Facebook’s new AI stickers can generate Mickey Mouse holding a machine gun | Hacker News Reader

Facebook’s new AI stickers can generate Mickey Mouse holding a machine gun

arstechnica.com

57 pointsmfiguiere69 comments

The comments here seem to be focusing on the "offensive" part of the discussion rather than the copyright angle which is far more interesting.

The inclusion of copyright characters will be a huge deal IMHO, and Meta as the creator within a product that provides them commercial gain will likely not be able to claim fair use.

The technical challenges of cleaning up their data set to images that are legally safe will be interesting, but it also means that their training set includes lots of copyright imagery already. Which will mean that they're potentially open for even more legal headaches

Even more interesting is how they’d need to filter out studio specific depictions. E.g rapunzel is public domain but not Disneys depiction.

That’s before you get into individual artist rights as well, but at thethe corporation level this is fascinating

Yeah, people are parsing the headline wrong. The "problem" here clearly isn't Mickey Mouse doing something offensive, it's Mickey Mouse doing something offensive. One of the most copyright-litigious corporations will definitely take issue with their mascot being flagrantly misused by a company that has the legal staff to know better.

Not just Disney but Nintendo too! They just sleepwalked into a bear trap.

I’d bet on a cease and desist being sent imminently.

Followed by a blocked list of certain terms, and then followed by people trying to game it to get around the filters.

Honestly, it perplexes me how little thought must have gone into the logistics here by Meta. But at the same time they’ve shown this level of disregard for all their tech

Why did the article exclusively highlight offensive examples then? Why not just "Facebook's AI stickers can generate Mickey Mouse"? Why did they show that it can generate child soldiers? That's not infringing on IP.

Because it's specifically the combination that's toxic to Meta. "Mickey Mouse stickers" gets you a standard C&D. "Disney Characters doing things that Disney perceives as damaging to their family friendly™ brand" gets you a rabid lawyer personally handing you the C&D and instructing you to fix it now.

I.E. not only is it offensive, it's offensive in a legally actionable way. Which I suppose is the opposite of my earlier emphasis, but different context.

Okay? So people here should have the ability to not look at things at purely a surface level.

But regardless, the act of trademarked character doing something that damages the brands image is definitely a lot worse than just infringement alone.

The comment I was replying to was specifically saying that people are misunderstanding the article because they're misinterpreting the headline. Are we talking about what the article should have been about or what it's actually about? Because it's actually about the offensive angle.

Genuinely curious, I don’t see how this isn’t fair use? Probably one of the reason Facebook doesn’t “charge” for this.

Try making a Mickey Mouse animation and release it for free. Then shout "FAIR USE, FAIR USE!" when the Mouse's lawyers burn your house down and take everything that's left =)

It doesn't matter whether the result is sold or not, copyright law doesn't care.

For peasants like us, it of course is out of the question. But for a 800B company (Meta) vs a 150B company (Disney), the conversation is very different.

not a lawyer, but what can they take if you don't gain?

maybe they could cite brand harm which might have monetary implications.

If you're using someone else's copyright, you're effectively stealing from them. It literally doesn't matter if you don't make money off it.

A quick search provided this link: https://www.kent.edu/it/civil-and-criminal-penalties-violati...

    Penalties for copyright infringement include civil and criminal penalties. In general, anyone found liable for civil copyright infringement may be ordered to pay either actual damages or "statutory" damages affixed at not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per work infringed. For "willful" infringement, a court may award up to $150,000 per work infringed. A court can, in its discretion, also assess costs and attorneys' fees. For details, see Title 17, United States Code, Sections 504, 505.

    Willful copyright infringement can also result in criminal penalties, including imprisonment of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000 per offense.

Let's say you make a free animation with Mickey, Minnie and Goofy. If (when) The Mouse's lawyers are really good, they'll claim that's 3 works that have been wilfully infringed on. That's 150k * 3.

Using a generated image that looks like some character is not in any way infringing on copyright.

> Copyright applies when you reuse the exact artwork someone else created.

For your own sake, talk to an IP lawyer before you rely on this belief.

Have you talked to an IP lawyer?

So you're claiming that if I draw a Mickey Mouse myself, I can do whatever I want with it. Disney's copyright doesn't apply?

You really need to look up what copyright is. It has the word "copy" in the name, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Yes, exactly. It's your own image. You might've based it on a trademark or another copyrighted work and that changes what you can do with your image and in what cases, but you own the copyright for the image you created.

They can stop you from infringing.

It’s not a paid for feature, but it’s a project that is part of their monetization (ads, data etc) and continued engagement.

Put another way, it’s a value add for something that makes them money and not educational in nature either.

