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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

If a person learns how to paint expertly by looking at (and even copying, stroke for stroke) paintings, would you consider that immoral, and those paintings having been stolen? If not, what would you say the difference is?

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Morality aside, an artist who entirely copies someone else's work would be looked down upon because they are not original or creating anything novel or new.

So scribes were looked down upon in the middle ages for making copies of books before the printing press?

I think in the tech industry we get caught up on 'novel' and 'new' because duplication is cheap to the point of almost free.

Scribes were not authors. They were expected to copy. Bad faith.

Morality is the only thing I'm querying here. No point changing the topic.

The difference is that a human made the artistic stroke-for-stroke reproduction through human skill and expertise. Even a counterfeit painting is an exercise of perception and interpretation. The value is in the human's hand in the output.

That’s actually a good point. It is very much a non-trivial ability.

Making a lump of silicon generate a painting is far less trivial. That's not relevant. Being trained on paintings was described as stealing, and unless your argument is that stealing is easy so anything non-trivial can't be stealing, I don't see the relevance.

There is the notable difference in the speed and scale at which a computer can be trained. The analogy doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

So the analogy doesn't hold up because computer does it more efficiently?

That can be a valid reason to reject an analogy. For example, many people who would accept regular police patrols are not fine with the police installing a tireless ALPR scanner.

Well, in police scanner example, problem people have with it is not its efficacy, but rather other surrounding concerns (like privacy).

So if there were a genius painter that learned various artistic styles on sight you would say that their work had no value?

I think you might be in trouble there, a number of savants have been known throughout history who have been able to learn various things with no instruction and simply by hearing or seeing a work done by someone else have been able to recreate it or produce something in their style.

Being able to do something faster isn't automatically a moral principle. Even between two humans there will be big differences.

Have you read "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Borges?

Part of the conceit of the story is that even a mechanical copy of a known work can become something else because of the inner experience of the person reproducing it. Menard's Quixote, his fictional author thought, was different because Menard knew things and lived through things that Cervantes before him didn't, and so the exact same words are injected of different connotations because of this.

It's absurd, but it explores something about authorship.

ChatGPT and AI have no inner lives, no authorial perspective, and so they cannot use this defense. In their case, a copy is truly "stolen" with no additional value.

This is kind of a tired reasoning. I don’t know what the goal of this kind of reasoning is. The fact is that virtually no one learns or dies art this way. No one in any statistically meaningful amount has a photographic memory and uses such memory to create new art stroke by stroke.

There are many paintings that have been made following along to a Bob Ross video - using the same paints, the same brushes, and the same elements within the painting.

Even after following along and gaining the confidence to paint on their own, they continue to use the same approach to painting. Are those paintings afterwards derivative works and to be treated the same way as an AI painting asked to create a scene with certain elements in the stye of Bob Ross?

That is largely hobby painting and learning to paint. You’re conflating human skill to learn and adapt and go through a relaxing exercise to AI generated. It’s not a serious argument.

> learn and adapt and go through a relaxing exercise

The AI is learning. Why is one of those things stealing and not the other?

My question is "what is a derivative work?" This is equally applicable to images generated for a hobby as it is for professionals. It applies to art generated with a paintbrush and canvas, on a painting app on a digital tablet, and as generated though an AI model.

The definition of a derivative work is agnostic to the means to create it. The final product is what is being evaluated.

If the answer is "but the Bob Ross paintings that are derivative works by amateurs are never sold and only hung at home - it would only be an issue if they sold them or tried to display them publicly as described https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106 " - then I would agree.

If I create an image through any means - be it paint on canvas, stylus on tablet, or prompt and ML and don't violate 17 U.S. Code § 106 then there shouldn't be any issue.

If, however, I publish that image - again, no matter how it is created - then there is an issue. But it isn't the maker of the paints, or Adobe, or the creators of whatever ML model generated it. A program cannot hold a copyright and cannot itself create a derivative work. ( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-copyright-offic... ) and so the issue of creating and publishing a derivative work is upon the human who did it - not the computer.

If you want to sue someone for publishing an image generated as "create a landscape of San Francisco in the style of Pixar" then have Pixar go after the person who published that image. It doesn't matter what process created that image.

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