D&D General DMs Guild and DriveThruRPG ban AI written works, requires labels for AI generated art

[MoonSong]

Is it legal for AI to use artist work?
So now we dig a little deeper. A common criticism of AI right now is that the AI is "stealing" artist work to then make money off of. So is that true?

Ultimately we have to use the laws that are the books right now. Almost certainly a ton of new legislation will be generated from teh AI revolution, and whose to say what the future of AI law will look like. But as for right now we have our existing copy right laws to fall back on.

To me mind the arguments focus on the concept of "use in teaching". If for example, a human was able to access your work without payment, study that work, and then create their own derivative work and sell it for money without compensating you.... than likely an AI will be able to do that as well, and likely that is what the argument will be. This might even bypass work clauses that prohibit the use of work for "commercial purposes", because again I am not selling the work nor am I copying it to sell. I am using it as a training and teaching tool, which may (may not depending on the language) be legally seperate.

On the flip side, should it be shown that the AI generators were using private images behind paywalls or security and were never supposed to be accessed, those AI creators could be in for a wild ride of lawsuits.

Now, what will be interesting in the future is if legislation is created to force a "white list" for AI training. Aka unless you give permission for your work to be used in an AI training (must likely so contracted work), then AIs are forbidden to train on that work.

However, the law has often been notoriously slow compared to the pace of technology, so it will likely be several years before we see some real changes here. Meanwhile it will be up to the interpretations of courts.

I've had to interact with copyright, and so far facts don't point towards this opinion.

Fair use, the crux of the issue, tends to be complex to adjudicate. For it to be a thing, it needs to be checked on many criteria. Being used for education is one such criteria. (And it is education, not just "teaching". One could argue education has having a human destinatary as a necessary condition) However, there are other conditions. The most important being that it is transformative and it doesn't replace the original. Using a given artist's work to train an AI, not only allows the AI to draw, but also allows the AI to replace the artist, not just on the generic, but on the specific. An AI trained on a given artist, can perfectly mimic that artist's style, making the artist themself superfluous. It will have to reach the courts, but from existing precedent, it seems artists have a case with existing laws. All of them, not just artists putting their work behind paywalls.

Another thing to consider is that AI output isn't eligible for copyright. It is public domain by default. Without a human author behind the pencil, there is no copyright. (See the cases about the Urantia Book, the Naruto selfie, and the copyrightability of font faces)

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

High level we 'know' the logic they use - a probability distribution of words is created by an algorithm reading from a large data set. The specifics of that algorithm is a mystery, but not because of emergent properties, it's simply because it's not public information.

Even OpenAI doesn't fully understand why ChatGPT outputs the text it does. That's why they're having such a hard time preventing it from creating harmful text.

 

[MoonSong]

And if you don't believe me on AI replacing humans. Notice I've been trying to give away art for free for a few weeks now and nobody has asked for it so far.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder why they are banning AI written material outright and only requiring disclosure with visual art. Is AI text more likely to be outright copied text?

 

[Rogerd1]

Hmmm, can AI make good world maps and combat grids?

This is some AI art I believe....

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1a/eb/e2/1aebe25be1b59d987f9802afe1bfaf1d.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/54/ce/ca/54ceca02d2596a74a49b626443b14d35.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a7/a7/9a/a7a79a8c3c268b7c4f741e12066bf6ac.jpg

 

[Vaalingrade]

I wonder why they are banning AI written material outright and only requiring disclosure with visual art. Is AI text more likely to be outright copied text?

Because if given free reign to generate the entire product, the content mills will spam the service so hard it will basically be a DDOS attack of nonsensical chaos scripts posing as adventures.

 

[Scribe]

I wonder why they are banning AI written material outright and only requiring disclosure with visual art. Is AI text more likely to be outright copied text?

Perhaps because they realize that images are a bottleneck due to the cost of artists, but 'anyone' (not really but most) can write/type/dictate.

The whole topic just spirals me anyway but I accept that its the way things will go, I'm actually going to look at some land on Monday/Tuesday next week and get the hell out of dodge.

 

[Rogerd1]

Here is a query I put into Pinterest, DnD character concept art.

Pinterest

Discover recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

www.pinterest.ca

In feel the AI stuff speaks for itself tbh.

EDIT: Interestingly, if I use another browser without logging in, all the good AI vanishes. Weird.....

 

[MoonSong]

I wonder why they are banning AI written material outright and only requiring disclosure with visual art. Is AI text more likely to be outright copied text?

Art is more contentious and open to litigation so banning the sell of AI art by itself is shielding against liability. AI art as secondary is less tricky. And the thing I mentioned before AI output isn't copyrightable. There's no money to be made selling AI

 

[FrogReaver]

Art is more contentious and open to litigation so banning the sell of AI art by itself is shielding against liability. AI art as secondary is less tricky. And the thing I mentioned before AI output isn't copyrightable. There's no money to be made selling AI

A few thoughts -
Agreed on the practicality of banning AI Art. The risk is too large at this stage.

Even if Art was copyrightable, there still wouldn't be money because someone can always get it to make new art for free or at least very cheap.

And while AI Art itself isn't coprightable, using it in conjunction with a copyrightable work could be a value add for that work. If you make 2x as many sells by selling a book with ai art as a book with no art then you would potentially be willing to pay something for the ai art.