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

[Prime_Evil]

I don't think that's correct.

My artwork was found in the LAION-5B data set, which is used by AI image generators like Stable Diffusion to "draw inferences from," as you say. Those are then used by companies like NightCafe, Midjourney, DreamStudio, and several others. Six original images of mine were copied there without my permission (or even my knowledge), presumably from my Facebook page.

When you mention that your work was discovered in the LAION-5B data set, how did you discover this? Most of the services that allow you to check whether any of your images were used to train the data set (e.g. https://haveibeentrained.com/ and https://knn5.laion.ai/) do not check whether the image is "were copied" into the data set. Instead, it checks whether the specified works were cataloged by a bot to generate the inferences that were fed into the data set. It is possible to check this with the LAION-5B data set because it is a large-scale open source dataset created for research at a university. The academic creators never envisaged that "tech bros" would use their research into computer vision to create commercial products. Because the model is open source, it is possible to see exactly what it looked at when developing the model. You can't check that with the closed source models such as those used by OPenAI. It's a subtle distinction, but a significant one from a legal and moral perspective. A more significant question is why so many of the commercial services are refusing to respect the opt out flags proposed by Spawning AI and others. Look at the recent controversy about the Adobe's Terms of Service - basically, if you edit any image with Adobe products, you grant them a licence to use your works to train their AI models.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I think the moral argument that artists deserve to be paid for their labor is reasonable. The problem is that our legacy intellectual property laws are not a good fit for these new technologies. I am cautiously optimistic that a reasonable compromise can be found. But I think it may take a decade or more. My biggest fear is that the whole thing is being driven by the toxic "tech bro" crowd who think Ayn Rand was a genius. These guys will fight tooth and nail against any regulation of the sector beyond telling politicians that "AI is scary" (and therefore only they can be trusted to own it - i.e. give us a legally protected monopoly forever). The problem is not the technology per se - it's the Silicon Valley culture of enshittification.

 

[Necropolitan]

But because you have made your art publicly viewable, it is quite apparent that it has been used to educate, train, inspire or simple influence one other artists who then created a piece of art after they were enhanced by your artwork. Yet apparently none of them have paid you for helping them become better artists, and I do not see you complaining about them.

That's not the same at all.

AIs aren't artists and having art used as training data isn't the same as an artist taking inspiration from a work of art.

And you're repeating the already-refuted claim that artists having their work stolen to train AIs is the same as their jobs being made obsolete as opposed to their intellectual property being ripped off for somebody else's profit.

The creation and running of textile factories didn't involve stealing finished fabric from weavers. AI on the other hand is entirely dependent on artists to keep churning out work. Otherwise it just has itself to feed on.

Just because I create art, design a waste water treatment plant, or clean up a park does not entitle me to be paid for that work.

It does if that work is USED. You don't get to just take work someone else did and use it for your own profit without paying for it. You're arguing that intellectual property doesn't exist and justifying theft.

Every single one of your arguments has a false premise and has already been thoroughly refuted.

 

[CleverNickName]

But because you have made your art publicly viewable, it is quite apparent that it has been used to educate, train, inspire or simple influence one other artists who then created a piece of art after they were enhanced by your artwork. Yet apparently none of them have paid you for helping them become better artists, and I do not see you complaining about them.

You seem to think that looking at a piece of art is comparable to training yourself to be an artist. You know that isn't true, and I'm growing weary of the entire line of discussion.

No, that's not how anything works, not art, not civil engineering, not menial labor. A person creates or does something that has value to another person, and that second person then decides to pay the artist, creator , laborer. Just because I create art, design a waste water treatment plant, or clean up a park does not entitle me to be paid for that work.

Here's how freelance art is done.

You decide you want a piece of art. You contact several artists, set up an interview, and ask to see their sample portfolio. They come in, show you some samples of their stuff, and you pick the artists whose style and skill match the project you want. You solicit estimates from those artists, and then choose the best artist with the best price. You negotiate, draw up a contract, you both sign it, and only then does the artist create anything for you.

So yes, if the artist is under contract to create something for you, and then creates it, they absolutely are entitled to be paid. If you don't pay, or if they don't deliver, someone is getting sued.

AI trainers are effectively taking every artist's sample portfolio, scanning it, and then using Photoshop to manipulate it after the artists leave the interview. Why? I think it's to avoid having to sign a contract with those artists...because without a signed contract, they believe they don't have to pay them.

 

[Epic Meepo]

These guys will fight tooth and nail against any regulation of the sector beyond telling politicians that "AI is scary" (and therefore only they can be trusted to own it - i.e. give us a legally protected monopoly forever).

There needs to be a grassroots effort to reverse engineer every gen-AI on the market and release functionally-identical open-source software free to the public. If that happened, OpenAi would be worth exactly what they think visual artists should be paid.

 

[Umbran]

However, it does not COPY these materials but rather draws statistical inferences from them.

So, the generative AI itself does not contain an obvious copy. But, a copy is made, when the data is put in the training set. The process requires copying, even if the final AI doesn't contain that copy.

 

[Umbran]

On the subject of detectors, I also concur about ai detectors getting it wrong all the time...

One possible solution is to require that ai generated content be labelled accordingly, wherever it is posted, to avoid any confusion.

Problem - if you cannot reliably detect ai generated content, then you cannot enforce rules about labelling it.

 

[CleverNickName]

Well I had a whole big response typed out, but then--as usual-- @Umbran drops a response that is far more succinct.

 

[Lanefan]

AI isn't 'the next step' after artists, it can't exist without them and can't keep going without them. That's not progress, that's plagiarism.

For now.

Once it starts learning for itself and-or becomes able to self-train from its own productions, lookout.

 

[Swanosaurus]

No, that's not how anything works, not art, not civil engineering, not menial labor. A person creates or does something that has value to another person, and that second person then decides to pay the artist, creator , laborer. Just because I create art, design a waste water treatment plant, or clean up a park does not entitle me to be paid for that work.

And you know on what the value and the price and labor are based? On implicit and explicit social contracts; they are not some ideal result of a context-free negotiation between a buyer and a seller, but are based and power, hierarchies and laws - which means that they are always already political. Which also means that they are subject to political struggle and regulation. Which is ecactly what "protecting the rights and interests of artists" is. Struggling to get paid for your work is just as legitimate as developing new technology to depress the price of other people's work; on a societal level, both are political acts; telling one side to just roll over and die can' t be the answer.