Disney's Loki faces backlash over reported use of generative AI
theverge.com
theverge.com
A human-made poster uses a stock photo for the background, which is suspected to be AI.
This is such a non-issue.
Only some of the copyright issues. The issue of whether AI creations are protected by copyright, for example, would remain.
Long story short is that they played ball with every demand the recording industry made regarding how selling audio clips would work when other nascent music store experiments wouldn't. Industry gets to dictate quality? Got it. Online store releases after physical releases? Got it. Encrypted? Strongest stuff the government will let us put in.
And then one day... Apple just stopped selling the music encrypted. The recording industry had a bloody fit about it. And Apple's response was "Well, customers hate it. And honestly, who else will you do business with? You gave us all the contracts. What are you gonna do, found your own software companies from scratch to compete with us? If that was on the table you'd have done it already. You don't know how." It took a little while for streaming alternatives to crop up, but it was amazing to watch Apple call an entire industry's bluff.
All this to say... Wouldn't be the first time a content gatekeeping industry's myopia let it become the instrument of its own unmaking. People heavily invested in the old model have some of the hardest challenges fully realizing what new model novel technology can enable.
I predict the Disneys of the world will discover that their memetic monopolies become badly challenged in a world where content creation is so cheap that, while of course they can build their staple of wholly-owned IP for AI generation... So can everyone else, which means the shape of the competitive field will change, close to overnight. And if they try to compete by standing in front of the tide and bidding it to not come in, they'll eventually be cut down by someone who promises to give them everything they want... And then takes their empire from them.
Far too many people make their fortunes gatekeeping access to resources.
"Disney" isn't the culprit here!
Acceptable to whom? Consumers? Or Luddites and a guild whose interests aren’t entirely aligned with consumers?
I am no fan of Disney, but they appear to have been doing everything by the book.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hollywood_labor_dispute...
So not sure why it needs a mention in the article.
Edit: I stand corrected, not all of the strikes are over. However it does seem like coverage of it basically ended once the writers strike ended. I had no idea it was still going on. I don't even see it on Instagram anymore.
But they are clearly diffusion-model artifacts.
The bigwig studio executives don't composite their own ad posters.
But the X-Men later realize the gift is tainted; it's powered by human creativity. The architect discovers that while he can fabricate any structure he ever imagined, he can't imagine any new ones.
Confronted with accusations of treachery, Loki is chagrined. He more or less thought he was bringing something to humans they actually wanted, and is infuriated when they reject his gift. He fundamentally cannot understand what it is that people desire.
Not being able to think creatively sounds scary but there’s also the alternative which is dying without doing things. Like, you could potentially make it a worse trade that sounds less scary by just making it trade years off your lifespan in exchange for creative execution and I think that’s not crazy. It’s actually fairly banal considering all the things we do to survive today.
Humans... So impossible to please.
I don't need to come up with any new ideas. I would just hang out on Hackernews listening to ideas that I would then execute on.
We also have all the ideas we need to fix climate change, and world hunger, we just need execution.
I would gladly take the trade of executing on existing ideas, versus coming up with new ideas that we cannot execute on.
It's like playing Minecraft with full mods turned on that find you all the diamonds to mine automatically, or like drinking 4 liters of Coke and trying to enjoy a high quality pastry afterwards.
One is a synthesis of general knowledge that can be used to generate new ideas.
The other is a multi arm bandit and some collaborative filtering. Maybe there’s some AI there to classify what things are to begin with, but the decision of what to show is a very different kind of thing.
You made an argument that threads was showing people a hundred landscapes and that this decision was also ai ergo it’s an AI problem.
It might take humans a dozen hours to make a landscape but there are still thousands of human drawn landscapes and you’ll grow equally bored looking at all of those, no AI required.
"The market" has decided on what gets pushed to the top of your social media feed, and that is by all accounts turned out to be terrible for humanity. Idiocracy is what happens when we tailor to the lowest common denominator.
"The market" will decide on the cheapest and easiest, not what's in your best interest.
Disney are not the market, and neither are they "the market". They are indeed betting on lots of people not caring about AI one way or another, so that they can save some money. Good for them.
I'm not saying it's being faked, I'm saying it's wrong to allow it when it goes against the best interest of the many, or worse, us as humanity as a whole.
People vote with their dollars by buying cheap crap to eat every day, and manufacturers save a ton of money pumping that crap out instead of nutritious food. That doesn't mean it's good or should be encouraged, or even tolerated.
The market is not god.
However I think Loki brings up an interesting question. Wether or not "AI" art could become its own style? Like to me the Loki series would benefit from those inconsistencies, weirdness, etc that comes from an AI generating art.
Not that a Human can't do it, but the results would likely be different.
Not really defending its usage here, just an interesting thought I had about this in this particular use case. It happens to fit the theming very well.
Just embarrassing that Disney cuts costs for creating a poster instead of just contracting any talented artist that would like to work for them or any artist that currently does. But it doesnt matter.