Still on the fence for whether or not you should be able to opt out of training (I'm sure many artists would love to "opt out" of humans looking at their art if the human intends to, or might, copy the artists' style at some point).
I am catastrophically unhappy at the prospect of a corporation ingesting a copy of my work and stuffing it into a for-profit machine without my permission. If my work ends up significantly influencing a generated image you love, nobody will ever know. You will never become a fan of my work through this. You will never contribute to my Patreon. You will never run into me at a convention and tell me how influential my work was to something in your life. Instead, the corporation will get another few pennies, and that is all.
Also, if anything, being included in a training set means you are already notorious. The big ones are usually trained on stock art or famous professionals/classics, and the ones trained by random people are going to use quality filters to get the best images of a specific subject. If you aren't already notorious, you simply will not make it into a set. The other possible motivation is spite, but that'll only happen if you participate in internet slapfights.
And...Patreon? Fans? Influence? "younger PRO" (so a non-pro doesn't count even if they are trying their best?) I sincerely recommend you choose sentences more carefully. Makes you sound phony and using art as a social strategy. When there's so much talk about art and its "soul" you really don't want to make yourself sound like art is a mere means to an end or you risk making the cold, calculating machine seem "purer".
Personally, art should be its own goal. I had plenty of time to stomach one isn't entitled to anything just because effort, so I just want to make my art better. And saves me from the trouble of chasing trends to stay relevant.
companies stealing your work isn't a thing that just happened to become possible because AI can make it easier to imitate. The real world scenario is much rather: _they just steal your existing work_
ever since I've been publishing my own illustrations I've always ran an image search on the stuff I've got on my homepage once or twice a year, and almost every time i did this I've found multiple individuals or companies who just used my illustrations for something without ever contacting me.
On the other hand, if my style was ever to become known and sought after enough for people prompting AIs with my name, I'm pretty confident that this would mean that:
A) I've grown big enough to have more inquiries than i could serve anyway and
B) The ones doing this are neither people or companies I'd liked to have as clients, nor would they have booked my services for the price I ask if it weren't for AI.
Big agencies with interesting clients couldn't allow themselves to risk their reputation with faking original work, and other large corporations that just don't give a fuck because they are ready to litigate if i challenge their usage are likely to have such reach that they'll end up still contributing to the desirability of my original artwork if they appropriate it. And the smaller ones, they fulfill premise B) on the one hand and would also feed the hype.
So I truly feel what actually bothers you, forever I've been drawing first and foremost because i want to inspire people to express themselves and make experience the same experiences I've had when loosing myself in a drawing. And i do think the bittersweetness of imaging AI remains that while some people will gain the confidence to DO try to express themselves creatively, others will at the same time never want to seek achieving this by their own physical skill and raw will.
But when it comes to myself and my art, I actually see only benefit and progression, regardless of what current dystopic scenarios might manifest :)
It could just mean AI can imitate above a certain "good enough" level the kind of style you and others working in a similar vain do (say "whimsical children illustrations") and all other styles besides, so once-would-have-been-customers now just use some AI stuff with a generic prompt.
In other words, AI aet doesn't have to request your specific name to affect you. It's enough that it provides art for many/most gigs that would now go to a human illustrator.
It would be hard to see just "good developments" when paying gigs dry out.
Most customers currently paying an artist will just slap some quick AI stuff and call it a day.
Big customers might still make it a matter of prestige or pride or "quality" differentiator to use "real human art" from some famous graphic designers, but that is like 1/1000 of the commercial gigs going on today.
We are making huge steps to promoting ourselves in last decades.
I think this is incredibly cool technology, but using other people's property without their consent is stealing (I'm not talking about legality, but morality here).
The second reason why it's not the same is that people can't look at X million pictures and become proficient in thousands of different art styles. So, again its not legality but more about ethics.
I guess different people have lower moral standards than others, and that's always been part of the human condition.
With all that out of the way, I think artists won't get replaced, because these tools don't really produce anything... Substantial on their own. An artist still needs to compose them to tell a story. So, all this nonsense about how it will replace artists is misguided. It can only replace some parts of an artist's workflow.
I know there was an art competition where someone won with a piece that was AI-aided, but honestly it looked like colour sludge. The only thing that was really well executed in it was the drama created by the contrast from sharp changes in values near the centre of that work, and something vaguely resembling a humanoid silhouette against it. You could've called it abstract art if you squinted.
Do you think ChatGPT should not be allowed to read books and join ideas across them without paying the original authors for their contribution to the thought?
