visarga t1_j9q9q7o wrote on February 23, 2023 at 8:18 PM

Reply to comment by genericrich in US Copyright Office: You Can't Copyright Images Generated Using AI by vadhavaniyafaijan

That is glossing over the fact that nobody can actually demonstrate which of the source images were responsible for this derivation. Will you choose, or shall we pick one or ten at random, or just the closest by similarity score? We have no way of assigning merit.

And I suspect you think everything in a copyrighted work is protected by copyright. But it's not true. Only expression is protected, not the ideas. You can borrow ideas if you don't copy the exact expression. AI only learned basic concepts, it builds new images from first principles. By learning only ideas and not exact expression they can have free hand.

If you want to be 100% sure, then it is possible to train an AI with variations of the original works generated by another AI - this way only the ideas are transmitted and the new model has never seen copyrighted works, so it can never replicate them even by mistake.

genericrich t1_j9qlhnd wrote on February 23, 2023 at 9:30 PM

Ah, a way to skirt the law against using stolen images and abuse human copyright with impunity! And people wonder why artists are concerned with this glowing future you all are so eager for. Sounds positively utopian.

visarga t1_ja2zhbj wrote on February 26, 2023 at 1:40 PM

But it is still preferable to train on synthetic images than on the original works, don't you agree?

When the artist refuses to allow their images be used for training AI models, or it is impossible to get permission for other reasons such as not knowing the correct contact information, if the AI uses variations it won't learn to imitate the originals closely. Variations should be OK because they have no copyright, as the courts decided. Seems like a better compromise than either indiscriminate training or making AI impossible to train.