AI/LLMs AI art bans are going to ruin small 3rd party creators

[bsss]

I know of a few companies that do this. I didn’t know it originated with Toyota. +1!

It also gave us kanban in software engineering, which despite its misapplications and oft-misunderstood nature, allows for a lot of the same decision-making and humans-owning-the-process --- at risk of summoning terrible project management demons --- agility.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Thinking up 'Heh, a painting of a woman with a slight smile' is not the same as painting the Mona Lisa.

Although what that makes me think of is that I've seen art students all over the Louvre (yes, including in front of the Mona Lisa) assiduously copying works of art in order to....I don't know, I'm not an artist, but I guess the process of copying somehow hones one's skills as an artist. (I've heard of writers re-typing great novels, I assume for a similar reason.)

And certainly in general any sort of creative is going to have studied mountains of existing works. And that knowledge is going to seep into the "original" art they eventually produce. Sometimes intentionally, but often...probably usually...unintentionally.

Are they stealing from the artists they learned from?

As usual, sorry if I'm asking a question that has been asked repeatedly. I've mostly avoided these threads after getting my fingers burned.

 

[Morrus]

Although what that makes me think of is that I've seen art students all over the Louvre (yes, including in front of the Mona Lisa) assiduously copying works of art in order to....I don't know, I'm not an artist, but I guess the process of copying somehow hones one's skills as an artist. (I've heard of writers re-typing great novels, I assume for a similar reason.)

And certainly in general any sort of creative is going to have studied mountains of existing works. And that knowledge is going to seep into the "original" art they eventually produce. Sometimes intentionally, but often...probably usually...unintentionally.

Are they stealing from the artists they learned from?

As usual, sorry if I'm asking a question that has been asked repeatedly. I've mostly avoided these threads after getting my fingers burned.

As I’ve repeatedly said on these forums, the process that the human mind uses and the process that an LLM uses are not the same. They are not similar. Not even slightly. They are very, very different processes. The human mind is not an LLM and an LLM does not mimic human mental processes. The comparison is meaningless and the very question highlights a lack of understanding of what an LLM is and does.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Although what that makes me think of is that I've seen art students all over the Louvre (yes, including in front of the Mona Lisa) assiduously copying works of art in order to....I don't know, I'm not an artist, but I guess the process of copying somehow hones one's skills as an artist. (I've heard of writers re-typing great novels, I assume for a similar reason.)

And certainly in general any sort of creative is going to have studied mountains of existing works. And that knowledge is going to seep into the "original" art they eventually produce. Sometimes intentionally, but often...probably usually...unintentionally.

Are they stealing from the artists they learned from?

As usual, sorry if I'm asking a question that has been asked repeatedly. I've mostly avoided these threads after getting my fingers burned.

Yes, most artists- regardless of medium- learn by copying the work of others.

A lot of the old masters taught students to paint in their style. They were paid for this.

A lot of artists have gone to art schools, where, again, they’re paying for the education.

When you see art students in museums copying what they see, they’re usually looking at pieces that are in the public domain.

Etc.

But there’s always going to be layers of filters between the sensory perception, the mind, and the output into the artist’s preferred mode of expression. Unless they’re forgers, the artist’s goal isn’t to paint indistinguishably from Rembrandt, it’s to have Rembrandt as a point of reference for stylistic and technical skills, and to develop their own style from there. The person’s art is almost always altered from reality or its inspiration in some noticeable way.

One day when I was in Life Drawing 101 (I needed credits, not teaching), there were 3 of us sitting side by side created an unintentional triptych. The person to my left captured the model, I did her immediate surroundings, and the third, the rest of the students in the room.

In contrast, AI, painting in broad rhetorical strokes, is trying to make things look as Rembrandty as possible when it emulates Rembrandt.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Although what that makes me think of is that I've seen art students all over the Louvre (yes, including in front of the Mona Lisa) assiduously copying works of art in order to....I don't know, I'm not an artist, but I guess the process of copying somehow hones one's skills as an artist. (I've heard of writers re-typing great novels, I assume for a similar reason.)

