AI generated art will have interesting ramifications on copyright law I think. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know much about copyright or trademark, but it's a common opinion that the length of...
AI generated art will have interesting ramifications on copyright law I think. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know much about copyright or trademark, but it's a common opinion that the length of copyright has been too long for a long time. I wonder if the big tech companies have enough money and clout to fight Disney and whatever other media company and get the copyright terms down to what they used to be, just enough to promote arts but not enough to harm public goods. Because the big tech companies are going to want to generate pictures of Indiana Jones long before Lucas and Spielberg are dead for 70 years.
There's always been people who "steal" copyrighted works, but it hasn't been as bold as it is since the AI art generators appeared. I've been kind of interested in "crappy off brands" since I was a kid. I remember going to those fairs that come to town sometimes for a few days, the ones that have those sort of dangerous rides that are held together by rusty cotter pins. And those rides would frequently have a picture of some character like Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. But you could tell it wasn't an official version because the colors weren't quite right or the artist wasn't very good and the faces had the wrong proportions. I don't think Disney or Warner Bros spent much time pursuing these carnivals, maybe just because they were distributed and had shallow pockets. That's not the case with GPT, so we can expect them to clash a lot.
The exercise was interesting enough, but I really don’t understand the message the author was trying to get across. His closing thoughts: Okay, so, what exactly are we getting at here? Stealing is...
The exercise was interesting enough, but I really don’t understand the message the author was trying to get across. His closing thoughts:
It’s a reminder that LLMs of this type and size all train on copywritten material.
It’s stealing, but also, admittedly, really cool.
Does the growth of AI have to bring with it the tacit or even explicit encouragement of intellectual theft?
To co-opt a line from the “super strong man with a sword that fights an enemy with skeleton face who lives in a skeleton castle.”:
You have the power.
Don’t slow down.
Okay, so, what exactly are we getting at here? Stealing is cool, and we should keep doing it?
Just for the record, copyright infringement is not stealing. In order to be guilty of stealing, you have to deprive the true owner’s of their ability to use the thing. Certain kinds of...
Just for the record, copyright infringement is not stealing. In order to be guilty of stealing, you have to deprive the true owner’s of their ability to use the thing.
Certain kinds of infringement are criminal though.
Also worth noting, there are no universal or natural or even hallowed property rights. They have always been arbitrary amd politically defined.
I respect the distinction, but if we’re splitting hairs at that level, we’re probably letting the bastards in this equation win, so to speak. If I’m a small, independent creator and I put out a...
I respect the distinction, but if we’re splitting hairs at that level, we’re probably letting the bastards in this equation win, so to speak.
If I’m a small, independent creator and I put out a product in the hopes that it will help me make a living, and somebody takes my creation out from underneath me and earns something from it, ostensibly taking away some of my potential earnings from said product, I don’t really care too much about if it’s legal for them to do it, it still didn’t put any bread on the table.
On the flip side, maybe this means we can yoink some ideas from Disney, make a buck off it, and get away with it, but we both know that the lawyers behind the Mouse (and others at that level) are litigious enough that the former situation is much more likely than the latter.
I think the major point that most people in the abolish copyright crowd would make here is that you as a small independent creator have exceptionally little ability to actually enforce your...
I think the major point that most people in the abolish copyright crowd would make here is that you as a small independent creator have exceptionally little ability to actually enforce your copyright. If a large company with lots of resources, like Disney or OpenAI, violated your copyright even in an incredibly brazen way, they would most likely get away with it because of their superior resources. Meanwhile there is no shortage of stories of illegitimate copyright takedowns by these large companies even in situations where the use is undoubtedly fair and transformative. Copyright thus really only serves as a tool that helps those that already have power and resources to stifle smaller creators while failing to actually protect those creators.
In practice, do we know if that’s true from individual to individual? I understand that a small creator is likely going to lose to a corporation no matter what. But why strip those protections...
In practice, do we know if that’s true from individual to individual? I understand that a small creator is likely going to lose to a corporation no matter what. But why strip those protections away if they might help when the situation is between two individuals (or small companies)?
Just spouting off here, but the larger issue is what is intellectual property protection for? The stated goal is to promote creativity and innovation, which I value and share. The challenge as I...
Just spouting off here, but the larger issue is what is intellectual property protection for? The stated goal is to promote creativity and innovation, which I value and share.
The challenge as I see it is that the protections don't favor those creating or innovating, but rather creates a class of exploiters who are unfairly empowered by financial and legal institutions to claim/acquire the creative work of others ang generate a lot of profit.
Small players can't access the system. More specifically, the cost of accessing the system exceeds the losses due to infringement. This happens whether it's little guy v. big guy or little guy v. little guy. And when it's v. little guy, you're not going to get any satisfaction anyway, because the other little guy isn't going to have wealth from which you can recover.
As a consumer, do I have a right to be entertained (speaking here only of copyrighted entertainment materials)? No, of course not. But I do have a right to recover those costs imposed on me (and everyone) when other parties externalize the costs of their profits. I am paying the cost to support the legal system which the big distributors access to protect their 'rights.' That's an externalized cost (to them). I have a moral right to recover, from them, the amount of my share of that cost.
A more painful example is the current state of drugs. So many of today's most important, still patent protected medicines have their roots in publically funded research. That's an externalized cost that we all bear, and yet do not have the means to recover from. You better believe if I had the chemical equivalent of an mp3 player I would pirate whatever drug I felt I needed.
