this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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An AI model is a derivative work of its training data and thus a copyright violation if the training data is copyrighted.
A human is a derivative work of its training data, thus a copyright violation if the training data is copyrighted.
The difference between a human and ai is getting much smaller all the time. The training process is essentially the same at this point, show them a bunch of examples and then have them practice and provide feedback.
If that human is trained to draw on Disney art, then goes on to create similar style art for sale that isn't a copyright infringement. Nor should it be.
This is stupid and I'll tell you why.
As humans, we have a perception filter. This filter is unique to every individual because it's fed by our experiences and emotions. Artists make great use of this by producing art which leverages their view of the world, it's why Van Gogh or Picasso is interesting because they had a unique view of the world that is shown through their work.
These bots do not have perception filters. They're designed to break down whatever they're trained on into numbers and decipher how the style is constructed so it can replicate it. It has no intention or purpose behind any of its decisions beyond straight replication.
You would be correct if a human's only goal was to replicate Van Gogh's style but that's not every artist. With these art bots, that's the only goal that they will ever have.
I have to repeat this every time there's a discussion on LLM or art bots:
The imitation of intelligence does not equate to actual intelligence.
Absolutely agreed! I think if the proponents of AI artwork actually had any knowledge of art history, they'd understand that humans don't just iterate the same ideas over and over again. Van Gogh, Picasso, and many others, did work that was genuinely unique and not just a derivative of what had come before, because they brought more to the process than just looking at other artworks.
Yup. There seems to be a strong motive in many to not understand this concept as it makes their practices clearly ethically questionable.
My feeling is that the vast majority of pro-AI techbros come from a computer science, finance, or business background; undoubtedly intelligent people, but completely and utterly lacking in any appreciation or understanding of what actually goes into creative work. I'm sure they genuinely believe that there's no difference between what a human does and what an AI does, because they think art (or writing, music, etc) are just the product of an algorithm.
Ironically, my background is in mathematics but I also happen to be a writer so I see both sides of the argument. I just see the utter lack of compassion people have for those who produce creative work and the same people believe that if it can be automated, it should be automated.
Likely. Which is weird because algorithms are only a subset of software engineering, which requires abstract and creative thought to perform well.
I really, really, really wish people would understand this.
AI can only create a synthesis of exactly what it's fed. It has no life experience, no emotional experience, no nurture-related experiences, no cultural experiences that color it's thinking, because it isn't thinking.
The "AI are only doing what humans do" is such a brain-dead line of thinking, to the point that it almost feels like it's 100% in bad faith whenever it's brought up.
You're completely wrong, and I'll tell you why.
None of what you said matters, perception filters, intent, intelligence... it's all irrelevant to the discussion.
Copyright infringement only gives certain rights, and at least here in Canada using them to generate a model isn't one of those. Rights are for things like distribution, reproduction, public performance, communication, and exhibition. US law says you can't "Prepare derivative works based upon the work." but the model isn't a derivative work because it's not really a work at all, you can't even visually look at the model. You can't copyright an algorithm in the US or Canada.
Only the created art should be scrutinized for copyright infringement, and these systems can generate both (just like a human can).
Any enforcement should then be handled when that protected work is then used to infringe on the actual rights of the copyright holder.
Not sure why you think anyone would read anything if that’s how you start it.
a human does not copy previous work exactly like these algorithms, whats this shit take?
A human can absolutely copy previous works, and they do it all the time. Disney themselves license books teaching you how to do just that. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/learn-to-draw-disney-celebrated-characters-collection-disney-storybook-artists/1124097227
Not to mention the amount of porn online based on characters from copyrighted works. Porn that is often done as a paid commission, expressly violating copyright laws.
Neither does AI?
But considering that humans do get copyright strikes when they do something too similar that should also applies to AI, doesn't matter if it's not exact.
That should tell you something about how companies act. They're fine with these LLMs plagiarising content but when someone gets marginally close to their own trademarks, they get slammed.
Humans and AI are not the same and an equivalence should never be drawn.
Your feelings don't really matter, the fact of the matter is that the goal of ai is literally to replicate the function of a human brain. The way we're building them is often mimicking the same processes.
And LLMs and related technologies, by themselves, are artificial but not intelligent. So, the facts are not in favor of your argument to allow commercial parasitism on creative works.
I think you're missing a point here. If someone uses these to models to produce and distribute copyright infringing works, the original rights holder could go after the infringer.
The model itself isn't infringing though, and the process of creating the model isn't either.
It's a similar kind of argument to the laws that protect gun manufacturers from culpability from someone using their weapon to commit a crime. The user is the one doing the bad thing, they just produce a tool.
