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Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu

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Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#621

Post by vmirnv »

gfodor wrote: post #175

Huge market for snake oil here. There is no way that such tools will ever win, given the requirements the art remain viewable to human perception, so even if you made something that worked (which this sounds like it doesn’t) from first principles it will be worked around immediately. The only real way for artists or anyone really to try to hold back models from training on human outputs is through the law, ie, levera…

I'm thinking — is it possible to create something on a global level similar to what they did in Snapchat: some sort of image flickering that would be difficult to parse, but still acceptable for humans?

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#622

Post by Ukv »

enord wrote: post #616
Ukv wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and how that relates to how people work or “learn” is besides the point It is important (for the training and generation stages) to distinguish between whether the model copies the original works or merely infers information from them - as copyright does not protect against the latter. > The first part, collation of source material for training is emphatically not unexplored legal or moral territory. Similar to as…

Listen, most website and book-authors want to be indexed by google. It brings potential audience their way, so most don’t make use of their _right_ to be de-listed. For these models, there is no plausible benefit to the original creators, and so one has to argue they have _no_ such right to be “de-listed” in order to get any training data currently under copyright.

> It brings potential audience their way, so most don’t make use of their _right_ to be de-listed.

The Authors Guild lawsuit against Google Books ended in a 2015 ruling that Google Books is fair use and as such they don't have a right to be de-listed. It's not the case that they have a right to be de-listed but choose not to make use of it.

The same would apply if collation of data for machine learning datasets is found to be fair use.

> one has to argue they have _no_ such right to be “de-listed” in order to get any training data currently under copyright.

Datasets I'm aware of already have respected machine-readable opt-outs, so if that were to be legally enforced (as it is by the EU's DSM Directive for commercial data mining) I don't think it'd be the end of the world.

There's a lot of power in a default; the set of "everything minus opted-out content" will be significantly bigger than "nothing plus opted-in content" even with the same opinions.

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#623

Post by CatWChainsaw »

joseph8th wrote: post #602
KingOfCoders wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Not being snarky, but if you believe that, then you clearly are not an artist.

his handle is KingOfCoders - self-aggrandizing, insufferable, impotent in its attempts to be meta.

He thinks he's an artist because he now has the ability to curate a dataset based off of one artist's work and prompt more art generated in that style. He did it, so clearly he is an artist now.

(salty salty~)

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#624

Post by honkycat »

gfodor wrote: post #175

Huge market for snake oil here. There is no way that such tools will ever win, given the requirements the art remain viewable to human perception, so even if you made something that worked (which this sounds like it doesn’t) from first principles it will be worked around immediately. The only real way for artists or anyone really to try to hold back models from training on human outputs is through the law, ie, levera…

"A law, ie, leveraging state backed violence to deter the things they don’t want."

We all know what a law is you don't need to clarify. It makes your prose less readable.

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#625

Post by usrbinbash »

AlexandrB wrote: post #599
usrbinbash wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The similarities are merely surface level. Then please, feel free to explain the deep differences. > That is precisely why we should not be making this comparison. Wrong. It's precisely why the claim "there is a big difference" doesn't have a leg to stand on. If you claim "this is different", I ask "how?" and the answer simply repeats the claim, I can apply Hitchens Razor[1] and dismiss the claim. [1]: https://en.w…

A person sitting in an art school/museum for a few hours ingests way more than just the art in question. The entire context is brought in too, including the artists own physical/emotional state. Arguably, the art is a miniscule component of all sensory inputs. Generative AI ingests a perfectly cropped image of just the art from a single angle with little context beyond labelling metadata. It's the difference between…

And how is any of that a compelling argument regarding the assumption of a fundamental difference in the MO of learning?

Simply stating "it has more inputs" doesn't describe the human learning model, so nothing in this establishes a baseline for comparison.

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#626

Post by jazzyjackson »

xpe wrote: post #507
jazzyjackson wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying "lie" suggests willful deception. Consider instead the term "legal fiction", it's not so derogatory.

