On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney • Hacker News Board

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#901

Post by slowhadoken » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:45 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #817

slowhadoken wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a naive and insidious line of reasoning. Free art and code should stay that way. Any company making a profit off of it through LLMs is unethical. It’s the opposite of open source.

Imagine if someone told me during the Pirate Bay showtrial that in the future I would see fellow hackers turn into copyright and intellectual property zealots.

I’ve been around since before Pirate Bay and you’re conflating two separate issues. Don’t be melodramatic. You’re advocating for corporate poachers.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#902

Post by munificent » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 7:05 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #621

munificent wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI models are fundamentally different because a computer is a lump of silicon which is neither a moral subject nor object. A human author is a living sentient being that needs to earn a living and is deserving of dignity and regard.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to fundamentally disagree with you. One does not get a morality pass because "the computer did it". People are creating these AI models, selecting data and feeding the models data on which to be trained. The outcome of that rests upon _both_ the creators of the models and the users prompting the models to achieve a result.

I don't know if we are disagreeing.

I interpret the comment I was replying to as basically saying "We let humans do it, so therefore we should let machines do it." And my response is basically, "we let humans do it because it provides benefits to an actual living being that deserves them".

When Midjourney serves up an image, it does not collect a paycheck that enables it to feed its family. It doesn't go home and sleep well at night with the satisfaction that it has created a piece of art that meant something to others.

It may be the case that the executives and engineers who own Midjourney feel some of that, but I think the experience of making a machine to make X is fundamentally different from making an X.

It may also be the cast that the person who wrote a prompt to ask Midjourney to produce an image generates some value from that and feels good about it. I get that. But I think the amount of creative effort they put into doing that and the amount of value in the result that is derived from uncompensated other artists is profoundly different from sitting down and actually drawing a picture.

A large enough difference in degree is a difference in kind.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#903

Post by JambalayaJim » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 7:17 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #860

romwell wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Generative models are just a tool. Sure. It's just a tool. That need other people's art to work . If it's "just a tool" in and of itself , then there's no problem keeping it away from other people's art. >The camera and 1-hour film developing didn’t destroy oil paintings Because the copyright laws were extended to include photographic reproduction of art as something you need to obtain a permission (and a license) f…

If you graduated from school and only used work that was public domain, would you have all the knowledge you currently have? Have you learned anything from anybody since graduating? Where is the line? It’s ok for humans to learn from others work but not a machine?

It is NOT okay for machine owner to profit from learning, unless the machine owner compensates the owners of the training data. That is where the line should be drawn.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#904

Post by JambalayaJim » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #886

sandworm101 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the authors did not benefit from my secondary market transaction. But they did. The presence of a secondary market for used books increased the value of some new books. People buy them knowing that they might one day recoup some costs by selling them. Would people pay more, or less, for a new car if they were told they could never sell or trade it away as a used car?

Lol, did an AI write this? Literally no one buys books because they might one day recoup a fraction of the sticker price on the secondary market. Baffling

They actually do exactly this, they’re just not thinking about it. You buy a book because you want the physical possession, which gives you the ability to sell it or give it to someone or display it. Not because you want to read the contents - else you would just borrow it from a library.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#905

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

WereAllMadHere wrote: post #797

csallen wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same principle applies, though. They can tell you maybe a dozen, maybe a few dozen, concepts they've learned and use in their work. But what about the thousands of concepts they use in their work they can't tell you about? The patterns they've noticed, the concepts that don't even have names, but that came from seeing things in the world world that were all created by other people?

For example, how many artists drawing street scenes credit the designer at Ford Motors for teaching them what a generic car looks like? How many even know which designers created their mental model of a car?

That is again a single word.

There is a strong correlation between how copyrightable a concept is and how well you can point to where you learned it.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#906

Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 7:36 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #881

johnnyanmac wrote: post #876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Comparing a GPU cluster and a printing press then staring the GPU cluster not limited by natural resources is just silly. Where does the materials come from to make the processors? Probably mined from 3rd world country slaves (in the literal "owning people" sense). But still, these servers already exist and scale up way more than a tree. >well. I could see a picture and then ask AI whose style it is. Then I could go…

> Probably mined from 3rd world country slaves (in the literal "owning people" sense). Why do you think the device you're using to make this comment is better than a GPU? Was your comment written by some new flamebait AI? You say so many arguments that fall apart under the slightest examination

I'm not. But I'm going to hold a company who's responsible for the production more accountable than a consumer who can't research the sourcing of every single part of their personal device.