I have a bit of cognitive dissonance on the subject of blog posts or articles in general, since those are kinda public domain? But I still think it should be opt in/out-able.
I realise I'm also a bit of a hypocrite since I've enjoyed playing with these AI tools myself, and I realise they'd be nowhere as cool if they didn't have access to such large datasets.
In order for blog posts (or other written works) to be in the public domain, authors must explicitly waive those rights. But, not that it needs saying, copyright's applicability in training data is basically the entire subject of debate right now. https://creativecommons.org/2023/02/17/fair-use-training-gen...
So my assumption was that anything trained on it will just help further expand that knowledge.
Although I do realise now as I'm typing this—AI could diminish their audience, clout and motivation, which isn't what I'd want.
If you don't like it, don't sign the contract.
Yeah, I think Adobe is a publisher and as such, you give it distribution rights. So, I agree with you on this case.
Slightly tangential, but Imagine a singer or actor's voice of face being used without their consent just because the publisher has rights to distribute their performance. That probably wouldn't fly very well, and I assume this doesn't fly with some artists either (even though they signed a contract).
I assume publishers will probably have an AI consent form soon.
It's all very exciting, and I hope we don't ruin it with greed and disregard for the works of the very people that made these technologies so successful. Like, if it weren't for the scraped works, the AI feats would've been both much more underwhelming and and much more expensive to train.
Instead of lower morality, I'd say it's selective morality.
I bet quite a few artists (rightfully) feeling threatened by this phenomenon would have absolutely no problem watching a pirated movie, using an ad blocker, read paywall-stripped articles, the like....whilst this is principally the same thing: taking the work of others without consent or compensation.
Are you saying all those art styles are original? They are not. Artists influence artists. Sometimes the influence is strong, other times just a glimmer.
Perhaps the burden of responsibility shouldn't be on Ai machine learning, but the human prompt author who chooses the instruction: "...in the style of Jo Blow". Who owns the ethical dilemma in that case? Who is being unfair to Jo Blow in that case? I'm quite certain whoever wrote the prompt is 100% responsible.
I could be wrong, but you seem to imply originality is a made up concept? Do original thoughts even exist?
Are our comments original or just regurgitation?
Do you believe nothing ever created throughout history is original then?
If you believe originality does exist, where and how do you draw the line?
I don't think people are as boring as you think they are. Or maybe you just don't appreciate art. I can't tell. Some people say they do, but they really don't.
And further, even if we do ignore originality as a concept and pretend for the sake of the argument it doesn't exist, someone still values that style or approach to creation. That probably makes a living based on the subjective value it brings to the table. They sold their work. An AI company now profits off of their work, having used it in an algorithm, without paying anything to those artists.
As an experiment: Give me an example of something you've made yourself that you valued enough to sell, and then tell me why I deserve to have it for free. Maybe that will help me understand. Maybe you can work for me for free?
If none of their work was original or valuable, why even train on it, and why can you even ask for "in style of X"?
Also, the approach of waving responsibility onto individuals is too naïve. If that worked, we'd not need laws or any type of regulation.
Anyway, even with this diatribe I still don't think AI is a bad thing or that it will replace people or or their work—in its current iteration at least. It'll probably improve it, but I certainly understand why people feel violated.
The keyword you missed is "style". Your word, that I quoted.
As in, "the style of that artist". I wasn't referring to individual pieces of original art.
"Black and white street photography, gritty contrast, low wide angles, urban decay, weathered characters"... could be a style shared by many, that Ai learns.
Nobody owns a "style". A style is merely a convenient way to describe art. It belongs to the art critic more than the artist.
Many have made art in the style of say Andy Warhol - minimal flat colors, mass produced product imagery. Or surrealist styles, "like Dali", with dreamscapes, imaginary landscapes, twisted architecture and optical illusions. Things Ai can learn without being accused of stealing. Unless you're arguing a kind of "theft of humanity".
> Also, the approach of waving responsibility onto individuals is too naïve.
You want others to take responsibility for your actions?
Prompt: "image like Jon Doe's fantasy illustrations"... Prompting with intent. That's on you, not others to regulate your adult choices.
Before Ai, you could hire an artist to help you learn the style of another artist, living or dead. Maybe a drawing style you like. So you hire a skilled artist to point you in the right direction for acquiring a similar result with the pencil. Nothing ethically unsound there. Ai just skips the lessons and time it takes you to draw in the style of your favourite artist. Nothing has been stolen.
Sorry I miss-interpreted a little.
