> …every image was traceable to a single consenting artist
> …fine-tune a Stable Diffusion base model.
So your entire business proposition was a lie, as you literally used a base model trained on billions of images by other artists too!
Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
81–90 of 176 posts
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#82the spotify comparison is telling because spotify succeeded by being better than piracy, not by being more ethical. tess was trying to compete on ethics against tools that were just flat out better at the actual job.
i generate hundreds of images weekly for video content and the honest truth is i never think "i want this specific artist's style." i think "i need a documentary still that looks like 1970s film grain" or "i need a character that matches my last 50 frames." consistency and speed matter way more than provenance. the few times i tried artist-specific fine tunes the quality was noticeably worse than just prompting a good base model well.
the 6.5% artist signup rate buried in there is actually the real story. they cold emailed 325 high end editorial artists and got 21. those artists didn't want passive income from AI - they wanted AI to not exist in their market at all. paying someone royalties to automate away their livelihood is a weird value prop no matter how you frame it.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#83> The timing wasn’t right. We depended on artists helping us to promote the platform, and they didn’t. There's a certain arrogance to believing the timing "simply wasn't right". It looks really bad if you try it with any recent controversy: * "The timing wasn't right to charge people for heated car seats" * "The timing wasn't right to make Photoshop a subscription service" * "The timing wasn't right to increase fees"…
It’s not arrogant to be firm in your beliefs. You’re not arrogant for believing the timing is never right. You may even be 100% right, but you don’t have to belittle or put down the other side. In this case, they already lost, what more do you want?
How is it not arrogant to be firm in your belief, even if signals say otherwise? If I believe it is OK not to shower, and everyone around me complains about it, is it not arrogant of me to ignore the signals because "they just don't understand yet"?
I think a much more useful question is whether some arrogance is necessary to succeed. I personally think it is. But we are discussing a post mortem here, and the author is (in my opinion) clearly beating around the bush and using "the time wasn't right" to hide what may be uncomfortable truths.
Is a post mortem valuable if it doesn't address these face first? I am not the one with all the answers here, but what I am used to in mature tech teams is that the uncomfortable parts are usually the most important in any post mortem.
There are plenty of stories about companies that failed because the timing was wrong, and then see another company succeed in their place later on. That doesn't mean failure simply means "the timing was wrong" - you are putting a lot of weight on society adjusting to your belief. Consider that venture capital often invests in hundreds of founders like this, betting that at least one of them wasn't wrong. That's not statistically in your favor.
It is OK (in fact it is valuable) to fail and conclude that your signals may have been wrong. There's a reason some venture capital funds prefer investing in people who have failed before.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#84How about that few want one artist’s particular style reproduced, instead they want what they are vaguely seeing in their head produced from a cacophony of styles
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#85> 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. 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, DRM, stupid and unnecessary litigation, and ultimately a loss of digital freedoms.
Kapwing is specifically designed for artists to share IP with other people in an IP-friendly and financially profitable way. A 'consumer' on Kapwing is not the same as an ordinary person browsing for AI generated art, and the fact that people who make money from selling their IP on there are in favour of expanding IP law shouldn't be a surprise.
All this really tells us is that Kapwing's artist community believe protecting their individual art style is more valuable to them than any money they'd earn from licensing it on a per-image basis to Kapwing's AI tool. I'd be willing to bet that if Kapwing changed the offer to a flat-fee-of-$50,000-a-year-plus-per-image-fee they'd find 99% of artists on there changed their minds. As with most things, people feel strongly about their rights all the way up until the price is right.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Spain books include a copyright notice explicitly prohibiting reproduction and digitalization and alluding to article 270 of the Spanish criminal code.
The book can say anything it wants, whenever it's true and/or applicable in court later on is a very different matter. Spain's SGAE is a very powerful lobby but still needs to follow the law. Edit: haven't followed the law in a while, but you could definitely copy, digitalize and scan documents for yourself and your friends (copia privada).
In Spain EULAs cannot infringe upon the law either.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#87I'm not a native English speaker, but since when became 'lessons' a 'learnings'?
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#88I'm not a native English speaker, but since when became 'lessons' a 'learnings'?
As a native (Commonwaelth) english speaker of six decades+ .. it only really "appeared" in frequency during the past decade, more heavily in the past five years or so, in central north American settings.
Grammerly will tell us:
Despite being more popular than “lessons” in the corporate setting, “learnings” is still incorrect. It's an erroneous plural form of the colloquial term “learning.”
As a business-speak buzz-word it might fade, or it may end up with a greater global footprint outside of the Biz-speak Babel tower.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No I didn't. It's use in a software product without my permission. That's never been allowed.
Just because you obfuscate what's happening by calling it "learning" and pretending your model is actually just looking at pictures the same as a human, doesn't make it true.
Re: Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>IP laws can stay the same, but they should have purchased a license to use my art before including it in their training data. But including your art in the training data is fair use (or otherwise exempt) by most standards, as no reproduction occurs. You are advocating for a change to IP law to make it more restrictive.
> But including your art in the training data is fair use
The four factors of fair use in the US:
> the purpose and character of your use
Commercial, for-profit. Not scholarship, not research, not commentary, not parody, etc.
> the nature of the copyrighted work
Absolutely everything. Artistic, creative, not purely factual.
> the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
All of it, from everyone.
> the effect of the use upon the potential market.
Directly competing with those whose data was copied.