Legal fiction is a technical term used by legal scholars. To be clear, any legal system is built from legal constructs; I'm not talking about these. A legal fiction has a markedly different meaning than lie as used in the comment two levels above (which seems to me more like a rant than a clear or convincing argument) Are you familiar with specific expert writings about claimed legal fictions in U.S. copyright law?

thanks for the correction

i listened to one podcast on corporate personhood and intuited that intellectual property was similar but i see what you mean

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#627

Post by usrbinbash »

jwells89 wrote: post #162
bluejekyll wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with this line of argument is that it’s anthropomorphizing machines. It’s fine to compare how humans do a task with how a machine does a task, but in the end they are very different from each other, organic vs hardware and software logic. First, you need to prove that generative AI works fundamentally the same way as humans at the task of learning. Next you have to prove that it recalls information in the sa…

The way these ML models and humans operate are indeed quite different. Humans work by abstracting concepts in what they see, even when looking at the work of others. Even individuals with photographic memories mentally abstract things like lighting, body kinetics, musculature, color theory, etc and produce new work based on those abstractions rather than directly copying original work (unless the artist is intentiona…

> The way these ML models and humans operate are indeed quite different.

Given that there is no comprehensive understanding of how human learning works, let alone how humans operate on and integrate on what they learned in a wider context...how do you know?

> Humans work by abstracting concepts in what they see

Newsflash: AI models do the same thing. That's the basis of generalization.

> ML models are closer to highly advanced collage makers that take known images and blend them together

Wrong. That's not even remotely how U-Net based diffusion models work. If you disagree, then please do show me where exactly the source images from where the "collage maker" takes the parts to "blend" together are stored. I think you'll find that image datasets on the scale of LAION will not quite fit into checkpoint files of about 2GB in size (pruned SD1.5 checkpoint in safetensors format).

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#628

Post by thomastjeffery »

xpe wrote: post #591
thomastjeffery wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best attempt at thought monopoly I can think of is religion. Even that is a general failure: no single religious narrative has ever stood constant. They have all evolved through the participation of their adherents. There is no one true Christianity: there are hundreds . I most certainly do mean to call out copyright as willful, but it's not a deception, at least not a successful one: everyone knows it is false.…

> I most certainly do mean to call out copyright as willful, but it's not a deception, at least not a successful one: everyone knows it is false. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, this is not even wrong. What about copyright law is empirically false? Such a question is non-sensical. Your comment redefines the word "false" in a way that muddles understanding. You aren't alone -- some philosophers do this -- but it tend…

The very concept that a thing cannot be copied. That is the obvious falsehood that we are compelled to pretend is true.

I don't see how any of that is muddled. I'm being as direct as I can with my words here. I'm talking about the very plain fact that art can be copied freely.

For example, DRM software gives you encrypted content and the decryption key. Why bother? Because the end user is expected to pretend they are only able to use that decryption key once. This is patently false, but any user who decides not to play along is immediately labeled a "pirate". What vessel have they commandeered? The metaphorical right to copy. What will be enshrined in law next, the rights to hear and to see?

Copyright law is poorly designed. It does have unintended consequences. It is immoral and pointless. To back these claims, all I must to do is show the absurdity that copyright is on the face of it.

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#629

Post by enord »

Ukv wrote: post #622
enord wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, most website and book-authors want to be indexed by google. It brings potential audience their way, so most don’t make use of their _right_ to be de-listed. For these models, there is no plausible benefit to the original creators, and so one has to argue they have _no_ such right to be “de-listed” in order to get any training data currently under copyright.

> It brings potential audience their way, so most don’t make use of their _right_ to be de-listed. The Authors Guild lawsuit against Google Books ended in a 2015 ruling that Google Books is fair use and as such they don't have a right to be de-listed. It's not the case that they have a right to be de-listed but choose not to make use of it. The same would apply if collation of data for machine learning datasets is fo…

With the caveat that I was exactly wrong about the books de-listing, I feel you are making my point for me and retreating to a more pragmatic position about defaults.

The (quite entertaining) saga of Nightshade tells a story about what is going to be content creators “default position” going forward and everyone else will follow. You would be a fool not to, the AI companies are trying to end run you, using your own content, and make a profit without compensating you and leave you with no recourse.

Re: Nightshade: An offensive tool for artists against AI art generators

#630

Post by hkt »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #597
hkt wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a great shame that we have come to a no-win situation for artists when VCs are virtually unable to lose.

I mean that's more or less status quo isn't it? Big business does what it wants, common people can get fucked if they don't like it. Same as it ever was.

That's exactly right. It is just the variety of new ways in which common people get fucked that is dispiriting, with seemingly nothing capable of moving in the opposite direction.
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