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supermegaampharos t1_iz9equ9 wrote

Artists make valid arguments.

It’s absolutely a problem that these programs are trained using material the developers don’t have permission to use. Imagine you spent your entire life creating a portfolio and then somebody you have no affiliation with fed your work to a software without your permission and is now using the software to produce new work based on your style.

It’s not hard to see where these guys are coming from.

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GeneralZain t1_iz9iopf wrote

Yeah except I can also go to any artist page, and learn how to draw in their style...just because an AI does it better faster than I could doesn't mean its stealing.

also where's all this "its stealing my ART" when it comes to book writing? or poetry? this is a systemic problem. They care (understandably) about their income, if they didn't have to make money from their art, NOBODY WOULD CARE. people would just do ART because they ENJOY DOING IT.

Be mad at the economic system not the AI.

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supermegaampharos t1_iza8177 wrote

I agree with your general point, for the record.

But:

>It’s absolutely a problem that these programs are trained using material the developers don’t have permission to use.

This part I mentioned earlier is still valid.

Just because something is posted on the Internet doesn't mean you have permission to use it. These AIs are using artist's work in ways the developers don't have permission to and that's a fair complaint.

It's one thing when somebody uses somebody else's artwork for personal use, and often artists say that's fine, but it's something else entirely when a for-profit company uses somebody else's artwork to train an AI for their commercial product.

Is that an issue with our economic systems? Absolutely. Are some artists taking their anger out on the wrong people and issues? Absolutely. Does that make them backwards luddites? No, they still have legitimate grievances.

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heavy_metal t1_izasj70 wrote

>use it

in copyright parlance that means making money from a direct copy. training an AI is akin to an art student going to a gallery, then creating art in a similar style. Not the same as photographing art, then trying to sell photos of it.

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Taron221 t1_izbxzqv wrote

I think many people in this thread are intentionally missing the counterpoints because they want to miss them. There is a lot of having an opinion and working backwards happening…

When a landlord adds ridiculous or exploitative fees to a lease agreement, who do we hold accountable? Both the landlord and the capitalist system that perpetuates & amplifies their exploitative qualities.

In turn, the reality of the current generation of AI-generated art, as it exists today under capitalism, is pro-capitalist, anti-individual, and walks a very dubious legal tightrope. It takes advantage of artwork uploaded to the ‘free-and-open’ internet to turn a profit… And that's without even touching the topic of deepfakes, which comes saddled with several of its own quandaries.

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rdlenke t1_izagyud wrote

> Yeah except I can also go to any artist page, and learn how to draw in their style...just because an AI does it better faster than I could doesn't mean its stealing.

I don't see what you are trying to imply. When a human does is still called plagiarism, no?

I'm no artist, but tracing has been a topic of discussion in the art community since forever.

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sipos542 t1_izb4nju wrote

I remember in like 3rd grade the teacher had us look at Van Gogh Paintings and then try and make our own with that similar style. Does that mean we plagiarized? Just now the AI could do it 100x better lol.

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rdlenke t1_izbdrcx wrote

If you think about it, plagiarism is just using a source so well that derivated work becomes indistinguishable from the actual source. Your third grade self wouldn't really be able to do that.

Using a more realistic example, if you went to Nerd & Jock (or any artist) page on Instagram, learned their style perfectly (as AI can do), and started to create/sell comics with this style, people would probably still call it plagiarism, wouldn't they?

I imagine that this possibility is what most artists fear and why they say that every model is using "stolen art", even if they don't articulate it very well.

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razorbeamz OP t1_izbpxq9 wrote

>people would probably still call it plagiarism, wouldn't they?

That would be trademark violation likely, not plagiarism.

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heavy_metal t1_izb6w9f wrote

>draw in their style

is not the same as tracing.

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rdlenke t1_izbel83 wrote

That's 100% true.

My intention with this argument was to say: "if tracing is problem in the artists community, I don't see why a tool that can perfectly copy someone's style wouldn't be".

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billytiger t1_izahozf wrote

No, people do art to have a purpose and an identity, and then they make money off of it. Picasso is special because it took Picasso going through life and experimenting with artistic principles and processing his emotions about the world wars and pushing the medium to the edge of what was accepted back then. And when other artists mimic that style, yeah it’s fucking stealing. When Lana del rey makes a song that sounds like a rip off of Radiohead, they sue her. Because it’s fucking stealing.

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_izari_ t1_izcy4xc wrote

Also people arguing that the words “theft” and “stolen” can’t apply here. This to me is a clear case of technology coming faster than we can make up a new word or phrase for what’s happening because it’s unprecedented. Technically it’s correct in the context of the literal meaning of stealing. But we also don’t have examples that quite apply here.

Artists have been “copying” each other to learn for generations, yes, but to make a perfect replica of someone’s exact art style to a point where it’s indistinguishable from an original is rare (traditionally) and heavily frowned upon in the modern scope.

So what do we do?

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chimgchomg t1_iza0oax wrote

Human artists copy each other's style all the time and nobody ever cared about that. It's only when a computer does it that everyone gets pissed.

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Drown_The_Gods t1_iza2o91 wrote

Human artists DO care about being copied. Trust me, some of them can get very (and very pointlessly) shirty about that, too.

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chimgchomg t1_izac83f wrote

Well okay, I shouldn't have said that nobody cares. But for the most part, the concept of "copying" each others styles is generally not considered an important or serious discourse within artistic communities. The vast majority of artists want to learn from and teach one another. The ones who aggressively try to go after people for copying them are typically regarded as assholes.

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