Well put. At the end of the day, I wish there was a more effective means to protect the individual / smaller collectives in these cases, and I fear the protections in place, while perhaps better...
Well put. At the end of the day, I wish there was a more effective means to protect the individual / smaller collectives in these cases, and I fear the protections in place, while perhaps better than nothing, are not as effective as one would hope for that level of creator. Which is a shame, as it’s one of the few spaces where we’ll continue to see innovation. Meanwhile, all other forms of “creativity” continue to spiral towards the most profitable lowest common denominator. I hope that’s just me being pessimistic but I really do worry about the state of things moving forward, and AI “art,” however it happens to factor into the bigger picture, is just throwing kerosene on whatever this fire is.
I think a lot of people are starting to be willing to “let go” of owning an idea or style in perpetuity, since everything is derivative, and wish they could at least be recognized for their...
I think a lot of people are starting to be willing to “let go” of owning an idea or style in perpetuity, since everything is derivative, and wish they could at least be recognized for their contribution or influence. Creative Commons licensing, for example.
Of course some people do not want their work used in very specific ways (Miyazaki) and are black and white about it. We are just in an unprecedented situation (technology wise) that we haven’t been before. But the behaviors are still similar. Isn’t it strange that if you want to perform a cover of a song, there’s a flat fee and it’s all said and done, but sampling a part of a song or making a song in the perceived impression of (looking at you Blurred Lines v. Marvin Gaye estate), is more complicated(fee wise) ? IP law is a weird place lol.
We live in a sad state of society where, at least in the USA, but from my examples you’ll see, not just the USA, where the laws are so expensive to enforce that they are basically only for the...
We live in a sad state of society where, at least in the USA, but from my examples you’ll see, not just the USA, where the laws are so expensive to enforce that they are basically only for the wealthy (companies) to enforce.
In civil suits, Lawyers by and large do not want to take cases they won’t make a lot of money from and they also don’t want to take cases they can’t win. It’s a shitty situation, but it is where we are now. Rarely are lawyers doing something because they think it’s the “right” thing to do - at least we do not see this happening outloud.
Moving on. “Theft” of intellectual property is not a new concept. And theft of “indie” artists is not a new concept either.
Urban Outfitters continues to “steal” or rather, use without credit, artists’ ideas all the time. And while some of their cases have played out and the artists have won, the amount of money won is a pittance. H and M has been accused of doing the same thing, and continues to do so. I did not follow up to see if a lawsuit was ever filed for the H and M case. But they had the audacity to state:
We employ an independent team of over 100 designers. We can assure you that this design has not been influenced by your work and that no copyright has been infringed.
To later issue this lukewarm apology, only after pressure from users on their Facebook page:
We apologies [sic] if anyone should think we have copied, which has never been our intention and also not allowed. We have merely been inspired, after seeing many different varieties with different text messages, to create something similar in a different font, with the use of big and small brackets and the placement of the shaped heart. We are truly sorry if we have led someone to believe that we intentionally should have copied someone else's creation.
She adds, “I guess that’s how you know you have good ideas these days, even if you never ‘make it’: a major corporation rips you off in a way that they know they can get away with.”
Compare this fight with the constant back and forth between Apple and Samsung. In one of their over 50 lawsuits with each other, this one being about a rounded bezel, Apple was awarded $548 million dollars (down from an initial $1billion). And we are talking about a “black rectangle with rounded corners”, “with bezel on surrounding rim” and “a colorful grid of 16 icons”.
The relevant patents-in-suit are three design patents: D618,677 (a black rectangle with rounded corners), D593,087 (with bezel on surrounding rim), and D604,305 (a colorful grid of 16 icons). After appeals, Apple’s original $1.05 billion jury verdict was reduced to $548 million. Of that, $399 million in damages stem from infringement of the three design patents that are part of the Supreme Court case.
So the laws, or at least their enforcement, are completely different for an individual vs. a company.
Lastly, people underestimate the absolute strain and exhaustion it takes to actually go through a lawsuit - as an ordinary person. It is not fun and I don’t wish it upon anyone.
Edit- I got very sidetracked in answering your question- basically lawyers do not represent little people, so even if the laws are designed to be used in any case, good luck finding anyone to help you fight them.
I really appreciate the response on this! I’ve been spending too much time on this thread over the last couple days so I’m gonna bow out, but I think you bring up excellent points. I wish it...
I really appreciate the response on this! I’ve been spending too much time on this thread over the last couple days so I’m gonna bow out, but I think you bring up excellent points. I wish it didn’t paint such a bleak picture but I think we’re all in agreement that we’re due for a sea change.
And it's worth pointing out that this isn't necessarily out of malice or because lawyers are evil. It's because, much like any of us, they don't want to waste their time at work and not make...
In civil suits, Lawyers by and large do not want to take cases they won’t make a lot of money from and they also don’t want to take cases they can’t win.
And it's worth pointing out that this isn't necessarily out of malice or because lawyers are evil. It's because, much like any of us, they don't want to waste their time at work and not make enough money for it to have been worth it. This is why companies that have lawyers in-house or on retainer have a much easier job filing meritless suits than common people who need a lawyer to take their case on contingency.
