D&D General Plagiarised D&D art

[EzekielRaiden]

I wouldn't employ a horse and buggy or steam ship to take me from Miami to New York when I could fly or drive a car cheaper, quicker and safer.

Skilled people aren't cars.

If their skill has little intrinsic value it will be hard to earn a living doing it. This has been true for artists in general for centuries, long before AI came on the scene.

Artistic skill does have intrinsic value. That's why it's such a crappy thing to offer to pay someone with "exposure."

Life is full of choices and following ones dreams or talents when it can not support one's lifestyle is such a choice. There is demand for all sorts of employment across the US and talented artists can certainly find gainful employment that would earn them a living wage.

And you are specifically saying that you support finding ways to eliminate that demand.

Heck, in today's market they could help train the AI machines that will ultimately replace them.

I find it extremely unlikely that that will ever occur. Keep in mind, these tools cannot improve unless they get a steady stream of new original art. There is no change or growth if the only source of art is machine-generated. You can only recombine what it already has. That's...literally what so-called "AI" does.

 

[ECMO3]

I work in software, I have been a programmer. We do not need AI, like we need art.

I didn't say we did "need it", I just said we should not restrict it, or stand in its way. We should let AI bring great art to our society, and if AI creates better art than humans we should embrace it.

In that regard, a computer is a medium, it is a letter. Now obviously it is far more, but it is not the computer that matters in the equation, at least until we are replaced with AI chat bots ourselves, it is the human on the other end that matters, and yes matters less in the ways I outlined than the human that lives beside you, or across the street.

This is nonsense. It is the art that matters, the quality of it, and the accessability (i.e. cost) not who, or what created it.

I am not against artists, but I am against limiting my access to art to only that which is created by human artists.

Nobody on this forum, will matter more to my community, than the people who live in my community. The people who work, provide goods and services, and in doing so feed and develop the community. This is artificial. Its bytes stored on a network of servers.

And a lot of the people living in my community are working on computers. One of the teams I supervise is actually developing AI algorithms and tools for analysis (not for art FWIW, but that would be no different philosophically). Shouldn't I care about them?

If I look at the negatives of globalization and computers, social media, AI, the positives do not balance the scales at all.

I agree there is not balance, but I see this opposite of the way you do. IMO they do not scale because the positives far, far, far outweigh the negatives. It is not even close IMO and it is social media that is the platform for social justice today. Computers and social media are the largest advancement in communication in history, eclipsing even the printing press in terms of providing people access to information, art and entertainment.

AI and computers can be used for evil, I am not saying they can't. But AI art is not inherently evil or bad and computers and AI are used for good and the betterment of people far more than it is used for evil.

 

[Clint_L]

This does not directly address my question that you have quoted. It appears to me that your previous responses to my earlier posts in this thread have done similar things. I am not asking about things that potentially may happen based on your own personal opinion of US copyright law. I asked,

I have been unable to find any instances of such.

Artists having sold the rights to their work but then using it again in other work for profit - thus committing copyright infringement - is obviously not controversial: you 100% can commit copyright infringement against work you created, once you have sold the rights to it. I am sure one of the lawyers here can weigh in, but if, for example, I record a song, sell you the rights to that song, then record another song where I substantially sample the first without your permission and without significantly altering it, then I absolutely will have committed copyright infringement against you, the copyright holder, regardless of the fact that I created both works. That's just not in question, is it? That's the whole point of buying a copyright: to gain control over the commercial use of someone else's creation.

So I assume what you are looking for is cases more like the Fogerty one, where artists are charged with plagiarizing their own style and thus committing copyright infringement. I don't know if there are any other cases exactly like that one in the US; the judgement seems pretty clear. And to be fair, that case seems to have been motivated more by personal animus rather than the plaintiff actually having much of a chance to push copyright that far.

Note that plagiarism is not normally illegal in the US or Canada, copyright infringement is. Plagiarism is the term normally used in academia, and you absolutely can plagiarize yourself. We warn students against it at the start of every course, and pretty much every university has specific rules about it. However, self-plagiarism can also be copyright infringement, which is why students and academics are warned that it "can involve copyright infringement if you reuse published work" (for example, by publishing an essay in one journal and then again in another, if you signed an exclusive deal with the first. There are many cases of this happening).

Again, none of this is controversial. The Fogerty case was controversial because he didn't reuse the work to which he had sold the copyright, but published new work that sounded (somewhat) similar, and the copyright holder consequently tried to argue that, in effect, he owned Fogerty's musical style. Mostly because he hated Fogerty.

 

[ECMO3]

Skilled people aren't cars.

You are right, cars are machines that replaced skilled teamsters, riverboat captains and railway engineers and society is better for it.

