The AI Red Scare is only harming artists and needs to stop.

[Thomas Shey]

There's very little nuance to discuss. Virtually none of the training used for these various generative models has been morally, ethically, and in some jurisdictions, legally sourced.

Yeah, don't think I'm going to get into that discussion again, thanks.

 

[Willie the Duck]

These are just the latest examples I found, and enough harm has been done at this point that I'm no longer humoring the gaslighting. No, AI training is not theft. No, AI training is not a violation of copyright. No, you don't have a point if your response to AI taking jobs is to quit taking jobs yourself. Its use has become just another thing someone can be falsely accused of with little recourse. And if you really want to continue pushing for 'ethical' training, just remember that indies are unlikely to ever afford the rights to enough content to train on, while Big Tech already has rights to all the content they'll ever need. And even if indies did there's no way for them to prove it. I'll let you decide who benefits more from that state of affairs.

Can I just ask, what exactly do you think is gaslighting?

 

[Umbran]

These are just the latest examples I found, and enough harm has been done at this point that I'm no longer humoring the gaslighting. No, AI training is not theft. No, AI training is not a violation of copyright.

Everyone gets to have an opinion, but this is hardly a legally settled matter.

It is a bit telling that the folks training AIs seem to avoid taking on the content of major corporate sources. Small content providers and individuals don't have much ability to take this to court. And they seem to have stayed away from, say Disney, or stuff controlled by the RIAA.

If you really want to prove that it isn't copyright violation, train your AI on Mickey Mouse and The Little Mermaid. Be public about that. And see what happens...

 

[overgeeked]

People thinking legality equals morality will always be depressing.

 

[Celebrim]

Everyone gets to have an opinion, but this is hardly a legally settled matter.

It is a bit telling that the folks training AIs seem to avoid taking on the content of major corporate sources. Small content providers and individuals don't have much ability to take this to court. And they seem to have stayed away from, say Disney, or stuff controlled by the RIAA.

If you really want to prove that it isn't copyright violation, train your AI on Mickey Mouse and The Little Mermaid. Be public about that. And see what happens...

I just asked a leading image AI to create me an image of Steamboat Mickey.

I'd say it had a pretty good idea of what the mouse looks like. Now, for legal reasons I used a public domain prompt since the old school Mickey is now available, but I'm sure this would work for any variation on Mickey.

But this is a good time to point out that while I believe the training to be legal, it doesn't necessarily imply that any image produced is legal to distribute. Knowing what Mickey Mouse looks like is not a crime. But a recognizable image of Mickey Mouse may be illegal to distribute anyway - for example by being a corporate trademark or not being sufficiently transformative from an existing work. These are separate issues. Knowing the style and works of an artist is not a violation of rights. Producing a transformative work based on the style of an artist that is clearly an original work is probably fine. But the prompt engineers and digital artists working with these tools and images still have to obey other applicable laws.

 

[Umbran]

I just asked a leading image AI to create me an image of Steamboat Mickey.

I'd say it had a pretty good idea of what the mouse looks like. Now, for legal reasons I used a public domain prompt since the old school Mickey is now available, but I'm sure this would work for any variation on Mickey.

Yes, but you realize that isn't the same as publicly stating you directly took Disney material and trained a commercial AI on it and are selling use of it for profit, right?

Disney is within its rights to choose not to pursue fan art or small snippets of their work. Having been lenient on it for a couple of decades means it becomes hard for them to prove that what you trained on was actual Disney content, or fan-art. The provenance is unclear, making suit difficult.

But, if this really is absolutely clearly not copyright violation, then there should be absolutely no problem being up front about using authentic Disney content. "We took official, commercial copies of these elements of the Disney catalog, and trained an AI on them," should be a selling point.

Folks should be willing to invest major portions of their life savings in the Disney-trained AI. If there's no copyright issue, there's little risk. It'll make a mint!

 

[CapnZapp]

Everyone gets to have an opinion, but this is hardly a legally settled matter.