Otherwise, could Disney go after a pencil company because someone used one of their pencils to infringe on their copyright. Even if that pencil company had designed the pencil to be extremely good at producing Disney imagery by looking at a whole bunch of Disney images and movies to make sure it matches the size, colour, etc? No, because a pencil isn't a copyright infringement of art, regardless of the process used to design it.
Nah. You're missing the forest for the trees. Let's get abstract:
Person A makes a living by making product X and selling it.
Person B makes a living by making product Y and selling it.
Both A and B are in the same industry.
Person C uses a machine to extract the essence of product X and Y and blend them. Person C then claims authorship and sells it as product Z, which they sell in competition to X and Y.
Person C has not created anything. Their machine does not have value in the absence of products X and Y, yet received no permission, offers no credit nor compensation. In addition, they are competing for the same customers and harming the livelihoods of A and B. Person C is acting in a purely parasitic manner that cannot be seen as ethical in any widely accepted definition of the word.
You're missing something even more basic.
The machine Person C has created is not infringing on anything by itself. It's creation was not an infringement. "Extracting essence" isn't a protected right provided by the copyright frameworks. Only the actual art it is used to create could infringe (which most of the generated images do not).
If the final art created is an infringement, the existing copyright system handles that situation just like an infringing piece of art created by a human. The person at fault is the person who used the machine to create an infringing work, not the creator of the machine.
In your scenario, if a human C came along and looked at the art from Person A and B, blended them together into their own style, there wouldn't be any problem either. Even though they received no permission, and offered no credit nor compensation to the original creators. They would only get in trouble if they created an actual piece of art that was too similar to either of the specific artists works and therefore found to be infringing upon the copyright.
First, feeding something into a machine is not the same as looking at it. Person C literally creates nothing. They are a parasite. There's far more to creating than using statistical modeling algorithms. One cannot claim that that's what people studying a style and then creating someone are doing because it is empirically false.
Second, the scope of the discussion is not just "can someone legally get in trouble".
The scope here is not limited to "can someone legally get in trouble under current law" (which, seems likely but is still working its way through courts). The discussion is specifically discussing ethics. Person C has created nothing. They should have no product to sell, if not for persons A and B. Their competition with those that their product is derived from is a parasitic relationship, plain and simple. They are performing an act of exploitation with measurable harm both to persons A and B but also to further development of their craft by destroying any incentive to continue it.
Now, in some sort of alternate economic system, where one's livelihood is not tied to their vocation, sure, it's possibly not problematic because the economic harm is removed. However, in current capitalist systems that are in place where LLMs are heavily hyped, it's an ethically bankrupt action to take.
ETA: No amount of mental gymnastics can change the fact that use of others' works without their consent to train a model, then claiming authorship and competing IS plainly theft of the labor that went into creating the original works.
That's not too say that LLMs and they like don't have value or often require effort to produce something worthwhile. Just that they need to be used in an ethical manner that improves the human condition, not as another tool to rob others of the fruit of their labors.
I'll remind you the original article title literally contains the words "copyright law"
This discussion is entirely about legality, not ethics.
By your stupid logic, I have created nothing in my job designing automation systems, since I just look at what people currently do, program a computer to do those tasks instead, and I profit off those people no longer needing to do that job.
You want to keep everyone fully employed in needless tasks? Go join the Mennonites.
I feel that you're being deliberately obtuse here in order to avoid the ethics dilemma.
A design is a "thing", software is a "thing" even if it is physically intangible. Designing automation systems requires more than just looking at existing processes or algorthmic modeling. It requires synthetic and abstract thought. Nor is it a parasitic process; the automation has value by itself nor is it dependent upon the outputs of those whose tasks it automates. Automation, in theory, also improves the human condition by reducing amount of labor required by a given individual (though this particular good has largely been stolen since the 80s).
The goal of AI is fictional, and there's no solid evidence today that it will ever stop being fiction.
What at have today are stupid learning algorithms that are surprisingly good at mimicing intelligent people.
The most apt comparison today is a particularly clever parrot.
I'm all for having the discussion about how to handle AI when we have it, but it's bad faith to apply it to what we have today.
Critically, what we have today will never ever go on strike, or really make any kind of correct moral decision on it's own. We must treat it like dumb automation, because it is dumb automation.
…says who? That’s absolutely your feeling and not facts.
Derivative works are only copyright violations when they replicate substantial portions of the original without changes.
The entirety of human civilization is derivative works. Derivative works aren't infringement.