That, plus the fact that the average person likely has a much harder time knowing whether and when to find a lawyer in the first place. The rich and structurally powerful take advantage of the lack of legal education and resources of the little guy all the time. My siblings have gotten several security deposits back after their landlords tried to illegally withhold them or missed their deadlines solely because my dad was a lawyer and knew they had a right to demand them. Similarly, the average joe is probably going to be massively intimidated by a cease and desist letter from someone's lawyer even when the basis for the letter is completely meritless.
Their right to use it was to trade access to something they made on specific terms for something of value of their choice. It’s one thing to decide that their terms aren’t worth it, it’s an...
Their right to use it was to trade access to something they made on specific terms for something of value of their choice. It’s one thing to decide that their terms aren’t worth it, it’s an entirely different thing to sneak around behind their back and access it anyway.
This would be patently obvious if you asked them to do work for you — what changes when they think of the job on their own and offer the work product to you?
It’s still not stealing, because their ability to trade access Is not impaired in any way. They can still trade access. Non permissive access is sometimes illegal, sometimes criminal, maybe...
It’s still not stealing, because their ability to trade access Is not impaired in any way. They can still trade access.
Non permissive access is sometimes illegal, sometimes criminal, maybe morally wrong. It’s just not stealing.
I wasn't sure what they were trying to say either. Personally I do believe that stealing intellectual property should be cool. Since copying doesn't have to mean taking anything from anyone. It...
I wasn't sure what they were trying to say either.
Personally I do believe that stealing intellectual property should be cool. Since copying doesn't have to mean taking anything from anyone. It could just be an additive process. Human knowledge has been building on top of itself for thousands of years now. Modern society is a cumulative result of thousands of years of work by those who came before us.
What's not cool is the unregulated capitalism we have set up. It means everyone has to find something to do in order to feed and shelter themselves. Now AI can do some of those things faster, and it makes it harder for humans to earn enough to feed themselves.
Couldn't we just use all this extra productivity to take care of people no matter what?
Raise the top tax rate, create a social safety net, and eliminate intellectual property. Anyone could use any information . In this scenario, intellectual "property is theft".
Then AI can do whatever it wants and we can use AI or human created art based on which one we like better.
I’m very torn on your statement. I get the general gist of it, but the reality (for the foreseeable future) is that society is largely based on capitalism, so folks who create to literally survive...
I’m very torn on your statement. I get the general gist of it, but the reality (for the foreseeable future) is that society is largely based on capitalism, so folks who create to literally survive paycheck to paycheck ( /gig to gig) are being actively harmed by this theft. So yeah, on one side, I agree that co-opting ideas from too-big-to-fail IP behemoths like Disney is fine, and that the law works too well in their favor. But to give AI a blank check to steal from all creators and hope that it’ll just work out for little guys in the long run because society will suddenly stop being driven by capitalism? I fear it’s a pipe dream.
If we have to fight against big, rich companies. Then we have a choice. Do we fight to maintain the status quo and suppress technology so that we can continue to scrounge a living. Or do we change...
If we have to fight against big, rich companies. Then we have a choice. Do we fight to maintain the status quo and suppress technology so that we can continue to scrounge a living. Or do we change the system so that the technology we create works to benefit all of humanity?
Either way it's a hard fight, why not fight the root of the problem rather than the symptom. In my opinion, unregulated free market capitalism is the root cause. Not AI or any other tech that will be used by rich people to keep themselves in power.
I fundamentally agree with what you’re saying, but the cynic in me says that capitalism isn’t going to be toppled in our lifetime. I suppose I’m just more interested in mitigating the damage it...
I fundamentally agree with what you’re saying, but the cynic in me says that capitalism isn’t going to be toppled in our lifetime. I suppose I’m just more interested in mitigating the damage it has done (and will do) in the meantime than I am in trying to sort it out. I have friends and family in the arts who are below the poverty line, and me telling them that I disagree with capitalism as a concept doesn’t help them get paid any more for their gigs. And yeah, I acknowledge that it’s short-sighted of me to fight the symptom, as you aptly put it, but I guess I don’t want to make the good (helping those in the current system) the enemy of the perfect (changing the system).
I wouldn't stand in the way (or vote against) any short term action to help people right now. But I'm not sure what it would look like. This is speculation and just my opinion, but I think trying...
I wouldn't stand in the way (or vote against) any short term action to help people right now. But I'm not sure what it would look like.
This is speculation and just my opinion, but I think trying to stop AI or those in power from using it to concentrate their power, is a lost cause. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and you can't convince billionaires in a capitalist society to continue paying people when there is a cheaper option.
In my opinion we are in the middle of a rapid acceleration in technology, artists are not the only ones who will suffer. Software engineers are next, drivers, machine operators, office jobs in general. I think, in the next 30 years more than half of current jobs will be eliminated. If we keep the system as is, those who own the machines will have more power than ever and we exist at their mercy.
Trying to reengineer society while the plane is flying does seem crazy hard. But I think stopping the above scenario while keeping the current status quo is even more hopeless. And the current shakeup from people losing jobs might be our chance to do so.
It also doesn't have to be a completely revolutionary thing. In the US, I would suggest gradually raising the top tax rate over the next decade or so until it's back at 80-90% like it was in the 50s and 60s. We could call it the "Make America great again" bill, lol. If the gov gets more tax revenue from that we can use it for social programs. It would be a start at least.
Politically, I realize this is all a pipe dream. But what solution isn't at this point?