I guess we disagree on what style means maybe:
> Black and white street photography, gritty contrast, low wide angles, urban decay, weathered characters"... could be a style shared by many, that Ai learns.
I still think there's a lot more individual flavour in art that can't be captured with words.
You described a specific art style in your example, and within that there's probably a plethora that fit that description roughly, but there's often a unique signature every artists brings to the table through different application and mixture of those "sub styles" and techniques.
You can try to reduce Matt Inman's (Oatmeal) style to "line art, blobs for humans, vivid colours, absurdist face expressions, comic" etc, and spend ages explaining to an AI to steal the style, and it wouldn't get it probably, but just slapping "in style of Oatmeal" would probably get you very close.
Similar for xkcd, Oglaf, specific anime styles, concept artists (often time this is what gets them hired). They all have a flavour of style that's unique to them even if they use similar approaches and techniques. All manga or anime is in the similar vein of line art, but Miyazaki Hayao is indisputably Hayao; any fan of anime will recognise his style immediately. If this weren't true, nobody would be putting "in style of X", they'd just be saying "{generic technique}" instead.
Listing the individual composition of technique won't really get you close to how they work, but saying "in style of X" gets you crazy close.
You bring up a bunch of dead and famous artists, but ignore the fact that their styles can only be mimiced because they were studied. And they can only be mimced by someone with enough knowledge the theory behind the techniques composed to achieve the style, and the skills they spent years building to to execute it.
> You want others to take responsibility for your actions?
No, but the problem is that currently nobody is being held responsible. Not the model devs for using works without consent, nor the actors benefitting from it. For example, Fiverr is currently flooded with AI scam artists who get away with saying "in style of X" without even having a basic comprehension or intuition what that style is composed off, much less be able to describe the style intelligently. Everyone's turning a blind eye, artists are protesting, and people there's people saying "yes, this is the way it's meant to be".
You can't expect everyone to have the same moral standards as you do. If it's you create a tool and put it into the world, people will use/abuse it. That's just the way it is.
Who should be responsible? Like I agree with you that the profiteers abusing this "in style of X" are much worse and bigger assholes than the people developing the models, but nonconsensual use of someone else's work without their consent, or without any way to prevent abuse of that content (eg by properly anonymising the training data, at the very least) is also bad. The devs didn't even pay a one-time fee to the artists to use their work; which is IMO the rock bottom expectations of decency. They just paid to get the training set, which was probably collated through some scummy ToS loophole.
So they're eating the market of someone who spent a lot of time developing a unique style. Can these artists use the tools? Yeah, and I hope they do, but I still think it's a bit ludicrous how easy it is for me (or anyone else) to mimic a style someone spent years building, with a few words. And that's "thanks" to that artist trying to build a name for themselves. So the clout the artist tried to build is literally coming to bite them in the ass. Not to mention the fact their good will of sharing artwork with the internet is also coming to bite them in the ass too.
It's crazy to me people are being so incredibly flippant about the livelihood, careers and lives of other people.
Anyway. I'm happy to agree to disagree with you on this. It's an incredibly complex subject, and I wish people weren't so dismissive of... Well, other people. And if you feel like you aren't: you are; you're just oblivious to it.
Anyway, I hope I'm wrong and you're right, and maybe there won't be any detrimental effect to artists and art. But given how many scammers are already abusing this, I'm incredibly doubtful.
> "indisputably Hayao; any fan of anime will recognise his style immediately"
No they wouldn't. If you're talking about a still frame, nobody can be certain who the artist is. Why? Because LOTS of artists make similar work. You think there's an indisputable signature in every drawing from every artist? There really isn't.
There may be an obvious signature, such as placing an "upside down umbrella" in every piece they make. But the Ai won't copy the umbrella, because that would be replicating the work rather than style.
There are books about Miyazaki's style, authored by him that go into detail and share everything from concept sketches to the use of computer graphics in his films. It's all there in the books he wrote explaining and SHARING his techniques with the world. But what he can't share, and what can't be replicated with prompts, is the brilliance of the storytelling that threads the vast body of visual work to create the whole.
> unique style
Again, you're claiming an artist's style is unique, when in fact the vast majority of "styles" are blends of other styles and influences. No artist was born in a bubble.
Even if there is a unique visual signature, so what? It's not the heart of the work. It's a preferential technical characteristic.
Not only that, but this world is saturated with images. Even in music, it's difficult to come up with an original riff that doesn't sound like an existing song. The musician, in order to be awarded "originality", needs to use the full 3 minutes of the song to involve lyrics and other elements before something truly "unique" emerges.
