Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Mgrecord t1_j5luylm wrote

Reply to comment by greenappletree in CNET's AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism by iingot

I believe there’s already a lawsuit against Dall-e and it’s use of copyrighted artwork.

5

LAwLzaWU1A t1_j5nns9q wrote

Also worth pointing out that it's done by an organization that represent companies like Disney.

My guess is that massive companies like Disney are very interested in setting precedence that if their pictures are used for learning, they deserve payment. They will have their own datasets to train their AI on anyway, so they will still be able to use it.

These types of lawsuits will only serve to harm individuals and small companies, while giving massive companies a big advantage.

12

natepriv22 t1_j5ntkrw wrote

No, they just want to use these models for their own profit, while making fan art generation or creation illegal.

They know they can't stop their pictures as used for learning, because they're publicly available. There's legal precedent for this.

What they care about is that you can generate an iron man style picture and post it online, without their licensing for such a character.

What's ironic is that this lawsuit will fail anyways, even with corporate backing, as I just mentioned, it can't generate any exact pictures, but only "style like" pictures.

2

Mgrecord t1_j5o513j wrote

But isn’t the “style” or “essence” what’s actually copyrighted? I’m not sure Fair Use will cover this.

2

natepriv22 t1_j5o72qn wrote

No, the final output is what's copyrighted. It's impossible to copyright style because it's too much of an abstract.

Example: Disney copyrights drawings of Mickey Mouse. Mickey mouse is a character that resembles a mouse, walks upright, has little mouse ears, has a boopy nose, red pants, and yellow shows.

This is a character, that Disney has come up with and which is unique. If someone were to draw something according to these exact specifications, then it is very likely that they would come up with a drawing closely or almost completely resembling Mickey Mouse. By trying to redistribute something so obviously similar, you are in danger of breaching someone's copyright.

On the other hand a style could be cartoons, or lets make it at the simplest level possible, drawing only with circles.

While you may have been the first to use a style, you have no copyright claim over it. It's a very abstract thing, but its more far removed from the artist. The style is a medium to produce a creation, it's more like a tool, but not the ultimate product. If you and Disney both started drawing with circles, you would ultimately come to very different products, no matter how similar the goal may be (draw a mouse using only circles).

In other words, styles are almost mathematical arrangements of colors, movements, dots, etc. You use this mathematical formula to produce a character for example. This character is unique, it's very likely only you could have come up with this. The style is very likely to be discovered by other people. Trying to copyright a style would be like trying to copyright a math formula.

TLDR: sorry for the messy writing, but I was trying to put all my thoughts together into one. For these reasons, AI can never truly plagiarize or infringe copyright on its own. Styles are non copyright able and that is almost exclusively what matters to the AI. Arranging math to try and satisfy your output desire. Unless it has a reference point it will pretty much never be able to come to the same conclusion you have come to.

Extra: imagine a world where style is copyrighted instead of just the product or output. It would be the destruction of creativity and art. Imagine if Disney was able to smartly copyright a cartoon or 3d cartoon style. They would be the only ones able to create cartoons and 3d cartoons in the industry, gatekeeping and locking everyone else out for risk of lawsuits.

Now that would be a true dystopia...

2

natepriv22 t1_j5o7jzl wrote

Just to add:

If I made it really confusing by being all over the place:

Style = like math, discovered

Art product or output = like an idea, invented

Creativity combines the use of a style, to produce a product or output that expresses something. Without the product or output, what can a style express?

Imagine trying to explain Van Goghs style and styles without his product or output. It would be very mathematical and scientific = turbulent lines + bright colors + lowering of clarity filter

2

M_Mich t1_j5ork5f wrote

and if expressionism could be copywrited, it wouldn’t have become a style of are. it would have been limited to the first artist to do it and then everyone else would have been sued.

2

Mgrecord t1_j5o8cl6 wrote

Thanks for the thoughtful explanation. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The technology is going to move much faster than the lawsuits!

1

Fafniiiir t1_j5wym5z wrote

Human beings are not ai, I don't think that the two can just be compared.
A human being being influenced by another artist is not the same as an ai, and a human being can't copy another artist as accurately, broadly and quickly as an ai can.

Even if you practice Van Goghs work your entire life your work will never actually look like his there will always be noticeable differences.
There's a lot of artists who even do try to directly copy other artists styles and it's always very apparent and like a worse copycat.

The problem with ai too which is unique to it compared to humans is that it can be fed with an artists work and spit out finished illustrations in that style in seconds.
What is the point of hiring the artist who's work was input into the ai for it to learn from it?
The artist is essentially being competed out of their own work with no way of combating it or keeping up with it.
Not to mention that it also competes them out of their own search tag, when you search for some artists you literally get page after page of ai generations instead of the actual artists work.