I get what you’re saying. The reason that art is set apart in my mind is because, if AI does a bad job replacing tech for the time being, there are usually enough safeguards in place, or fixes...
I get what you’re saying. The reason that art is set apart in my mind is because, if AI does a bad job replacing tech for the time being, there are usually enough safeguards in place, or fixes that are rolled back by actual experts in the field. If AI art does a bad job at replacing traditional art, oh well, art is just generally more mediocre now. We were already on a downward curve thanks to capitalism sinking its fingers into all forms of media, and now AI slop has art in a downward spiral. And since we tend to prefer convenience over quality as consumers of media, we accept it all at face value.
I hope I’m just being cynical, I really do, because you’re right, the cat’s out of the bag and there’s nothing stopping that.
Edit: here’s an old post of mine that goes into greater detail on my thoughts above; I didn’t mean to come across as short or vague but I’ve spent several hours responding to comments in here since yesterday and I’m starting to repeat myself so I’m stepping away from it. Appreciate the discourse up till now!
"Everyone" is the wrong word here because it ignores children, the elderly, and the disabled. But society does make an assumption that able-bodied people of working age should find work, and that...
It means everyone has to find something to do in order to feed and shelter themselves.
"Everyone" is the wrong word here because it ignores children, the elderly, and the disabled.
But society does make an assumption that able-bodied people of working age should find work, and that most people should work for a large part of their lives.
Good artists copy; great artists steal. This is the new reality. In a few years, we're going to be generating our own movies, re-casting TV shows, you name it.
Good artists copy; great artists steal.
This is the new reality. In a few years, we're going to be generating our own movies, re-casting TV shows, you name it.
Pragmatically speaking, you’re probably right about what the future looks like. Doesn’t mean I need to like it, though :) That said, it’s a bit of a bastardization of Picasso’s quote, if you ask...
Pragmatically speaking, you’re probably right about what the future looks like. Doesn’t mean I need to like it, though :)
That said, it’s a bit of a bastardization of Picasso’s quote, if you ask me. I don’t think the man had gen AI on his mind when he said this. I don’t think he could have envisioned anything even close to such a thing. First off, not to be too reductive, but to suggest that gen AI engines, or the folks feeding prompts into them, are “great artists” is a non-starter in the first place, but I won’t dwell on that since it kills the discourse before it begins, and that’s no fun! I’ll instead humor the concept and discuss its merits.
Don’t get me wrong - as a jazz musician, I love and appreciate the spirit of that quote. We steal all the time! Part of my formal education was to learn how to listen to, transcribe, and whole-cloth lift entire musical quotes from other musicians. The reason behind this is that humans can take these quotes and expand upon them—synthesize and build upon the ideas contained within them and generate truly novel ideas from them. The natural ideation and development on pre-existing ideas is the foundation of jazz music. Being good at this means understanding jazz at its core.
Hearing somebody play a solo over a well-known jazz tune from the American songbook wherein they quote a well-known lick from another musician who has soloed on that tune in the past (or a separate song that might have the same harmonic form, or even something more obtuse like the song is in the same key, or the song titles are similar and the musician transposes the lick to a different key - there are no hard rules here, I’m just giving examples), and then builds on that idea to create a new improvised solo on the fly means that the musician doing so is well-studied and well-listened, appreciates the historical context of the song they are performing, and is comfortable generating ideas live from said quotes. In this case, this is a brilliant artistic showing from a human, and I would argue that it’s the type of “stealing” to which Picasso was referring.
At a macro level, one can argue that this is how nearly all new thought is generated. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and what have you.
AI’s usage of stealing in this way is less “jazz” and more “ransom note made out of magazine clippings.” It can’t create genuinely new works out of what it learns, it just chops and screws what it’s found and mixes it up a bit. There’s rarely any sort of artistic nuance there. The inspiration isn’t just worn on the sleeve; it’s what the whole shirt is made out of, and the work always feels reductive because of it. If we want to tie it back to music, it’s the difference between a group of brilliant musicians inspired by a pre-existing artist and building on their formula, vs. a really strong cover band. There’s a time and a place for cover bands, and they aren’t inherently a bad or low-quality thing. But they lack the cultural weight of an ensemble putting out new music, regardless the influence they draw from earlier groups.
An interesting post I came across on the orange link aggregation site. It's kind of funny how it quickly devolves into a sort of game to see how easily you can get it to spit out something that's...
An interesting post I came across on the orange link aggregation site. It's kind of funny how it quickly devolves into a sort of game to see how easily you can get it to spit out something that's likely infringing.
[Ghiblifying is] an example of the things people hate about Gen AI- its ability to reproduce while managing to strip away the things about the art/product/experience that were the most human.
According to a Business Insider article on this “Ghiblifying”, “copyright laws generally allow artists to mimic a visual style”, but I mean… come on.
Just how easy is it to wrangle from GPT that which is very clearly someone else’s IP?
Really, this is a conclusion the author came up with from this "experiment?" "AI is getting better" and "copying" don't align at all. If I was to take a stab at this, ChatGPT's training data has...
Still, the near perfect mimicry is an uncomfortable reminder that AI is getting better at copying and closer to…something
Really, this is a conclusion the author came up with from this "experiment?" "AI is getting better" and "copying" don't align at all. If I was to take a stab at this, ChatGPT's training data has very limited connected data to those very specific prompts. So all it does is spit out some basic blending of the few images that match, maybe with "unique" backgrounds.
