WotC So it seems D&D has picked a side on the AI art debate.

[doctorbadwolf]

Have we reached the point in society where imaginary races can't be inherently evil, but artificial intelligence and inanimate objects can be?

What a time to be alive.

NFTs cannot be used ethically. It’s not a “point in society”, it’s a simple fact of the nature of the tool.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, no. NFTs are inherently unethical.

As for the idea that these programs necessarily steal art, I’ll just go ahead and politely disagree and

You said this already

 

[tetrasodium]

Oh, you were asking about the show? That’s unequivocally art. Just because it takes inspiration from other sources doesn’t mean it lacks anything original. I thought you were asking about the specific image you put in the spoiler block.

It seems like you just did a complete 180 from what you said in post43. If a human "recombines elements of the creations of actual artists" then it's art. If an AI does the same thing it is not unless doing so from Plato's cave. That's a very slippery slope as more & more skilled labor is aided & outright handled by AI. Pretty quickly you wind up with no forms of skilled labor.

 

[Charlaquin]

It seems like you just did a complete 180 from what you said in post43. If a human "recombines elements of the creations of actual artists" then it's art. If an AI does the same thing it is not unless doing so from Plato's cave.

That is not what I am claiming at all. Read my edit to post 49 for a more detailed explanation of my claim.

That's a very slippery slope as more & more skilled labor is aided & outright handled by AI. Pretty quickly you wind up with no forms of skilled labor.

That is a very real concern, yes, which is why it’s important to recognize the distinctions between skilled labor (which humans do) and the recombining and regurgitation of the products of that labor (which algorithms do).

 

[gnarlygninja]

Well, no. NFTs are inherently unethical.

As for the idea that these programs necessarily steal art, I’ll just go ahead and politely disagree and

yep. While attribution is a needed feature, I don’t need permission to make fair use of a work. The procedurally generated art program is a tool, any action is ethically taken by a person. People use existing ideas to make new ideas. All new ideas build on and recombine existing ideas. Full stop.

And that process has basically nothing to do with how AI generates "art". Full stop.

 

[Clint_L]

As I said in my post, what these algorithms do is inherently different than how humans take inspiration. Human artists learn from other artists’ work, but they make original creations influenced by those inspirations. Algorithms are not capable of making original creations. They can only recombine elements of the creations of actual artists.

Hmmm...define original.

But that's not what is happening with AI art, anyway. What is happening is that human beings are giving the AIs direction, and then the AI is doing its best to predict what will fulfill the request. Again, I ask how this is different from me hiring a human artist to study and emulate another artist's work?

Or consider this example:
Please write out Shakespeare's sonnet 29

Sure! Here's Shakespeare's Sonnet 29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth)
sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

That's great, but now replace all the metaphors with fish imagery

Okay, I'll do my best to replace the metaphors with fish imagery in Sonnet 29:

When, like a fish out of water, I swim
In disgrace with the sea and other fish alike,
And trouble the deaf ocean with my fruitless flailing,
And look upon myself and curse my fishy fate,
Wishing I were like a more hopeful fish,
Colored like him, swimming with friends around,
Desiring this fish's fins and that fish's gills,
With what I most enjoy making me least content;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Perhaps I think on thee, and then my scales,
(Like to a salmon leaping at dawn's first light
From a stagnant pond) sing songs at the ocean's door;
For thy sweet love remembered brings such abundance,
That then I scorn to trade my fishy life with kings.

That second poem is definitely new art that never existed before in the world. Do I own that poem? What if I go in there myself and change a few more words? What if I change 50% of the words? At what point does the human intervention make this a new thing that I could own or sell?

Edit: All I will say is that if you think that you are confident that you have the answer to these questions right now, be prepared to be proven wrong in the very near future. The truth is that nobody knows the answers, and in fact some of these answers are going to be subjective. Legislators and courts will have to weigh in, and we will see different rules applied in different places. This is an incredibly nuanced problem, and a black and white answer is not going to happen.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

U.S. Copyright Office Rules A.I. Art Can't Be Copyrighted

An image generated through artificial intelligence lacked the "human authorship" necessary for protection

www.smithsonianmag.com

AI-created images lose U.S. copyrights in test for new technology

The decision is one of the first by a U.S. court or agency on the scope of copyright protection for works created with AI.

www.reuters.com

AI artwork can't be copyright rules the US Copyright Office

Comic sans Midjourney images would be eligible for IP protections

www.theregister.com

 

[Charlaquin]

Hmmm...define original.

Again, tangential to the point. I could, for the sake of argument, concede that there is no such thing as an original idea, and my point would still stand that algorithms do not apply learned skills to create expressions of of ideas (original or otherwise). They only recombine the creations of humans, according to programming that tries to predict what combination will best satisfy those parameters.

But that's not what is happening with AI art, anyway. What is happening is that human beings are giving the AIs direction, and then the AI is doing its best to predict what will fulfill the request.

Yes, but you’re ignoring what it’s drawing from to make its predictions of what will fulfill that request. The algorithm can’t make anything new, it can only draw on the data it has been fed (in the case of art, that would be existing art), which it then recombines however its programming determines will most likely satisfy the prompt.