That's just not true
It absolutely is. There's nothing out there in the past thousand years that isn't based on other prior art, copyright law only replies to direct copies, and there are explicit cutouts past that that allow you to directly copy some things if your work is transformative.
It is not a derivative work, the model does not contain any recognizable part of the original material that it was trained on.
Except when it produces exact copies of existing works, or when it includes a recognisable signature or watermark?
The point is that if the model doesn't contain any recognisable parts of the original material it was trained on, how can it reproduce recognisable parts of the original material it was trained on?
That's sorta the point of it.
I can recreate the phrase "apple pie" in any number of styles and fonts using my hands and a writing tool. Would you say that I "contain" the phrase "apple pie"? Where is the letter 'p' in my brain?
Specifically, the AI contains the relationship between sets of words, and sets of relationships between lines, contrasts and colors.
From there, it knows how to take a set of words, and make an image that proportionally replicates those line pattern and color relationships.
You can probably replicate the Getty images watermark close enough for it to be recognizable, but you don't contain a copy of it in the sense that people typically mean.
Likewise, because you can recognize the artist who produced a piece, you contain an awareness of that same relationship between color, contrast and line that the AI does. I could show you a Picasso you were unfamiliar with, and you'd likely know it was him based on the style.
You've been "trained" on his works, so you have internalized many of the key markers of his style. That doesn't mean you "contain" his works.
Just because you can't point to a specific part of your brain that contains the letter 'p' doesn't mean it isn't in there somewhere. If you didn't contain the letter 'p', or Getty watermark, or Picasso's work, you wouldn't be able to recognise them when you saw them or tried to replicate them. The act of recognising something that is familiar is basically the brain comparing what the eye sees with what is stored in the memory. The brain stores it differently to an exact copy on a hard drive, but it does, nevertheless, contain everything that it remembers.
I disagree that recognition implies you contain it. It's much closer to a description than the actual thing, and a description isn't the same as the thing. This is evidenced by you being able to look at a letter P in a font you've never seen before and recognize it without issue. If it was just comparison, you couldn't do that.
Ah, this old paper again. When it first came out it got raked over the coals pretty thoroughly. The authors used an older, poorly-trained version of Stable Diffusion that had been trained on only 160 million images and identified 350,000 images from the training set that had many duplicates and therefore could potentially be overfitted. They then generated 175 million images using tags commonly associated with those duplicate images.
After all that, they found 109 images in the output that looked like fuzzy versions of the input images. This is hardly a triumph of plagiarism.
As for the watermark, look closely at it. The AI clearly just replicated the idea of a Getty-like watermark, it's barely legible. What else would you expect when you train an AI on millions of images that contain a common feature, though? It's like any other common object - it thinks photographs often just naturally have a grey rectangle with those white squiggles in it, and so it tries putting them in there when it generates photographs.
These are extreme stretches and they get dredged up every time by AI opponents. Training techniques have been refined over time to reduce overfitting (since what's the point in spending enormous amounts of GPU power to produce a badly-artefacted copy of an image you already have?) so it's little wonder there aren't any newer, better papers showing problems like these.
Nevertheless, the Getty watermark is a recognisable element from the images the model was trained on, therefore you cannot state that the models don't spit out images with recognisable elements from the training data.
Take a close look at the "watermark" on the AI-generated image. It's so badly mangled that you wouldn't have a clue what it says if you didn't already know what it was "supposed" to say. If that's really something you'd consider "copyrightable" then the whole world's in violation.
The only reason this is coming up in a copyright lawsuit is because Getty is using it as evidence that Stability AI used Getty images in the training set, not that they're alleging the AI is producing copyrighted images.
I said "recognisable", and it is clearly recognisable as Getty's watermark, by virtue of the fact that many people, not only I, recognise it as such. You said that the models don't use any "recognizable part of the original material that it was trained on", and that is clearly false because people do recognise parts of the original material. You can't argue away other people's ability to recognise the parts of the original works that they recognise.
I said that models don't contain any recognizable part of the original material. They might be able to produce recognizable versions of parts of the original material, as we're seeing here. That's an important distinction. The model itself does not "contain" the images from the training set. It only contains concepts about those images, and concepts are not something that can be copyrighted.
If you want to claim copyright violations over specific output images, sure, that's valid. If I were to hit on exactly the right set of prompts and pseudorandom seed values to get a model to spit out an image that was a dead ringer for a copyrighted work and I was to distribute copies of that resulting image, that's copyright violation. But the model itself is not a copyright violation. No more than an artist is inherently violating copyright because he could potentially pick up his paint brush and produce a copy of an existing work that he's previously seen.
In any event, as I said, Getty isn't suing over the copyright to their watermark.