If you really want to prove that it isn't copyright violation, train your AI on Mickey Mouse and The Little Mermaid. Be public about that. And see what happens...

Of course, as you know, nobody needs to prove that.

It is arguing the opposite, that AI is copyvio (and to do so in court) that's the relevant thing to discuss.

 

[Celebrim]

Yes, but you realize that isn't the same as publicly stating you directly took Disney material and trained a commercial AI on it and are selling use of it for profit, right?

Disney is within its rights to choose not to pursue fan art or small snippets of their work. Having been lenient on it for a couple of decades means it becomes hard for them to prove that what you trained on was actual Disney content, or fan-art. The provenance is unclear, making suit difficult.

But, if this really is absolutely clearly not copyright violation, then there should be absolutely no problem being up front about using authentic Disney content. "We took official, commercial copies of these elements of the Disney catalog, and trained an AI on them," should be a selling point.

Folks should be willing to invest major portions of their life savings in the Disney-trained AI. If there's no copyright issue, there's little risk. It'll make a mint!

I mean, from the image it is obvious that a major corporation did in fact train their AI on Disney copyrighted and even trademarked content, so I feel like you have a non-argument.

As for a selling point, your statement "We took official, commercial copies of these elements of the Disney catalog, and trained an AI on them" involves a legal risk unrelated to whether the training is legal. The really open question is who is responsible for the created art - the company that trained the AI or the prompt engineer that is the creative force behind the production of the art. That issue is really up in the air alongside who is at fault in a self-driving car, the car company that made it, the owner, or the driver at the wheel? I have my own beliefs as to who should be responsible, but that's not a settled question.

And the problem with making as a publicity statement, "We took official, commercial copies of these elements of the Disney catalog, and trained an AI on them", is that if some future prompt engineer takes your program and creates images that violate Disney's corporate trademarks and distributes or sell them they might use that statement to defend the idea that they believed doing so was legal because the producer of the software seemed to be advocating creation of such art as a valid use of their software and that would then open you up to legal liability. In my opinion, that's again a separate issue from issue of the legality of training, but the courts are so technologically illiterate and well generally untrustworthy (you can always buy a judge somewhere to get them to say just about anything) that obviously if I'm a lawyer I'm going to advice against any statement that would seem to promote using my software to violate trademarks.

For example, if I had AI 3D printing software I would not be publicly saying that you could use the software to produce good enough 3D models of say Space Marines because we had trained them on Space Marine art. That's an endorsement of use that might not be legal separate entirely from the question of whether I could train AI on art produced by Games Workshop. Heck, I'm not even really sure what the courts will think about that one even if no AI is involved. If you model your own WH40K models as a human artist and print them out as playing pieces for your own use, what is the legality of that? I'm not a lawyer, but I do know people casting and injection molding and printing WH40K playing pieces for their own use that are direct copies of pieces they purchased. I'm pretty sure whatever the legality is of this sort of action, it has everything to do with the production of the product and nothing to do with the software or tools used to make it.

 

[Umbran]

I mean, from the image it is obvious that a major corporation did in fact train their AI on Disney copyrighted and even trademarked content, so I feel like you have a non-argument.

Again - in terms of the burden of proof necessary for court, it is impossible to know if that was trained directly on Disney art, or on fan art.

In a moral argument, yes, they trained on Disney content, perhaps with a degree of separation from the original. But the law is not interested in that moral argument.

 

[NaturalZero]

These are statements are not legally accurate nor are they fair interpretations of the statements you are quoting.

If you post a story on the internet and I read it along with thousands of other stories and then take all those stories into my mind and write my own story. That story I write will be bits and pieces of what you wrote. But I will not be stealing what you wrote.

And this is why the argument that it's "immoral" or "stealing" to learn from someone's art style and make something original based on that learning is bunk. It's how art has always worked but now we're incensed because someone found a more efficient way to do it. Somehow, when it takes more time and effort it's acceptable but when the process is streamlined it's suddenly "immoral".