You think there's an infinite bucket of "styles" visual artists can tap into? There isn't.
Content choices and narrative choices are more important anyway. For example, the artist may have something to say about humans being cogs in the machine. Sounds interesting. Such concepts form part of the style and reputation of the artist. People follow artists largely because of their artistic substance.
You're too focused on visual technique. The guts of any good artwork is the whole package, including the symbolism and balance of meaning in the work.
What is the artist SAYING with the work. Ai won't help prompters with quality of symbolic meaning, concepts and interlinking symbolism, subtext, balance of imagery, subtle visual tension... all the things that make ART ART -- the ESSENCE of art is found in the body of work.
So... Ai can generate a sci-fi robot running through the city, and your concern is this impedes the profit margin of real artists pumping out the same generic stuff? Sorry, but I won't shed a tear for the loss of artistic mediocrity in a world saturated with stock images.
Artists are adaptable, and should be doing a lot more than selling robot images to stock art collections anyway. Time to level up. Nothing wrong with Ai keeping us on our toes.
I think the only part we maybe disagree is on the importance of style as a form of expression. I think style is a big part of it (or mixture of styles). To me, there was a style-space where each technique is a dimension (kinda like a colourspace), you can position yourself anywhere within that space. And I think that the choice of that position matters to artists a lot. It doesn't matter _for_ the artist, but it matters _to_ the artist. They could've spent a long time searching the style space to find their own individual style, and it's a part of their art. Maybe thinking about styles mathematically here is a mistake here?
To me it feels unfair their efforts to build this style is being treated dismissively by some. I don't think you yourself treat it dismissively, since you seem to appreciate art too. But I don't think every employer in need of art will see it like that.
Also, I as I read your reply and thought about the topic a bit and you partially changed my mind:
I believe established artists won't be impacted by this, but I fear that certain entry-level positions in some industries will be jeopardised by AI. I'm not even sure why I think this. Maybe it's no more than a hunch based on what I've seen happening to people in entry positions already being treated like throwaways in film and game industry.
An alternative and more optimistic way to look at it would be that entry-level positions will evolve to be more quality/fulfilling work. I hope that's what happens, then.
I also think it's hard to sufficiently develop in any field if you don't do some of the "grunt work" too. I guess I'm not a trained nor is art my career (just a self-taught hobby). So, maybe the exploration and development of styles isn't as big of a deal as I make it out to be for day-to-day artists. Maybe they do the grunt work in art school?
You mentioned mediocre art and stock images. I know what you mean, but I also think that's just a phase lot of people go through. Nobody is born a great artist (or anything else), they become it. People need to start somewhere.
I think it's all very complicated... This is somewhat tangentially related (which I think was the real thing that sent me down this spiral, more than anything else): I wish the artists' wishes about their works were treated with more respect by the people training the models, since I think it's difficult to expect every user of the tool to do the same. Or allow them to opt in and be compensated for their works.
Anyway, thank you for indulging me in this long thread! :)
I’m pretty sure that would be a death knell for art. Where are these mythical artists who have never looked at anyone else’s art?
Those people got in trouble for recreating specific works, or creating new works in his style and defrauding people by saying they were originals. Safe to say that not disclosing "this is not actually a work created by <artist>, just in their style" would be grounds for fraud, especially if you were to sell it.
It's about actually being able to use that content legally (and commercially) that matters to most in this conversation.
Yes you are allowed to read closed-source, proprietary code and become a better programmer for it.
I've decompiled games to learn how they structure their code to improve the structure of games that I program. I had no right to that code and I used it to become a better programmer just like AI do.
That's not copyright infringement. You have a right to stop me from using your code, not learning from it.
So, yes: They have a right to stop you from "learning" from their code. If you want that right, see if they're willing to sell that right to you.
They absolutely do not, and as pedantic as it may be I think it's very important that you and everyone else in this thread know what their rights are.
If you sign a contract / EULA that says you cannot decompile someone's code than yes you are liable for any damages promised in that contract for violating it.
But who says that I ever signed a EULA for the games I decompiled? Who says I didn't find a copy on a hard drive I bought at a yard sale or someone sent me the decompiled binary themselves?
Those people may have violated the contract but I did not.
There is no law preventing you from learning from code, art, film or any other copyrighted media. Nor is there any law (or should there be any law IMO) that stops an AI from learning from copyrighted media.