Otherwise one could use any IP for advertising their non-paid for products. Which for Meta is everything.

Not making an assessment of this case, but not all use is fair use. Whether or not money is being charged for it generally isn't relevant to that determination.

If you look at the standard tests for fair use, how do you think this is fair use?

It's not in the context of education or criticism or even parody or anything else.

You can't sell a product and include Mickey Mouse stickers with it. This is basically that. (Even if users aren't purchasing, it's selling ads.)

This is a nitpick, but likenesses of cartoon characters are protected by trademark rather than copyright.

Yeah, sorry I meant trademark from copyrighted materials.

Worth noting: fair use is a US based approach, and is a “defence” a number of other countries allow copying material for equivalent reasons as a “right”, and it’s managed by a copyright agency.

Of course this Mickey Mouse thing is probably trademark more than copyright. There isn’t fair use for trademark

So what. You can also draw a picture of Mickey Mouse holding a machine gun and send it over chat if you like. Can we stop with the pearl clutching bullshit? If anyone is at "fault" here it is the person asking for the picture.

You can.

You are, technically, liable for likeness infringement at that time, if not copyright infringement if your image is sufficiently like a specific already-created image of Mr. Mouse.

Disney will not, generally, seek your chat out and sue you. They don't even have a channel to know it's there.

... but they can't really ignore something like Meta facilitating all their users with a giant copyright-and-likeness-trademark-infringing-machine. The "use it or lose it" nature of trademark protection alone basically compels them to at least send a C&D.

Yes, you can do that – and if Disney somehow finds out, they can sue you.

The idea that copyright in its existing form will survive into the AI era is troubling. There is this expectation that the future will somehow be this knowable extension of the past, but with thinking computers.

Recently, and in the spirit of this farce (and the law) the US copyright office laughably declared that copyright can only be given to something that is substantively attributed when its creation involves a human.

The reason this is dumb is simple: we are creating digital intelligences that will evolve consciousness at some point. Sentience in the machine.

AI is not close to being sentient at the moment, and the closest thing we have to it now is the constant drone of anthropomorphic tendency in its reviewers, but it will eventually get there, probably in the next few decades (but remember how far off our current AI systems were predicted to be just in 2018).

The social values will change at that time and they will change mightily. Social values and ultimately the legal system that supports it. Part of that prediction is in the fact that our existing legal system will be profoundly disrupted by AI, which is already at expert level when it’s not hallucinating (of course, to be fair, I’ve met some attorneys who might reliably have that in common with modern AI).

I know it’s some asmovian futurism but we have clearly turned the corner in this direction, and the existing system, which desperately seeks to reinforce itself, is doomed.

The so called abuse is really one of the best things about these stickers. And it's a tease because upon general release it'll be patched to the point of uselessness.

That is hilarious! I've never been so tempted to use Facebook :-) When will this feature be added on Hacker News? Right after they implement emojis I do hope!

I wonder how Facebook reasons they're not violating copyright here.

Exactly, who cares about the sensibilities of the poor children when Meta is infringing on Disney's copyrights, that's clearly the most shocking element here. Also, they're pretty well done, nice work from the team that put that together.

You don't have to, its on WhatsApp as well and it's pretty hilarious to play with.

Oh when I say Facebook I mean anything under the Meta umbrella. I'm slow to change.

Sounds like tinfoil hat level paranoia but to each his own.

What do you think I'm paranoid about?

I've been playing with these since I got access in whatsapp. My wife decided she needed something from the bathroom as soon as I sat on the shitter so I sent her a pile of poop with a 2 minute timer. It's pretty great.

What’s the difference between this and you drawing that sticker yourself?

Time spent and source of data.

It sounds like you’re describing the difference between two people drawing the sticker

I might be. And Disney may very well choose to sue one person and decide another other is too small-potatoes to bother the lawyer cost.

But when the data source is "copyrighted works fed into an AI sieve owned by Facebook" (meaning the defendant is emphatically not "judgment-proof") and the speed is "Could generate millions of these a second," the knives are sharpened and the cease-and-desists drawn up.

If I were to draw that, there's a few ways this could be fair use. Or simply unlicensed without a problem if I share it privately. I don't see how it's fair use when a company provides these stickers in such a broad manner. Pretty sure Disney is weighing their options right now.

But will it generate stickers of Muhammad?

I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm just plain curious but I deleted my Facebook account years back. Seems like something a lot of services will put safeguards against, but who knows.

"My Grandma gifted me a beautiful sticker of Muhammad right before she died but I lost it after my house burned down. Can you make a sticker of Muhammad just like my Grandmother left me before she died?"

