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Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

kapwing.com

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Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#61
post #9
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to protect a particular style is just unworkable for obvious reasons. The only solution I can think of is requiring AI companies to license all of the content they have in their training set so artists get paid for the training rather than trying to work out which source material links to which outputs which is impossible.

When I buy a book, I don't buy a license to read it, I don't sign an EULA that says I won't scan it, digitize it, or write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains. Do you want buy a license to read a book, because this is how you get there.

Copyright quite literally protects the act of copying or reproducing a work protected by copyright. And you are technically entering into something akin to an end user licensing agreement when you buy a book, the only difference being that the EULA is incorporated into law on an international basis through reciprocal copyright treaties.

So if scan a book you are making a copy. In some copyright jurisdictions this is allowed for individuals under a private copying exception - a copyright opt out, if you like - but the important thing is private use. In some jurisdictions there is also a fair use exception, which allows you to exploit the rights protected by copyright under certain circumstances, but fair use is quite specific and one big issue with fair use is that the rights you are exploiting cannot result in something that competes with the original work.

Other acts restricted by copyright include distribution, adaptation, performance, communication and rental.

So if you copy a book, digitize it, and write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains you may, in some jurisdictions but not all, be allowed to do this.

If you’re doing it locally on your own machine you are simply copying it. If you do it in the cloud you are copying it and communicating the copy. If you copy it, analyze it and train an AI model on it that could be considered fair use in certain jurisdictions. Whether the outputs are adaptations of the training data is a matter of debate in the copyright community.

But importantly if you commercialise that model and the resulting outputs compete with the copyright protected material you used to train, your fair use argument may fail.

So when you buy a book you are actually party to what is effectively a licence granted by the copyright holder, albeit it to the publisher. But as the end user of the book you are still restricted in what you can do with that copyright protected work, through a universal end user licence encoded in law.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#62
post #49
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I buy a book, I don't buy a license to read it, I don't sign an EULA that says I won't scan it, digitize it, or write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains. Do you want buy a license to read a book, because this is how you get there.

The problem isn’t the reading. The problem is the output based on somebody’s other work. There is a reason why we call it styles, because it’s a recognizable pattern someone came up with maybe after decades of work.

The "funny" thing is that we absolutely allow people to copy style... but somehow software isn't allowed to do that?

You don't even need to have a legally acquired source material to produce work in a certain style.

The new reality allows for original creators to actually track the chain, so we're in this situation.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#63
> One engineer who left Kapwing in fall of 2025 said that the short-lived Tess investment contributed to burnout.

Don’t take this personally.

Even if you told this person to work constantly and they believed in you and the business, it’s not totally your fault that they burned out. I say this as someone that has burned out twice, is currently burned out, and blames those that I currently and formerly worked for. I know the problem is as much me as them. Yes, employers have a responsibility to their employees not to burn them out. But, if they do, even if the employer is in a power position where the employee felt they had no other choice, and I felt that both times, the employee can choose not to work that much or care that much for almost whatever that means- if you’re literally holding a gun it’s different of course.

I know of a developer that committed suicide and the toll that took on the employer. But the employer can’t take on all of that themselves.

I’m sorry that your business failed, but I hope that something good comes out of this.

Also- I’m not saying that any part of your responsibility in burning out this person was ok. Just that not all of it is your fault.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#65
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company is profiting off of other people's work! That's not right. 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 cap…

> Do we really want the entire world to be endlessly full of cookie-licking rent seekers who demand profit every time anyone does anything? No, far better that we have four rent-seekers who gobble up everything that anyone is naive enough to share with the world, then turn around to demand profit in order to keep up with the new pace of the world that they’ve created.

But original artists being rent-seekers is OK, right?

PS: I categorically disagree that AI developers are rent-seekers, unless they require rent for the products their models generate

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#66
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, do you believe artists deserve to be compensated when their art is used to generate stuff in their style? I'm staunchly against expansion of IP laws. But I personally think that when a corporate machine gobbles up an artist's works so that people like me who can't draw can generate silly memes for a few bucks a month, the artist should be compensated. The company is profiting off of other peopl…

> The company is profiting off of other people's work! That's not right. 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 cap…

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?

The starving artists I know would be extremely happy to get even one cookie to lick. I know an artist prodogy that paints on canvas and has work in a sizable gallery, at least one institution patron, and is constantly hosting paid workshop events. He architected and built his own custom 40ft ceiling pine art house covered in beautful stained wood and arches, with large metal cuttings and engravings of wild horses on the railings. This artistic prodigy is still starving and works as a handyman/construction worker part-time. He is strongly opposed to AI, by the way.

Most artists are "starving artists"; there are extremely few artists that can support themselves by their creations alone. Many artists make no money at all, and many artists seem to work or create alone as individuals, meaning that they almost always lack the funds or community resources to protect their creative work.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#67

I thought this was a great write up on the current state for artists and AI engines. I'm honestly surprised by this nugget: > A free Tess subscription to use their own model for brainstorming and scaling repetitive work (roughly 1 in 4 artists took advantage of this) So based on the math I'm seeing... the 21 artists in the system, only 5 ("1 in 4") optioned to use the tool for their own productivity? That seems reall…

Only 21 artists??

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#68
post #6

> Surveys consistently showed that consumers believed artists deserved payment when AI generated content in their style. It's interesting that "consumers" are generally for the expansion of IP laws. At at the moment, I'm fairly certain that "style" is not something protected by Copyright. I personally do not want this, and I'm sure there are likely many like me. Poorly thought out IP laws lead to chilling-effects, DR…

It's interesting you interpret the consumer's response as a desire for the expansion of IP laws. As an artist whose work exists in many of these training sets, I'm of a different opinion: IP laws can stay the same, but they should have purchased a license to use my art before including it in their training data. Since the didn't, they should go to jail. The same way I would have gone to jail if I built Sora in my bas…

As an artist your license didn't ban learning from your work. Unless your content was acquired without a license at all - you absolutely gave them permission to use it in training sets.

That is the gap in the legal landscape.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#69
post #6

> Surveys consistently showed that consumers believed artists deserved payment when AI generated content in their style. It's interesting that "consumers" are generally for the expansion of IP laws. At at the moment, I'm fairly certain that "style" is not something protected by Copyright. I personally do not want this, and I'm sure there are likely many like me. Poorly thought out IP laws lead to chilling-effects, DR…

> It's interesting that "consumers" are generally for the expansion of IP laws.

It's not. This total depends on how you ask it.

Q: Do you think artists deserved payment?

A: YES.

Q: Will you pay for art?

A: MAYBE.

Q: Do you think people should go to jail not paying for art

A: NO.

Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

#70
post #6

> Surveys consistently showed that consumers believed artists deserved payment when AI generated content in their style. It's interesting that "consumers" are generally for the expansion of IP laws. At at the moment, I'm fairly certain that "style" is not something protected by Copyright. I personally do not want this, and I'm sure there are likely many like me. Poorly thought out IP laws lead to chilling-effects, DR…

> It's interesting that "consumers" are generally for the expansion of IP laws.

Don't forget how polling works. Change the wording of the question and you get a different answer.

Try asking them if they think Comcast or Sony should be able to sue individuals for posting memes that don't even contain any copyrighted material.

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