Or consider this example:
Please write out Shakespeare's sonnet 29

Sure! Here's Shakespeare's Sonnet 29:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth)
sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

That's great, but now replace all the metaphors with fish imagery

Okay, I'll do my best to replace the metaphors with fish imagery in Sonnet 29:

When, like a fish out of water, I swim
In disgrace with the sea and other fish alike,
And trouble the deaf ocean with my fruitless flailing,
And look upon myself and curse my fishy fate,
Wishing I were like a more hopeful fish,
Colored like him, swimming with friends around,
Desiring this fish's fins and that fish's gills,
With what I most enjoy making me least content;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Perhaps I think on thee, and then my scales,
(Like to a salmon leaping at dawn's first light
From a stagnant pond) sing songs at the ocean's door;
For thy sweet love remembered brings such abundance,
That then I scorn to trade my fishy life with kings.

That second poem is definitely new art that never existed before in the world.

It’s definitely a combination of words that didn’t exist in the world written out in that particular form. But to call it art is to downplay the actual process of artistic creation. That wasn’t thought up by someone and created through application of their learned skill. It was generated by a computer that has been programmed to look through examples of poems that were created by real human artists and determine what elements of those poems are most likely to be evaluated by a human reader as metaphors, and which are most likely to be evaluated by a human reader as fish imagery, and replace the former in the original poem with the latter. There was no creative thought (or indeed thought of any kind), and no application of skill involved in the generation of that combination of words. Just some math that’s really good a chopping up bits of the art you feed it and figuring out how to put it back together in a way that you’ll think satisfies what you asked it to do.

Do I own that poem? What if I go in there myself and change a few more words? What if I change 50% of the words? At what point does the human intervention make this a new thing that I could own or sell?

Those are all interesting legal questions unrelated to whether or not the algorithm works by stealing the work of human artists.

Edit: All I will say is that if you think that you are confident that you have the answer to these questions right now, be prepared to be proven wrong in the very near future. The truth is that nobody knows the answers, and in fact some of these answers are going to be subjective. Legislators and courts will have to weigh in, and we will see different rules applied in different places. This is an incredibly nuanced problem, and a black and white answer is not going to happen.

I definitely don’t have the answers to those questions. What I’m much more concerned with is that we’re teaching computers to imitate human artists in order to profit from those human artists’ labor without having to pay them for it.

This isn’t just machines putting laborers out of the job by performing that labor more efficiently (though that’s also a problem in a system where people are required to perform labor in order to acquire basic necessities for living). Without human artists, these algorithms would have nothing to draw from to generate their responses to our prompting. They are only able to function by studying and copying existing work. They are literally purpose-built to create value from the existing products of human labor without having to compensate the humans who did that labor.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And that process has basically nothing to do with how AI generates "art". Full stop.

Lol nonsense. It’s a collage tool with a fancy computer process.

 

[tetrasodium]

Again, tangential to the point. I could, for the sake of argument, concede that there is no such thing as an original idea, and my point would still stand that algorithms do not apply learned skills to create expressions of of ideas (original or otherwise). They only recombine the creations of humans, according to programming that tries to predict what combination will best satisfy those parameters.

Yes, but you’re ignoring what it’s drawing from to make its predictions of what will fulfill that request. The algorithm can’t make anything new, it can only draw on the data it has been fed (in the case of art, that would be existing art), which it then recombines however its programming determines will most likely satisfy the prompt.

It’s definitely a combination of words that didn’t exist in the world written out in that particular form. But to call it art is to downplay the actual process of artistic creation. That wasn’t thought up by someone and created through application of their learned skill. It was generated by a computer that has been programmed to look through examples of poems that were created by real human artists and determine what elements of those poems are most likely to be evaluated by a human reader as metaphors, and which are most likely to be evaluated by a human reader as fish imagery, and replace the former in the original poem with the latter. There was no creative thought (or indeed thought of any kind), and no application of skill involved in the generation of that combination of words. Just some math that’s really good a chopping up bits of the art you feed it and figuring out how to put it back together in a way that you’ll think satisfies what you asked it to do.

Those are all interesting legal questions unrelated to whether or not the algorithm works by stealing the work of human artists.

I definitely don’t have the answers to those questions. What I’m much more concerned with is that we’re teaching computers to imitate human artists in order to profit from those human artists’ labor without having to pay them for it.

This isn’t just machines putting laborers out of the job by performing that labor more efficiently (though that’s also a problem in a system where people are required to perform labor in order to acquire basic necessities for living). Without human artists, these algorithms would have nothing to draw from to generate their responses to our prompting. They are only able to function by studying and copying existing work. They are literally purpose-built to create value from the existing products of human labor without having to compensate the humans who did that labor.

You are stumbling into the wild conundrum of how many AI's are created... A second AI trains them by making many small changes to the better performing ones that were tested before a second AI tests the whole batch.

An analogy might be a PHD professor (Alice) & preschool teacher (Bob). Alice creates dozens hundreds thousands etc tests, that's all she knows how to do. Bob brings in a huge number of preschoolers & gives them those tests for Alice to grade. Dave then makes another huge batch of clones with slight changes based on the better performing test takers. The rest just get deleted or maybe archived for reference. That process repeats until the test takers meet some standard of acceptably good.

When a google engineer testifies under oath that they don't actually know how the algorithm decides to show one thing or another it's not because the wrong engineer is testifying or because the engineer is unskilled. They could speak in generalities about the things they expect the algorithm to consider.

We don't really know how things like consciousness & such work either