Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

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Hi Joel,

Given that nVidia has a pretty clear license saying that their model and all derivates may only be used non-commercially (https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2/blob/cec605e0834de5404d5...) and Artbreeder is clearly commercial (https://artbreeder.com/pricing) but is using StyleGAN (https://artbreeder.com/i?k=755521d9fe07456286a06f06), do you feel that Artbreeder is intentionally violating nVidia's license?

For what it's worth, I fully support your project and I nearly launched something similar myself. But many people choose not to do projects such as yours due to licensing considerations, and I'm wondering in general how to reconcile the moral dilemma. On one hand, nVidia almost certainly doesn't care. On the other hand, they did say very clearly "thou shalt not use this model, or any derivative thereof, commercially."

(It's tempting to believe the license only covers the code, not the model. But the same license appears in their download drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QHc-yF5C3DChRwSdZKcx...)

Hi there! Good question, it's one I get a lot and don't mind.

First off, I am not a lawyer but have consulted them. A lot of this is a gray area and not well defined. As you mention, there is the code, the given models, models fine-tuned on those models, models trained from scratch, using styelgan reimplementations, etc. Even with the license being included there does not mean that the output of a model trained from scratch counts as derivative work. And technically I just sell things like upscaling, keeping images private, google sync etc and provide unlimited image creating for free (not sure if that would hold up in court but I think it's relevant). So, no I do not think I am violating the license. But some lawyers may feel differently.

Also, I try hard to cite everything involved. Google was thrilled by my use of the biggan model and how it showed off the model. With the amount of money I have spent on Nvidia cards, I hope they are happy too :)

and then image ownership is a whole other question. Everything in arbreeder is CC0 to keep things simple https://artbreeder.com/terms.pdf

Best, Joel

Are you saying that Artbreeder is using a model trained from scratch?

If so, was that a recent change? When I checked several months ago, your latent space sliders were compatible with nVidia's FFHQ model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23149739

The only explanation seemed to be that Artbreeder was fine-tuned from nVidia's released FFHQ model.

To rephrase the question: It seems like you were using nVidia's model (or a fine-tuned version) at some point in the past. At the time, you were also selling subscriptions via your pricing page. Do you just sort of ignore the legal implications and hope that it never becomes an issue?

(That's sometimes an effective strategy.)

^ IANAL, but I could imagine it being a slightly less effective strategy if he replies here in the affirmative.

How does that image link tell you which specific model they use?

Answering that requires a bit of technical detail.

If you click "Edit Genes" (e.g. on the upper-right of https://artbreeder.com/i?k=755521d9fe07456286a06f06) you'll find a bunch of sliders. StyleGAN uses sliders like this to control various facial features. For any given StyleGAN model, you can find a slider for a given attribute as follows: Create a classifier for that attribute (for example, "blond hair" probability), generate 50,000 or so outputs from the model, classify each image, then plot a fitted line through all 50k latents. You now have a blonde hair slider for your specific model.

Ok, but sliders aren't unique to nVidia's licensed model. How do we check?

Suppose Artbreeder used a model that was trained from scratch. Since it has a random initialization, its latent space wouldn't be compatible at all with nVidia's FFHQ model. Sliders on Artbreeder wouldn't work with nVidia's model, and vice-versa. A "blond hair" slider for Artbreeder would result in nonsense when applied to nVidia's model.

Artbreeder has an API, through which you can get the latent vector of any given image. You can use this to extract Artbreeder's sliders as follows: Extract the latent vector for a given Artbreeder image; move a slider to the maximum setting; extract the latent vector for the result; subtract the two latent vectors. Presto, you now have the slider.

If you add the resulting slider values to nVidia's FFHQ model, you will find that they control the same facial features on both Artbreeder and nVidia's FFHQ model. They don't match exactly – Artbreeder appears to be fine-tuned from nVidia's base model – but it's very close. So it's clearly derivative, and thus falls under nVidia's "no commercial usage for derivative work" restriction.

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