Things like fair use take this stuff into consideration too, the damages or even potential damages caused to the person.
And ai is fundamentally different than humans in this regard, another human artist can never do what an ai and can't be judged the same.

1

natepriv22 t1_j5xrs8o wrote

>Human beings are not ai, I don't think that the two can just be compared.

Absolutely they can be compared though, they are two forms of intelligence, one of those is built on the principles of intelligence of the other.

>A human being being influenced by another artist is not the same as an ai, and a human being can't copy another artist as accurately, broadly and quickly as an ai can.

It's not the exact same sure, but its broadly similar. You don't store 100% of the info you learn and see because it would be too much data. So you remember processes, rules, and outcomes much better, just like an AI would.

>Even if you practice Van Goghs work your entire life your work will never actually look like his there will always be noticeable differences. There's a lot of artists who even do try to directly copy other artists styles and it's always very apparent and like a worse copycat.

I mean, the average person and I'm pretty sure the both of us too would not be able to distinguish the original from the copied one, unless we had more info. You can do a simple test online, and let's see if you manage to distinguish the two. If you do get a high score, then congrats! You are better at spotting copied art than the average human is.

Furthermore, what you're describing is exactly how AI works. Unless you use an Img2Img model, which is not what the majority of AI art is, then you would never, or it would be close to impossible for you to produce the same output, just like a human. Again, you could test this right now. Just go on an AI art app like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, and type in "Van Gogh Starry Night", let's see what outputs you will get out of this.

>it can be fed with an artists work and spit out finished illustrations in that style in seconds.

First of all not exaclty, as I've said before, the model never contains the original input, so it's only learning the process, like a human.

Second of all, you can do the same thing! It'll just take you more time. Your friend gives you 100 pictures of a new art style called "circly" which is art purely made with circles. He will give you days, weeks or months, however much you need, to output something in this new style. He wants a picture of New York only made with circles. So you learn this style and create the new drawing or painting for him. You did almost the exact same thing an AI did, except it took you longer which is normal as a human being.

>What is the point of hiring the artist who's work was input into the ai for it to learn from it?

What is the point of hiring a horse carriage driver, when the concept of how a carriage works, was used to create the "evil car"?

First this is a loaded and emotional question. All kinds of art was used without discrimination, no one was specially selected.

Secondly, again, the model will not be able to output the same thing. It can draw in the same style, but the output will not be the same, it just mathematically won't be. So there is economic value in the original work too.

If a process or job can be automated, and there can be a benefit for humanity, why should we stop this development. Where were you when the horse carriage was being replaced? Where are you, fast food workers are getting automated too?? Why is it ok for others but not for you? And if it's ok for no one, do you think we should regress and go back in the past?

>Not to mention that it also competes them out of their own search tag,

I literally have never met a person who searches the art from someone outside of their official channels. Even if they do, then that's a marketing challenge. But what's the difference with popular artists that were being flooded with copies from fiver then?

A style is copyrightable btw, and thank gosh for that. So if they're getting flooded with "copies of their style" that's a lie. It's not their style, it's the style they use and maybe even discovered. But they have no copyright claim. Imagine a world where Disney could copyright drawing cartoonish styles... or DC comic styles... is that what you want?

1

LAwLzaWU1A t1_j5p7pc7 wrote

Making it illegal to use pictures for learning, even if publicly available, is exactly what the lawsuits are about, and a huge portion of people (mainly artists who have had their art used for learning) support this idea.

It's in my opinion very stupid, but that's what a lot of people are asking for without even realizing the consequences if such a system was put in place (not that it can be to begin with).

0

Fafniiiir t1_j5wxvop wrote

This isn't really true at all, artists don't have a problem with art being used to teach ai so long as it's consensual and artists get compensated for it.

1

LAwLzaWU1A t1_j5xtymw wrote

And the consequence of that is that Disney could say that artists who used Disney works to learn how to draw without consent owe them royalties. I don't think that is what is going to happen, but logically that is the implication.

​

If you go through some of the lawsuits being done regarding AI you will see that what they are arguing is not exclusive to AI art tools. For example, the lawsuit from Getty seems to just states that it should be considered illegal to "use the intellectual property of others - absent permission or consideration - to build a commercial offering of their own financial benefit".

That wording applies to human artists as well, not just AI. Did you use someone else's intellectual property to build a financial offering, such as artists on fiverr advertising that they will "draw X in the style of Disney"? Then you might be affected by the outcome of this lawsuit, even if you don't use AI art tools. Hell, does your drawings draw inspiration from Disney? Then you have most likely used Disney as "training data" for your own craft as well and it could therefore be argued that these rulings apply to you as well.

​

I understand that artists are mainly focused on AI tools, but since an AI tool in many ways functions like a human (see publicly available data and learns from it), these lawsuits could affect human artists too.

