with their video AI and scraping youtube.

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#65

Post by falcolas » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #63

falcolas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Or rather, it should get the same copyright consideration as all the artwork that went into building the models. So still yes.

But the images that went into building the models are copyrightable. Adobe has a license to use them for AI training, but the authors still have copyrighht. So as per your logic the answer would actually be "no, these images aren't exempt from copyright."

Nothing from the OP or the original AI Artist was about using Adobe.

That said, were the images used by Adobe actually licensed for AI training, or was an existing overly broad license aimed at "showing this in an online gallery" interpreted by lawyers to include AI training? Because that latter option is being done by a lot of corporations (including Google) to make "ethical" AI models.

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#66

Post by orwin » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #63

falcolas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Or rather, it should get the same copyright consideration as all the artwork that went into building the models. So still yes.

But the images that went into building the models are copyrightable. Adobe has a license to use them for AI training, but the authors still have copyrighht. So as per your logic the answer would actually be "no, these images aren't exempt from copyright."

If any if the training set is public domain or creative commons, I'd argue that this make the image at best an integration work, not derivative nor fair use, and as bits from the images are indistinguishable from each other, you shouldn't be able to license it.

Like code generated from models trained on AGPL/GPLv3 licensed code should also be AGPL/GPLv3.

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#67

Post by fuzzfactor » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

EnergyAmy wrote: post #39

Spivak wrote: post #16

Y'all really want to be mad at this but this is one of those tragic cases where the worst person is correct. * AI companies claim that training should not be covered by copyright. This says nothing at all about the model outputs which can still violate copyright. * Curation makes something a copyrightable work. This applies to photographers and machine generated art. The copyright office's ruling doesn't change that…

I don't think copyright applies to the image itself. The work of curation can be copyrighted, but here it's trivial, just selecting one image. If he published a book of AI-generated artwork, the curation of images could be copyrighted as a whole, but each individual image would not be copyrighted.

What happens if he doesn't publish the book during his lifetime, and later his estate decides to release it but no matter how hard people try, nobody can figure out whether or not any AI was employed?

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#68

Post by orwin » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #16

Y'all really want to be mad at this but this is one of those tragic cases where the worst person is correct. * AI companies claim that training should not be covered by copyright. This says nothing at all about the model outputs which can still violate copyright. * Curation makes something a copyrightable work. This applies to photographers and machine generated art. The copyright office's ruling doesn't change that…

No, curation of a public domain painting does not make your scan of the painting copyrighted, even is someone somehow take your scan in his own book. I think it's called integration works, and basically the copyright remain with who owned them in the first place (cc/public domain images makes genAI a very fun case for IP lawyers. I think the 'nah, not human=not IP' is a good punt).

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#69

Post by fuzzfactor » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #58

spondylosaurus wrote: post #14

This may not be the reason he's "losing" money here, but I was struck by how much less... impressive that piece is to me now compared to when I first saw it. (Visually impressive; I've always known it was from Midjourney.) When the news first broke about it winning an award, I was like "well damn, I can see why—it's visually striking!" But the longer I look at it, and the more LLM-generated images I see in general, t…

AI-generated images are interesting in that, in general, the more you look at them, and in particular the more you look at the detail, the worse they look. This is, arguably, one simple way to distinguish them from actual art.

>the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall

Kind of like a Rembrandt or something.

I guess there's a reason it's always been said "there's no accounting for taste" :)

Re: Famous AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions from People Stealing His Work

#70

Post by fuzzfactor » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #53

Manuel_D wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photoshop is an AI tool. For several years now, inpainting and other Photoshop tools have been powered by AI.

Yep agreed. My understanding is that Adobe add some sort of metadata if you use those AI powered tools, and Facebook were displaying AI generated image if you uploaded an image with that metadata present. I guess I'm just curious whether the output of those tools can be copyrighted. Is it a boolean like Facebook treated it, where as soon as you use any of these tools it can't be copyrighted, or is it more complicated…

From a more abstract viewpoint, what's the difference between any computer-aided editing at all versus none whatsoever?

For instance some people have always had more advanced editing programs than others, or different performance levels of their hardware to run the software which makes/allows the final product to be more effortless than the mainstream by far. Effectively with significantly different output from the same input, all unique no matter how you try to make all your PC's run the same, kind of like a video game where you get better resolution or framerate when you have more advanced hardware and/or software. Sometimes just a little bit better which could be considered incremental. Sometimes much more than that which can astound as a major leap.

When somebody comes along with a much more powerful hardware or software arrangement to output the same class of data, is it supposed to kick them out just because it's a major milestone that can not be ignored?

You could start with something like a completely original watercolor, and very well be using the exact same PC but naturally get two distinct printouts from the same digital file simply from using two different printers. With more significant differences than if one would have been touched by AI and the other one not.

Regardless of copyright, the person who submits the winning image to an image contest should really be the one to take home the prize.