And certainly in general any sort of creative is going to have studied mountains of existing works. And that knowledge is going to seep into the "original" art they eventually produce. Sometimes intentionally, but often...probably usually...unintentionally.

Are they stealing from the artists they learned from?

As usual, sorry if I'm asking a question that has been asked repeatedly. I've mostly avoided these threads after getting my fingers burned.

It's not the same because the students are human.

 

[Bill Zebub]

As I’ve repeatedly said on these forums, the process that the human mind uses and the process that an LLM uses are not the same. They are not similar. Not even slightly. They are very, very different processes. The human mind is not an LLM and an LLM does not mimic human mental processes. The comparison is meaningless and the very question highlights a lack of understanding of what an LLM is and does.

I suspect I understand it better than you. I was writing back-propagating neural networks 30+ years ago, and have worked in all kinds of AI and A-Life techniques since then.

That said, I'm not disagreeing with you that the process is different. My initial reaction is that the process doesn't matter, that it's the result that counts, and the process argument strikes me as almost an excuse to claim the two things are totally different.

That said, unless you are sick of discussing this, I truly am curious why you think that difference is essential.

 

[Morrus]

That said, I'm not disagreeing with you that the process is different. My initial reaction is that the process doesn't matter, that it's the result that counts, and the process argument strikes me as almost an excuse to claim the two things are totally different.

I guess the end justifies the means is a take. It’s not one that I share. The methods you use to achieve your goals do matter.

For example, if I buy your car from you or steal it, does the difference not matter since the result is all that counts—that I now have the car? It’s not the best analogy, admittedly, but it serves to illustrate the point that of course the process matters.

 

[Bill Zebub]

No, I wasn't making an ends justifies the means argument.

When you refer to the 'means' do you mean that the AI companies trained their models without permission of the artists, and that it didn't constitute fair use, whereas the art student myelinating their own brain (and muscles) on the same content is doing so via copyright-respecting means?

EDIT: In other words, I thought by "process" you were referring to what happens once the prompt is submitted, but maybe you were also including the process of how the model got trained.

 

[gban007]

Although what that makes me think of is that I've seen art students all over the Louvre (yes, including in front of the Mona Lisa) assiduously copying works of art in order to....I don't know, I'm not an artist, but I guess the process of copying somehow hones one's skills as an artist. (I've heard of writers re-typing great novels, I assume for a similar reason.)

And certainly in general any sort of creative is going to have studied mountains of existing works. And that knowledge is going to seep into the "original" art they eventually produce. Sometimes intentionally, but often...probably usually...unintentionally.

Are they stealing from the artists they learned from?

As usual, sorry if I'm asking a question that has been asked repeatedly. I've mostly avoided these threads after getting my fingers burned.

I think largely unavailable for creators to not be influenced in anything they create, with some rare exceptions.
But generally when looking for example at doing a painting, and working out what to put in the corner, they are thinking what do I think will go well there, and yes that will be framed by background/ history / influences, but they are choosing for themselves. They may decide differently depending on time of day / mood / weather etc.
Influences they will have will be based on what they were able to be exposed to, schooling, their external environment (and why you get some horrific reconstruction of animals that they havent seen personally) media, books they've purchased etc.
An LLM in same situation isnt thinking about what would go wrll there, it is instead performing calculations and the calculation result will say what will go there, and it will take that as given. If given same input / situation, it will give same output each time (hence need to be able to adjust / deepen prompts).
the calculations will be based on its training data and any iterations it has done since (so what you provide in prompts in LLMs and outputs received will feed cycle). In my preferred world, any inputs will have been ethically derived, purchases of training material where not made publicly freely available etc, and as much as I can't use art from books for inspiration without buying a copy or loaning a copy (and following any restrictions on use of said art, so can't just copy and then sell unless license says can), LLMs shouldn't be able to use inputs not purchased/ loaned with ability to monetize.

 

[Umbran]

I know of a few companies that do this. I didn’t know it originated with Toyota. +1!

The Toyota Way itself was formalized in 2001.
However, Toyota's work with kaizen (what we might call "continuous improvement") that gave line workers power to control how work is done started back in the late 1940s, with Taiichi Ohno.