​

And like I said earlier, the small artists who are worried that big companies might use AI tools instead of recruiting them are completely missing the mark with these lawsuits, because the big companies will be able to afford to buy and train on their own datasets. Disney have no problem getting the legal right to train their future AI on whichever data they want. These lawsuits will only harm individuals and small companies by making it harder for them to match the AI capabilities of big companies.

​

It is my firm belief that these tools have to be as open and free to use by anyone as possible, in order to ensure that massive companies don't get an even bigger advantage over everyone else. At the end of the day, the big companies currently suing companies like StabilityAI are doing so for their own personal gains. Getty images don't want people to be able to generate their own "stock images" because that's their entire business. Disney doesn't want the average Joe to be able to recreate their characters and movies with ease. They want to keep that ability to themselves.

1

Fafniiiir t1_j5wxknu wrote

>There's legal precedent for this.

I think that people are getting ahead of themselves when making these claims, this is very new legal issues.
Context matters a lot here, and laws adapt to new technology or context all the time.

0

Fafniiiir t1_j5wxb0j wrote

Imo I think it's a really creepy and worrisome precedent to set that they can just scrape everything they want.
A lot of very bad stuff has been found in these dataset including cp and stuff like isis footage, revenge porn and leaked nudes etc.
Even on a less horrifying note, it's also peoples personal photographs, medical records and before and after photos of operations, peoples private vacations, family photos, id's etc you get the idea.

I do find it a bit worrisome if they can just scrape everything they want online and use it for commercial purposes like this.
At least Disney using their own copyrighted work to train an ai wouldn't run into these ethical problems.

1

LAwLzaWU1A t1_j5xvmyt wrote

I genuinely do not understand why you find that creepy and worrisome. We have allowed humans to do the exact same thing since the beginning of art, yet it seems like it is only an issue when an AI does it. Is it just that people have been unaware of it before and now that people realize how the world works they react to it?

​

If you have ever commissioned an artist to draw something for you, would you suddenly find it creepy and worrisome if you knew that said artist had once seen an ISIS video on the news? Because seeing that ISIS video on the news did alter how the artist's brain was wired, and could potentially have influenced how they drew your picture in some way (maybe a lot, maybe just 0,0001%, depending on what picture you asked them to draw).

​

The general advice is that if you don't want someone to see your private vacation photos, don't upload them to public websites for everyone to see. These training data sets like LAION did not hack into peoples' phones and steal the pictures. The pictures ended up in LAION because they were posted to the public web where anyone could see them. This advice was true before AI tools were invented, and it will be true in the future as well. If you don't want someone to see your picture then don't post it on the public web.

​

Also, there would be ethical problems even if we limited this to just massive corporations. I mean, first of all, it's ridiculous to say "we should limit this technology to massive corporations because they will behave ethically". I mean, come on.

But secondly and more importantly, about companies that don't produce their own content to train their AI on, but rather would rely on user submitted content? If Facebook and Instagram included a clause that said that they were allowed to train their AI models on images submitted, do you think people would stop using Facebook? Hell, for all I know they might already have a clause allowing them to do this. I doubt many people are actually aware of what they allow or don't allow in the terms of service they agree to when signing up for websites.

​

​

Edit:

It is also important to understand the amount of data that goes into these models and data sets. LAION-5B consists of 5,85 million images. That is a number so large that it is near impossible for a human to even comprehend it. Here is a good quick and easy visualization of one what one billion is. And here is a longer and more stark visualization because the first video actually uses 100,000 dollars as the "base unit", which by itself is almost too big for humans to comprehend.

Even if someone were to find 1 million images of revenge porn or whatever in the dataset, that's still just 0.02% of the data set, which in and of itself is not the same as 0.02% of the final model produced by the training. We're talking about a million images maybe affecting the output by 0.02%.

How much inspiration does a human draw from the works they have seen? Do we give humans a pass just because we can't quantify how much influence a human artist drew from any particular thing they have seen and experienced?

​

I also think the scale of these data sets brings up another point. What would a proposed royalty structure even look like? Does an artist which had 100 of their images included in the data set get 100/5,000,000,000 of a dollar (0.000002% of a dollar)? That also assumes that their works actually contributed to the final model in an amount that matches the portion of images in the data set. LAION-5B is 240TB large, and a model trained on it would be ~4GB. 99.99833% of all data is removed when transforming from training data to data model.

How to we accurately calculate the amount of influence you had on the final model which is 0.001% the size of the data set, of which you contributed 0.000002% to? Not to mention that these AIs might create internal models within themselves, which would further diminish the percentages.

Are you owed 0.000002% of 0.001%? And that also assumes that the user of the program accounts for none of the contributions either.

It's utterly ridiculous. These things are being discussed by people who have no understanding of how any of it works, and it really shows.

1