This is not an accomplishment. This is direct theft. Just because the examples are big IPs doesn't mean the same can't happen to smaller artists.
I very much believe that the copyright system needs a major overhaul, but this specific set of examples are ineffective at adding anything valuable to that conversation.
Any AI that achieves learning (or stealing) by scraping the internet of whatever a culture produces winds up matching the era of those products. Example to keep with the article: "a medieval...
Any AI that achieves learning (or stealing) by scraping the internet of whatever a culture produces winds up matching the era of those products.
Example to keep with the article: "a medieval English outlaw who is an archer, lives in a forest, and robs from the rich to feed the poor." Today, we will see images of Russell Crowe, or maybe Kevin Costner, as Robin Hood. If AI was around in the 1940s, it would be predominantly Errol Flynn. That was what the culture / media of the time was creating.
Unfortunately this seems to create a bias for more recent pop culture data to have priority, since it is digitized, and available in greater volume for the AI learning process. So we see only Indiana Jones rather than any earlier alternates to the query "adventuring archeologist who wears a fedora.'
The problem shouldn't be that the model is aware of copyrighted content, that's an unavoidable consequence of training on internet-scale data. The problem should come when people use the model to...
>Indirectly but very obviously ask AI to generate Indiana Jones
>AI generates Indiana Jones
>shocked_pikachu.jpg
The problem shouldn't be that the model is aware of copyrighted content, that's an unavoidable consequence of training on internet-scale data. The problem should come when people use the model to create copyright-infringing content for profit. Like, it's possible to use Photoshop to draw a picture of Mickey Mouse or use Microsoft Word to type up the lyrics to an unlicensed song, but that doesn't make those programs illegal; only using them to make that content and then selling the result should.
Somewhat related An analytic theory of creativity in convolutional diffusion models. This is not the behavior you want out of your model not because of copyright, but more fundamentally because it...
Somewhat related An analytic theory of creativity in convolutional diffusion models. This is not the behavior you want out of your model not because of copyright, but more fundamentally because it isn't creative. I've heard a lot of deep learning people worry that we're running out of data to properly exploit the size of models we are building, and I would think that these kind of prompts would be a sign of that.
This is what truly bothers me about AI. The copyright issue is real but can potentially be solved with money. But the actual danger is more sinister: If no new solutions to interesting ideas have...
This is what truly bothers me about AI. The copyright issue is real but can potentially be solved with money. But the actual danger is more sinister: If no new solutions to interesting ideas have to be come up with, where does that leave creativity? The “Alien” alien, Indiana Jones, Predator, John McClane and the Terminator were invented. There were no characters like them before (although, of course, there were stereotypes and inspirations) and someone came up with them and then there were. Now we can get hung up on the definition of “stereotypes and inspirations” but very clearly AI isn’t “inspired”, it plain copies shit. Let’s train them on whatever the difference is, maybe, but whatever it is: they have not figured it out.
So the true negative effect of AI on society is less a lack of copyright revenue but a sharp and tragic drop in creativity. I personally (maybe naively) like to think that people will notice that and “AI-generic” imagery will grow to be considered cheap and low quality (more so than it already is).
AI generated art will have interesting ramifications on copyright law I think. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know much about copyright or trademark, but it's a common opinion that the length of copyright has been too long for a long time. I wonder if the big tech companies have enough money and clout to fight Disney and whatever other media company and get the copyright terms down to what they used to be, just enough to promote arts but not enough to harm public goods. Because the big tech companies are going to want to generate pictures of Indiana Jones long before Lucas and Spielberg are dead for 70 years.
There's always been people who "steal" copyrighted works, but it hasn't been as bold as it is since the AI art generators appeared. I've been kind of interested in "crappy off brands" since I was a kid. I remember going to those fairs that come to town sometimes for a few days, the ones that have those sort of dangerous rides that are held together by rusty cotter pins. And those rides would frequently have a picture of some character like Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. But you could tell it wasn't an official version because the colors weren't quite right or the artist wasn't very good and the faces had the wrong proportions. I don't think Disney or Warner Bros spent much time pursuing these carnivals, maybe just because they were distributed and had shallow pockets. That's not the case with GPT, so we can expect them to clash a lot.
The exercise was interesting enough, but I really don’t understand the message the author was trying to get across. His closing thoughts:
Okay, so, what exactly are we getting at here? Stealing is cool, and we should keep doing it?
Just for the record, copyright infringement is not stealing. In order to be guilty of stealing, you have to deprive the true owner’s of their ability to use the thing.
Certain kinds of infringement are criminal though.
Also worth noting, there are no universal or natural or even hallowed property rights. They have always been arbitrary amd politically defined.
I respect the distinction, but if we’re splitting hairs at that level, we’re probably letting the bastards in this equation win, so to speak.
If I’m a small, independent creator and I put out a product in the hopes that it will help me make a living, and somebody takes my creation out from underneath me and earns something from it, ostensibly taking away some of my potential earnings from said product, I don’t really care too much about if it’s legal for them to do it, it still didn’t put any bread on the table.
On the flip side, maybe this means we can yoink some ideas from Disney, make a buck off it, and get away with it, but we both know that the lawyers behind the Mouse (and others at that level) are litigious enough that the former situation is much more likely than the latter.
