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Comment by sagebird | Hacker News Reader

This is about headshots, a very specific category of stock photos. I have a question about stock photos more generally:

If an ai company looked at thousands of examples of commercial, copyrighted stock photos, then created an ai that would make similar stock photos, but have a method that prunes or selects generated photos that are sufficiently distant from any example as no not be obviously derivative, could they conceal their “theft” and sell their stock photos free of legal risk?

More generally, can AI wash itself clean of copyright infringement by showing that it was “inspired” but not derivative? I guess a judge could compel you to reveal your training set, but at some point do you think there will be general ai that can have the argument that it only seeks “inspiration” and does not “knock off”?

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You've hit on a very confusing and debated topic :)

I tried to do some research into this awhile ago. What I found is that you (generally, kind of) are able to use copyrighted work to make another work as a "transformative work". For example: you can look at an image of a person and use that as _inspiration_ to draw the same person (as long as you aren't tracing). However! that's still kind of a gray area.

ALSO: how does that apply if you are using the exact pixels of 1,000,000 images to make new ones? I don't think anyone has a definitive answer yet.

My guess is that it will have to be decided in some high profile court case before we get real answers :)

Yeah, I think that while this seems like a small question right now, it will be incredibly impactful how it is decided for the future.

Imagine if Micheal Jackson made one album, but a week later AI’s made thousands of albums that sounded just as good and original (or better!) but were categorized as inspirations. Imagine how that would change the incentives of creation to know it will be consumed by the hive mind in mere moments.

Imagine the great benefit to humanity by having all those Michael Jackson quality albums.

I don’t think it would change incentives much. Michael Jackson is a brand. Having procedurally generates Michael Jacksonish type music might be nice for elevator companies, but won’t impact his ticket sales that much. There are always lots of similar bands trying to emulate the most popular. Sometimes they success (Creed v. Pearl Jam) but many times the only way I would learn about them is by finding them in the dollar bin. I’m not sure what the present day equivalent is of the dollar CD box.

This is a political question not a scientific one.

We'll need to train a copyright-evaluating AI based on human judgments.

Funny enough, the patent office has similar questions about AI:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/08/27/2019-18...

https://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/

It might depend on if you have deep enough pockets to prove you are not violating copyright.

> itself clean of copyright infringement by showing that it was “inspired” but not derivative?

if a human did it, it would obviously be clean of copyright infringement. So why is it any different if an AI did it?

I think there is a perception that pure functions applied to input data produce derivatives. Humans assume that machines make derivatives, but humans are likely to apply their own experiences and interpretations. It is easier to convince people that a machine was not being “creative”.

AI can capture the skill and tone of the human and can replicate it in mass faster that the human could

And the problem is?

Copyright was created as a response to the printing press being able to copy and distribute. However, with the advent of AI, this may no longer be effective. But to use existing copyright laws to control the output of an AI is wrong. May be new laws are needed. Until then, i dont think copyright infringement apply to the output of an AI if the output would not already infringe copyright had it been done by a human.

You can “accidentally” lose your training set.

I think we should err on the side of non-infringement. After all, this is how our real brains work. As long as the works are perceived as nonrelated, it shouldnt matter if they come from someone else s dataset. The similarity could be put to the test by doing a double blind test with a group of humans

I think the method of creation is sometimes relevant. Like if you can prove that you wrote a poem before someone else did, but they registered the same work coincidentally I don’t think you will be treated the same as if it is shown that you copied. So it’s more than if the results are sufficiently novel to a blinded human... perhaps in the future this will be an area where you could be audited - forced to show your training sets or you will be assumed guilty???

I think there have been many, many similar copyright cases in music. E.g. composers have performed their composition method to prove originality. It would be surprising if judges started claiming that dataset companies have excusivity to all NN-derived works , and would seriously hold back progress.

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