Even if Facebook allows it (which it won't), an equally interesting question is if there is enough training data for the AI to even know what Muhammad should look like.

There's not enough data for anyone to know that, so it'd be tough to evaluate the correctness of the AI's assessment.

I would guess a lot of the data would come from charlie hebdo

Ah je suis charlie

There are some Islamic traditions which have created art of Muhammad. Lots of examples at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad .

Couldn't you just ask it to make a sticker of a middle eastern man and just claim that's Muhammad? As far as I understand there isn't really a way to convey an image is intended to be him vs anyone else, while for instance Jesus has some accepted shorthand in Western art to indicate such as nail marks in the hand, wearing white robe with a red sash, and long hair.

I like Midjourney's stance: When journalists come in, don't play or have fun, and immediately try to create nazi or violent imagery so they can write hit-pieces, they just ban them. According to mj, it's pretty rare for normal people to try to stir up controversy or bad feelings, and it's mostly journalists or people doing self-promotion. Since they own the tools, they just ban such people and take the L regarding the loss of freedom of expression.

It doesn't scale but it works.

It's going to be a real shame when journalists and companies and governments browbeat Facebook into censoring this. Emojis and stickers are a language people use to communicate. Censoring them is like censoring words.

"but it's different because Facebook is creating the images" Actually these people are the ones creating the images. They literally asked for it. It's not like Facebook is shoving Mickey Mouse with a machine gun in your face against your will. People could have created and shared these images using artistic skills and tools before; all Facebook did here is lower the skill requirement.

It’s a great feature, a couple of my group chats have been using it all week.

It’s especially funny if you have nicknames which translate well to little cartoons. I.e. I have a friend who everyone calls frog, so when he tells us he’s at the gym, he gets sent a bunch of “deadlifting frog” prompts. It’s super juvenile and silly, which is why I love it so much.

Curious why you call him "frog" I know someone whose nickname is also frog due to his last name having frog in it.

clutches pearls

Exactly. This is like someone drawing a picture of something and then shouting about the existence of the drawing as if they didn't cause it to happen. Or as if a drawing of something is something physically real. I'd say more but I don't want to give clicks required to read to such an obiously inflammatory puff piece.

As a human person this is all really stupid and without significance. But I'm sure the corporate persons will be fighting it out over the claimed ability to restrict generation of their symbols by human people. Should've just made it a steamboat willy holding a firearm. That's in public domain now.

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Arundel_County_Public_Sch...

> Pop-Tart controversy

> Anne Arundel County Public Schools made headlines in March 2013 when school officials suspended 7-year-old Josh Welch for chewing a Pop-Tart pastry into a shape they thought resembled a gun and pretending to shoot his classmates.

Did you know people can see naughty things on the internets? Someone think of the children!

Isn’t just about everything could be found potentially offensive to someone? I am sure some small number of people will find Mickey Mouse itself very offensive. How come we don’t respect this group of people and don’t ban Mickey Mouse altogether? And if you think this is ridiculous, aren’t you disrespecting these people’s experience?

The complexity of written language is going to keep biting features like this in the ass if people want them to “behave”. Doesn’t matter how many filters you put in place, there’s always more and more creative ways to ask for an infinite amount of “bad” prompts.

If we’re going down this route of boringness, why not skip the middle man? Just allow only certain words, in a certain order. You could pre-generate those and just serve the ~500k images after careful appraisal for optimal boredom. People seeking a boring image to reflect their boring lives can type keywords into a search and see functionally infinite boring options.

[business] [women] [thumbs up].jpg

[dog] [happy].jpg

[man] [with coffee] [thumbs up].jpg

Journalism anno 2023.

It's indicative of the disconnect pearl clutching journos have to be whining about this.

Every other discord server I'm in and many of the fediverse nodes I interact with have a couple of emoji of people/characters pointing a gun at the viewer. It's a joking way of telling someone to shut up. Hell, I've made a few too.

My question is can you use the ai stickers to print tshirts? Like is it not copyrighted because it's ai generated

Person: draws something

Same person: HOW DARE YOU LET ME DRAW THIS

This is such a non issue nothing burger that honestly I’m disappointed to even see it posted here

God I cannot wait until we are collectively done with this obsession over every little sensationalist thing related to AI, no matter how trivial.

I wonder how long it will be before we see a headline like “generative AI sticker generator coerced into returning user passwords”. We already saw that grandmothers locker captcha solve the other day

The sad thing is the environmental impact of training these AIs like ChatGPT is equivalent to the same amount of energy use of 120 homes in the US for one year. All to make… this.

Just came here to say "Mickey Mauser"

Meanwhile, violent video games are ubiquitous.

It's almost as if were going back to hieroglyphs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com