I think the major point that most people in the abolish copyright crowd would make here is that you as a small independent creator have exceptionally little ability to actually enforce your copyright. If a large company with lots of resources, like Disney or OpenAI, violated your copyright even in an incredibly brazen way, they would most likely get away with it because of their superior resources. Meanwhile there is no shortage of stories of illegitimate copyright takedowns by these large companies even in situations where the use is undoubtedly fair and transformative. Copyright thus really only serves as a tool that helps those that already have power and resources to stifle smaller creators while failing to actually protect those creators.
In practice, do we know if that’s true from individual to individual? I understand that a small creator is likely going to lose to a corporation no matter what. But why strip those protections away if they might help when the situation is between two individuals (or small companies)?
Just spouting off here, but the larger issue is what is intellectual property protection for? The stated goal is to promote creativity and innovation, which I value and share.
The challenge as I see it is that the protections don't favor those creating or innovating, but rather creates a class of exploiters who are unfairly empowered by financial and legal institutions to claim/acquire the creative work of others ang generate a lot of profit.
Small players can't access the system. More specifically, the cost of accessing the system exceeds the losses due to infringement. This happens whether it's little guy v. big guy or little guy v. little guy. And when it's v. little guy, you're not going to get any satisfaction anyway, because the other little guy isn't going to have wealth from which you can recover.
As a consumer, do I have a right to be entertained (speaking here only of copyrighted entertainment materials)? No, of course not. But I do have a right to recover those costs imposed on me (and everyone) when other parties externalize the costs of their profits. I am paying the cost to support the legal system which the big distributors access to protect their 'rights.' That's an externalized cost (to them). I have a moral right to recover, from them, the amount of my share of that cost.
A more painful example is the current state of drugs. So many of today's most important, still patent protected medicines have their roots in publically funded research. That's an externalized cost that we all bear, and yet do not have the means to recover from. You better believe if I had the chemical equivalent of an mp3 player I would pirate whatever drug I felt I needed.
Well put. At the end of the day, I wish there was a more effective means to protect the individual / smaller collectives in these cases, and I fear the protections in place, while perhaps better than nothing, are not as effective as one would hope for that level of creator. Which is a shame, as it’s one of the few spaces where we’ll continue to see innovation. Meanwhile, all other forms of “creativity” continue to spiral towards the most profitable lowest common denominator. I hope that’s just me being pessimistic but I really do worry about the state of things moving forward, and AI “art,” however it happens to factor into the bigger picture, is just throwing kerosene on whatever this fire is.
I think a lot of people are starting to be willing to “let go” of owning an idea or style in perpetuity, since everything is derivative, and wish they could at least be recognized for their contribution or influence. Creative Commons licensing, for example.
Of course some people do not want their work used in very specific ways (Miyazaki) and are black and white about it. We are just in an unprecedented situation (technology wise) that we haven’t been before. But the behaviors are still similar. Isn’t it strange that if you want to perform a cover of a song, there’s a flat fee and it’s all said and done, but sampling a part of a song or making a song in the perceived impression of (looking at you Blurred Lines v. Marvin Gaye estate), is more complicated(fee wise) ? IP law is a weird place lol.
We live in a sad state of society where, at least in the USA, but from my examples you’ll see, not just the USA, where the laws are so expensive to enforce that they are basically only for the wealthy (companies) to enforce.
In civil suits, Lawyers by and large do not want to take cases they won’t make a lot of money from and they also don’t want to take cases they can’t win. It’s a shitty situation, but it is where we are now. Rarely are lawyers doing something because they think it’s the “right” thing to do - at least we do not see this happening outloud.
Moving on. “Theft” of intellectual property is not a new concept. And theft of “indie” artists is not a new concept either.
Urban Outfitters continues to “steal” or rather, use without credit, artists’ ideas all the time. And while some of their cases have played out and the artists have won, the amount of money won is a pittance. H and M has been accused of doing the same thing, and continues to do so. I did not follow up to see if a lawsuit was ever filed for the H and M case. But they had the audacity to state:
To later issue this lukewarm apology, only after pressure from users on their Facebook page:
Compare this fight with the constant back and forth between Apple and Samsung. In one of their over 50 lawsuits with each other, this one being about a rounded bezel, Apple was awarded $548 million dollars (down from an initial $1billion). And we are talking about a “black rectangle with rounded corners”, “with bezel on surrounding rim” and “a colorful grid of 16 icons”.
So the laws, or at least their enforcement, are completely different for an individual vs. a company.
Lastly, people underestimate the absolute strain and exhaustion it takes to actually go through a lawsuit - as an ordinary person. It is not fun and I don’t wish it upon anyone.
Edit- I got very sidetracked in answering your question- basically lawyers do not represent little people, so even if the laws are designed to be used in any case, good luck finding anyone to help you fight them.
I really appreciate the response on this! I’ve been spending too much time on this thread over the last couple days so I’m gonna bow out, but I think you bring up excellent points. I wish it didn’t paint such a bleak picture but I think we’re all in agreement that we’re due for a sea change.
And it's worth pointing out that this isn't necessarily out of malice or because lawyers are evil. It's because, much like any of us, they don't want to waste their time at work and not make enough money for it to have been worth it. This is why companies that have lawyers in-house or on retainer have a much easier job filing meritless suits than common people who need a lawyer to take their case on contingency.