Artistic skill does have intrinsic value. That's why it's such a crappy thing to offer to pay someone with "exposure."

I agree that it does, but so does AI artwork. If you are being paid for services you should be paid for the value of those services to the person paying you.

The person buying/commissioning art should pay for the value of that art to the buyer and the producer should demand what their work and creation is worth to them. This is true whether that art it is being created by an artist or by AI.

And you are specifically saying that you support finding ways to eliminate that demand.

No. When I said a talented artist has many opportunities I mean doing something other than art if art is not profitable.

Being a good artist is not easy and someone who can do that is going to be able to make a living doing a lot of other things.

I don't support "finding ways" to eliminate the demand for human-produced art, but I do support bringing art to society in innovative and more efficient ways, including AI. The potential to eliminate demand could logicially be a byproduct of that.

This "elimination of demand" has already happened to artists numerous times. From canvass to paper to computers ...... as you put it the "mediums" changed, but when they changed and transitioned to the digital age from around 1985-2002 many, many artists were left behind and demand for their kind of art dried up. This new move, if it happpens, would be no different.

I find it extremely unlikely that that will ever occur. Keep in mind, these tools cannot improve unless they get a steady stream of new original art.

I think that is very debatable, but if it is in fact true then human artists have nothing to fear from AI art and should not put up barriers to companies or individuals using it.

AI can creat entirely new languagees and words all on its own and has already done that in labs with computers advancing a language independently through machine learning algorithms to the point it is no longer even understandable by a human. I see no reason why art is any different and I think most art is evolutionary and to a large degree based on learned techniques.

 

[ValamirCleaver]

I don't know if there are any other cases like that one [...]

So you're answer is, no, you are not able to cite any US case law where one was successfully sued for plagiarizing one's self that was not subsequently overturned irrespective of any extraneous, speculative, potential instances that you think might occur based solely on your personal opinion of US copyright law?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I didn't say we did "need it", I just said we should not restrict it, or stand in its way. We should let AI bring great art to our society, and if AI creates better art than humans we should embrace it.

Good. Then we shouldn't embrace it because it can't.

Again, ignore the techbro snowjob about how AI is 'creating' anything. It doesn't. It generates images by recreating patterns pulled from training pools of art created by humans. If the human art goes bye-bye, the AI's start using other AI images, degrading their results until system collapse and they stop being able to perform as requested.

Also, the companies creating them have asked us to restrict them. No one in the know wants these things running wild and free and unrestricted except the grifters telling you they have a killer app that will make you the perfect canape 'power by AI' or other nonsense.

 

[ECMO3]

Good. Then we shouldn't embrace it because it can't.

If this were true you would not need to ban or impede it. If you think AI art is going to fail to deliver then just ignore it and let it fail on its lack merit instead of banning it.

If you look at the recent WOTC fiasco, people were upset when an artist used AI to "enhance" his own images. People were not upset about the quality of the images, they were upset specifically because he used AI to enhance images that he originally produced. There were allegedly "telltale signs" he used AI, but it was the fact of AI, not the images itself that caused the controversy. That is uncalled for IMO.

No one in the know wants these things running wild and free and unrestricted

I do, and I think I am in the know. I could be wrong certainly, but I don't think I am wrong.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If this were true you would not need to ban or impede it. If you think AI art is going to fail to deliver then just ignore it and let it fail on its lack merit instead of banning it.

The damage grifters can and will do before the collapse is complete is the problem.

I do, and I think I am in the know. I could be wrong certainly, but I don't think I am wrong.

Damage like excising important parts of culture and actively advocating ruining real human lives to sell nascent technology as an entirely different technology, preying on people's ignorance on how computers work and how they think computers work thanks to popular culture.

 

[ECMO3]

The damage grifters can and will do before the collapse is complete is the problem.

I think the harm is in restricting it, not in these phantom "grifters" pedaling AI art.

Do you think Nestor Ossandón is a "grifter" or an artist trying to produce quality art? I think he is the latter and now he has been essentially banned from WOTC because of this uproar.

Damage like excising important parts of culture and actively advocating ruining real human lives to sell nascent technology as an entirely different technology, preying on people's ignorance on how computers work and how they think computers work thanks to popular culture.

The beauty of art lies in the eyes of the beholder and I don't think it will damage culture or human lives. It will improve culture and improve real human lives ..... my life for starters.

Keeping it from people is what will di the most damage to real human lives!

 

[Jadeite]

Here's a real long-shot idea: is there any chance the tracer misread the OGL and thought the 3e MM was open-source?

Theoretically yes, but it's more likely that the tracer didn't even know (or care) where the image came from and just did an image search for dragon.