Learning from each other regardless of intellectual property law is how the human race advances itself. The fact that we've managed to that automate human progress is incredible, and it's very good that our laws are the way they are that we can allow that to happen.
I asked if I can learn from that code, which obviously I can. There is no license that says "You cannot learn from this code and take the things you learn to become a better programmer".
That's exactly what I do and it's exactly what AI do.
But fundamentally the problem is copyright, the copying of existing IP, not knowledge. grondo4 is completely correct that there is no legal framework that prevents learning from closed-source IP.
If such a framework existed, clean room design would not work. The initial spec-writers in a clean room design are reading the protected work.
Right. And they're only exposing elements presumably not covered by copyright to the developers writing the code. (Of course, this assumes they had legitimate access to the code in the first place.)
Clean room design isn't a requirement in the case of, say, writing a BIOS which may have been when this first came up. But it's a lot easier to defend against a copyright claim when it's documented that the people who wrote the code never saw the original.
Unlike with patents, independent creation isn't a copyright violation.
What are you contesting?
Did you actually read the link you were given? Clean room design is because you may inadvertently plagiarize copyrighted works from your memory of reading it.
i.e. the act of reading may cause accidental infringement when implementing the "things you learn"
You're describing thought crime right now. It's not illegal to learn things.
That's completely different from reading and learning from code, which is what grondo described.
Clean room design relies on this, in a clean room design you have one party read and describe the protected work, and another party implement it. That first party reading the protected work is learning from closed-source IP.
AI (e.g. copilot) has already been shown to break copyright of material in its training set. Thats the context of this whole thread.
If an AI infringes on copyright then it infringes on copyright, that's unfortunate for the distributors of that code.
Humans accidentally infringe on copyright sometimes too. It's not a unique problem to machine learning. The potential to infringe on copyright has not made observing/learning/watching/reading copyright materials prohibited for humans, nor should it or (likely) will it become prohibited for machine learning algorithms.
Grondo said that AI should be given access to all code, including private and unlicensed code.
He was given a link to Clean Room Design demonstrating the problem with the same entity (the AI) reading and learning from the existing code and the risk of regurgitation when writing new code.
He goes on to say thats what he does, which doesn't change that fact.
> Humans accidentally infringe on copyright sometimes too.
Indeed we do, and its almost entirely unnoticed, even by the author.
> nor should it or (likely) will it become illegal for machine learning algorithms.
If those machine learning algorithms are taking in unlicensed material and then they later output unlicensed and/or copyrighted material, then they are a liability. Why would you want that when you can train it otherwise and be sure it NEVER infringes others IP? Its a no-brainer, surely. Or are you assuming there is some magic inherent in other peoples private code?
Because it could produce a better model that produces better code.
You're now arguing a heavily reduced point. That a model that trained on proprietary code is at higher risk of reproducing infringing code is not a point under contention. The clean room serves the same purpose, it is a risk mitigation strategy.
Risk mitigation is a choice, left up to individuals. Maybe you use a clean room design, maybe you don't. Maybe you use a model trained on closed-source IP, maybe you don't. There are risks associated with these choices, but that is up to individuals to make.
The choice to observe closed source IP and learn from it shouldn't be prohibited just because some won't want to assume that risk.
Surely you know this isn't the case right? Maybe you're confused because we're talking about programming and not a different creative artform?
Great artists read, watch and consume copyrighted works of art all day, if they didn't they wouldn't be great artists. And yet the content they produce is entirely there own, free from the copyright of the works they learned from.
What's the difference then in programming? Why can an artist be trusted not to reproduce the copyrighted works that they learned from but not the programmer?
Every author reads books
Every painter view paintings
Unless you're arguing that every single artist across every field of artistic expression is constantly being jeopardized by claims of copyright infringement, this is a nonsensical point to make.
They cant. which is why that quote "Good artists copy, great artists steal" exists.
AI has already been shown to be "accidentally" reproducing copyrighted work. You too, can do the same.
Its likely no-one (including yourself) will ever be aware of it - but strictly speaking it would still be copyright infringement. This is the relevance and context of the link you were given.
Did you acquire it illegally? That's illegal.
Was it publicly available? That's fine, so long as you aren't producing exact copies and violate normal copyright law.
Once we have adopted the attitude that we can just copy as we please without attribution, it would be much more difficult to find motivated artists, and we would have failed as a society.
Your argument is based on the idea that you and AI should have the same rights?
I do not see how this works unless AI going to be entitled to minimum wage and paid leave?
Otherwise it is just a money grab