That, plus the fact that the average person likely has a much harder time knowing whether and when to find a lawyer in the first place. The rich and structurally powerful take advantage of the lack of legal education and resources of the little guy all the time. My siblings have gotten several security deposits back after their landlords tried to illegally withhold them or missed their deadlines solely because my dad was a lawyer and knew they had a right to demand them. Similarly, the average joe is probably going to be massively intimidated by a cease and desist letter from someone's lawyer even when the basis for the letter is completely meritless.
Their right to use it was to trade access to something they made on specific terms for something of value of their choice. It’s one thing to decide that their terms aren’t worth it, it’s an entirely different thing to sneak around behind their back and access it anyway.
This would be patently obvious if you asked them to do work for you — what changes when they think of the job on their own and offer the work product to you?
It’s still not stealing, because their ability to trade access Is not impaired in any way. They can still trade access.
Non permissive access is sometimes illegal, sometimes criminal, maybe morally wrong. It’s just not stealing.
I wasn't sure what they were trying to say either.
Personally I do believe that stealing intellectual property should be cool. Since copying doesn't have to mean taking anything from anyone. It could just be an additive process. Human knowledge has been building on top of itself for thousands of years now. Modern society is a cumulative result of thousands of years of work by those who came before us.
What's not cool is the unregulated capitalism we have set up. It means everyone has to find something to do in order to feed and shelter themselves. Now AI can do some of those things faster, and it makes it harder for humans to earn enough to feed themselves.
Couldn't we just use all this extra productivity to take care of people no matter what?
Raise the top tax rate, create a social safety net, and eliminate intellectual property. Anyone could use any information . In this scenario, intellectual "property is theft".
Then AI can do whatever it wants and we can use AI or human created art based on which one we like better.
I’m very torn on your statement. I get the general gist of it, but the reality (for the foreseeable future) is that society is largely based on capitalism, so folks who create to literally survive paycheck to paycheck ( /gig to gig) are being actively harmed by this theft. So yeah, on one side, I agree that co-opting ideas from too-big-to-fail IP behemoths like Disney is fine, and that the law works too well in their favor. But to give AI a blank check to steal from all creators and hope that it’ll just work out for little guys in the long run because society will suddenly stop being driven by capitalism? I fear it’s a pipe dream.
If we have to fight against big, rich companies. Then we have a choice. Do we fight to maintain the status quo and suppress technology so that we can continue to scrounge a living. Or do we change the system so that the technology we create works to benefit all of humanity?
Either way it's a hard fight, why not fight the root of the problem rather than the symptom. In my opinion, unregulated free market capitalism is the root cause. Not AI or any other tech that will be used by rich people to keep themselves in power.
I fundamentally agree with what you’re saying, but the cynic in me says that capitalism isn’t going to be toppled in our lifetime. I suppose I’m just more interested in mitigating the damage it has done (and will do) in the meantime than I am in trying to sort it out. I have friends and family in the arts who are below the poverty line, and me telling them that I disagree with capitalism as a concept doesn’t help them get paid any more for their gigs. And yeah, I acknowledge that it’s short-sighted of me to fight the symptom, as you aptly put it, but I guess I don’t want to make the good (helping those in the current system) the enemy of the perfect (changing the system).
I wouldn't stand in the way (or vote against) any short term action to help people right now. But I'm not sure what it would look like.
This is speculation and just my opinion, but I think trying to stop AI or those in power from using it to concentrate their power, is a lost cause. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and you can't convince billionaires in a capitalist society to continue paying people when there is a cheaper option.
In my opinion we are in the middle of a rapid acceleration in technology, artists are not the only ones who will suffer. Software engineers are next, drivers, machine operators, office jobs in general. I think, in the next 30 years more than half of current jobs will be eliminated. If we keep the system as is, those who own the machines will have more power than ever and we exist at their mercy.
Trying to reengineer society while the plane is flying does seem crazy hard. But I think stopping the above scenario while keeping the current status quo is even more hopeless. And the current shakeup from people losing jobs might be our chance to do so.
It also doesn't have to be a completely revolutionary thing. In the US, I would suggest gradually raising the top tax rate over the next decade or so until it's back at 80-90% like it was in the 50s and 60s. We could call it the "Make America great again" bill, lol. If the gov gets more tax revenue from that we can use it for social programs. It would be a start at least.
Politically, I realize this is all a pipe dream. But what solution isn't at this point?
I get what you’re saying. The reason that art is set apart in my mind is because, if AI does a bad job replacing tech for the time being, there are usually enough safeguards in place, or fixes that are rolled back by actual experts in the field. If AI art does a bad job at replacing traditional art, oh well, art is just generally more mediocre now. We were already on a downward curve thanks to capitalism sinking its fingers into all forms of media, and now AI slop has art in a downward spiral. And since we tend to prefer convenience over quality as consumers of media, we accept it all at face value.
I hope I’m just being cynical, I really do, because you’re right, the cat’s out of the bag and there’s nothing stopping that.
Edit: here’s an old post of mine that goes into greater detail on my thoughts above; I didn’t mean to come across as short or vague but I’ve spent several hours responding to comments in here since yesterday and I’m starting to repeat myself so I’m stepping away from it. Appreciate the discourse up till now!
"Everyone" is the wrong word here because it ignores children, the elderly, and the disabled.
But society does make an assumption that able-bodied people of working age should find work, and that most people should work for a large part of their lives.
Good artists copy; great artists steal.