>Was your comment written by some new flamebait AI

IIRC AI focuses on formal language and discourages slang. Either way:

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#907

Post by notfed » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #67

There is simple way to fix this. Ban private large models trained on public data, require them to be public weights. If a company wants to train large private model, they can do it with their own data.

I don't think this fixes much? People will just use open source image generators. Artists still have the same dilemma.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#908

Post by zen928 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

Tao3300 wrote: post #651

andy99 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a picture in the style of an artist is not replacing them. I don't know why anyone could get that idea. I can sing in the style Janice Joplin, pretty sure I'm not replacing her and that nobody thinks I am.

Media companies don't care if you think it's replacing her or not. They care that (1) they made something that will sell and that (2) they made it cheaper than they did before. All content will be behind a subscription and the algorithm will say "you like Janis Joplin? Let's autoplay some close-enough AI artists that don't exist that we won't have to pay any royalties to!" You'll get an offer to upgrade to Double Pro…

I know you're really really sad that one person can't hold all similarities to their chosen likeness in copyrighted perpetuity, but it sounds like you have a problem that things are SIMILAR and the artist isn't getting paid for any adjacent likeness instead of content itself being directly stolen. Regarding that topic, you should be able to find my morally, ethically and legally backed response via midjourney by prompting it to create the world's smallest violin.

This discussion makes people immediately place themselves under the boot of technology and display active helplessness almost entirely because they can't handle the mentality that it's now a commodity to get what they consider a "unique artstyle". That you can be "unique" if you consistently draw a line in thicker shades around borders and use flashy colors in a way no one has decided to try yet, and that this style "belongs" to you being extrapolated to the point of your artistic hobby becoming the only reflection of your identity as a person. Sad for those who staked their lives around capitalistic ideals.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#909

Post by mftrhu » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 8:19 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #898

mftrhu wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP compared copying a piece of clothing to copying digital art. I'd say that setting up a factory to make knockoffs - or even "just" buying a sewing machine, finding and buying the right fabric, laying out the piece you want to copy, tracing it, cutting the fabric, sewing it, and iterating until it comes out right - would qualify as "a truly astonishing amount of effort" for a person.

You can outsource. Look for "knockoff clothing manufacturers".

Yes. Now you - a generic person without any specific skills - just have to search for someone who is willing to sew knockoff clothing to your specification, ship them the item, and wait for them to get back to you - a month or longer, probably, as they are likely based in China and shipping things by boat - while hoping that your cursory search led you to an honest knockoff manufacturer, who won't just take your money and disappear.

I'd say that it still qualifies as a "truly astonishing amount of effort" when compared to the right-clicking and pressing save method of copying digital art.

Re: On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

#910

Post by mlyle » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 8:52 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #890

tga_d wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how to explain this any clearer. I am talking about neural net compression algorithms. As in, it is literally just a neural net encoding some copyrighted work, and nothing else. It is ultimately no more intelligent than a zip file, other than the file and program are the same. You can't seriously believe that these programs allow you to avoid copyright claims, can you? Movie studios, music producers, and…

A neural net designed to do nothing other than compress and decompress a copyrighted work is completely different than GPT-4, unless I'm uninformed. To me that sounds like comparing a VCR to a brain. GPT-4's technology is clearly something that "learns" in order to be able to produce novel thoughts and ideas, rather than merely compressing. A judge or jury would easily understand that it wasn't designed just to repro…

> A neural net designed to do nothing other than compress and decompress a copyrighted work is completely different than GPT-4, unless I'm uninformed.

Compression and the output from LLMs are cousins. The model tries to predict what continuations are likely, given context. Indeed, it takes a lot of effort to make LLMs less willing to just output training data verbatim. And conversely, you can get compression algorithms to do things similar to what LLMs do (poorly).

Whether this also describes most of human cognitive process, is subject to debate.