An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip • Hacker News Board

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

#741

Post by simonh » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

wkirby wrote: post #675

I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in this thread that this represents a "hideous theft machine", but I think even if we discard that, this is still bad. It's very clear that generative has abandoned the idea of creative; image production that just replicates the training data only serves to further flatten our idea of what the world should look like.

Right, the focus is on IP theft, and that’s part of it, but let’s set that aside.

How useful is an image generator that, when asked to generate an image of an archaeologist in a hat, gives you Harrison Ford every time?

Clearly that’s not what we want from tools like this, even just as tools.

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

#742

Post by sounds » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

What I see happening soon is a deeper transition from playful whimsy to real applications with contractual obligations.

Right now it's an unencumbered exploration with only a few requirements. The general public isn't too upset even if it blatantly feeds on copyrighted data [1] or attacks wikipedia with its AI crawlers [2].

The end state once legislation has had a chance to catch is breath looks more like Apple being forced to implement USB type C.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/04/ai-bo...

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

#743

Post by computerphage » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

raytopia wrote: post #704

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…

Trademark isn't copyright, those are two different things. Trademarks can be renewed roughly every 10 years [1] until the end of time and are about protecting a brand. Now copyright law lasts for "author plus 70 years. For anonymous works, pseudonymous works, or works made for hire, the copyright term is 95 years from the year of first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first." [2] Is copyright t…

Trademark isn't the same as Registered Trademark either, while we're at it

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

#744

Post by 52-6F-62 » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #440

duskwuff wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's worth considering that this issue isn't unique to image generation, either.

Santa didn't always wear red.

Granted, but not the best example, red and green are the emblematic colours elves wore in northern european cultures. Santa is somewhat syncretic with Robert Goodfellow or Robin Redbreast, Puck, Puca, etc etc. it wasn’t really a cola invention.

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

#745

Post by yieldcrv » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

this reminds me of the time I tried to use a prepaid lawyer to research some copyright issues

they went down the rabbit hole on trademark laws, which are not only not copyright related, they are an entirely different federal agency at the Patent Office

gave me a giggle and the last time I used cheapo prepaid lawyers

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

#746

Post by amai » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

Have US companies ever cares about laws if there was money to be made? Move fast and break things!

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

#747

Post by nearbuy » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #610

nearbuy wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Current generation of AI models can't think of anything truly new. How could you possibly know this? Is this falsifiable? Is there anything we could ask it to draw where you wouldn't just claim it must be copying some image in its training data?

Novelty in one medium arises from novelty in others, shifts to the external environment. We got brass bands with brass instruments, synth music from synths. We know therefore, necessarily, that they can be nothing novel from an LLM -- it has no live access to novel developments in the broader environment. If synths were invented after its training, it could never produce synth music (and so on). The claim here is tri…

Kind of a weird take that excludes the vast majority of human artwork that most people would consider novel. For all the complaints one might have of cubism, few would claim it's not novel. And yet it's not based on any new development in the external world but rather on mashing together different perspectives. Someone could have created the style 100 years earlier if they were so inclined, and had Picasso never existed, someone could create the novel style today just by "remixing" ideas from past art in that very particular way.

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

#748

Post by aabajian » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

I'm curious, is it the AI that should be blamed or the prompter who asks to generate something based on copyright?

For all of the examples, I knew what image to expect before seeing it. I think it's the user who is at fault for requesting a copyrighted image, not the LLM for generating it. The LLM is giving (nearly) exactly what the user expects.

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

#749

Post by whydoineedthis » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

It's only "intellectual theft" because we consider peoples thoughts their own property. On many levels, that doesn't really make sense to me.

Tons of historical documents have shown that inventions, mathematical proofs, and celestial observations were made by humans separated by continents and time. What that shows is that it is certainly possible for two persons to have the same exact or similar thought without ever having been influenced by the other.

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

#750

Post by briandear » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #737

enopod_ wrote: post #656

Looks to me like OpenAI drew their guardrails somewhere along a financial line. Generate a Micky Mouse or a Pikachu? Disney and Pokemon will sue the sh*t out of you. Ghibli? Probably not powerful enough to risk a multimillion years long court battle.

Ghibli isn’t a character, but a style. You can’t copyright it.

For the downvotes:

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

“Copyright does not protect • Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, or discoveries”

Not sure why this is even controversial, this has been the case for a hundred years.