This is the new reality. In a few years, we're going to be generating our own movies, re-casting TV shows, you name it.
Pragmatically speaking, you’re probably right about what the future looks like. Doesn’t mean I need to like it, though :)
That said, it’s a bit of a bastardization of Picasso’s quote, if you ask me. I don’t think the man had gen AI on his mind when he said this. I don’t think he could have envisioned anything even close to such a thing. First off, not to be too reductive, but to suggest that gen AI engines, or the folks feeding prompts into them, are “great artists” is a non-starter in the first place, but I won’t dwell on that since it kills the discourse before it begins, and that’s no fun! I’ll instead humor the concept and discuss its merits.
Don’t get me wrong - as a jazz musician, I love and appreciate the spirit of that quote. We steal all the time! Part of my formal education was to learn how to listen to, transcribe, and whole-cloth lift entire musical quotes from other musicians. The reason behind this is that humans can take these quotes and expand upon them—synthesize and build upon the ideas contained within them and generate truly novel ideas from them. The natural ideation and development on pre-existing ideas is the foundation of jazz music. Being good at this means understanding jazz at its core.
Hearing somebody play a solo over a well-known jazz tune from the American songbook wherein they quote a well-known lick from another musician who has soloed on that tune in the past (or a separate song that might have the same harmonic form, or even something more obtuse like the song is in the same key, or the song titles are similar and the musician transposes the lick to a different key - there are no hard rules here, I’m just giving examples), and then builds on that idea to create a new improvised solo on the fly means that the musician doing so is well-studied and well-listened, appreciates the historical context of the song they are performing, and is comfortable generating ideas live from said quotes. In this case, this is a brilliant artistic showing from a human, and I would argue that it’s the type of “stealing” to which Picasso was referring.
At a macro level, one can argue that this is how nearly all new thought is generated. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and what have you.
AI’s usage of stealing in this way is less “jazz” and more “ransom note made out of magazine clippings.” It can’t create genuinely new works out of what it learns, it just chops and screws what it’s found and mixes it up a bit. There’s rarely any sort of artistic nuance there. The inspiration isn’t just worn on the sleeve; it’s what the whole shirt is made out of, and the work always feels reductive because of it. If we want to tie it back to music, it’s the difference between a group of brilliant musicians inspired by a pre-existing artist and building on their formula, vs. a really strong cover band. There’s a time and a place for cover bands, and they aren’t inherently a bad or low-quality thing. But they lack the cultural weight of an ensemble putting out new music, regardless the influence they draw from earlier groups.
An interesting post I came across on the orange link aggregation site. It's kind of funny how it quickly devolves into a sort of game to see how easily you can get it to spit out something that's likely infringing.
Really, this is a conclusion the author came up with from this "experiment?" "AI is getting better" and "copying" don't align at all. If I was to take a stab at this, ChatGPT's training data has very limited connected data to those very specific prompts. So all it does is spit out some basic blending of the few images that match, maybe with "unique" backgrounds.
This is not an accomplishment. This is direct theft. Just because the examples are big IPs doesn't mean the same can't happen to smaller artists.
I very much believe that the copyright system needs a major overhaul, but this specific set of examples are ineffective at adding anything valuable to that conversation.
Any AI that achieves learning (or stealing) by scraping the internet of whatever a culture produces winds up matching the era of those products.
Example to keep with the article: "a medieval English outlaw who is an archer, lives in a forest, and robs from the rich to feed the poor." Today, we will see images of Russell Crowe, or maybe Kevin Costner, as Robin Hood. If AI was around in the 1940s, it would be predominantly Errol Flynn. That was what the culture / media of the time was creating.
Unfortunately this seems to create a bias for more recent pop culture data to have priority, since it is digitized, and available in greater volume for the AI learning process. So we see only Indiana Jones rather than any earlier alternates to the query "adventuring archeologist who wears a fedora.'
The problem shouldn't be that the model is aware of copyrighted content, that's an unavoidable consequence of training on internet-scale data. The problem should come when people use the model to create copyright-infringing content for profit. Like, it's possible to use Photoshop to draw a picture of Mickey Mouse or use Microsoft Word to type up the lyrics to an unlicensed song, but that doesn't make those programs illegal; only using them to make that content and then selling the result should.
Somewhat related An analytic theory of creativity in convolutional diffusion models. This is not the behavior you want out of your model not because of copyright, but more fundamentally because it isn't creative. I've heard a lot of deep learning people worry that we're running out of data to properly exploit the size of models we are building, and I would think that these kind of prompts would be a sign of that.
This is what truly bothers me about AI. The copyright issue is real but can potentially be solved with money. But the actual danger is more sinister: If no new solutions to interesting ideas have to be come up with, where does that leave creativity? The “Alien” alien, Indiana Jones, Predator, John McClane and the Terminator were invented. There were no characters like them before (although, of course, there were stereotypes and inspirations) and someone came up with them and then there were. Now we can get hung up on the definition of “stereotypes and inspirations” but very clearly AI isn’t “inspired”, it plain copies shit. Let’s train them on whatever the difference is, maybe, but whatever it is: they have not figured it out.
So the true negative effect of AI on society is less a lack of copyright revenue but a sharp and tragic drop in creativity. I personally (maybe naively) like to think that people will notice that and “AI-generic” imagery will grow to be considered cheap and low quality (more so than it already is).