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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9372914" data-attributes="member: 75787">Some info on how GenAI models handle input data:Importantly, the input data for GenAI models is not stored as part of the model. AI image generation models do not keep copies of all the images they were trained on internally. What they do do is to take those inputs and use them to modify a set of weights which allow them to generate images in the future. These weights essentially indicate how likely it is for one part of a image to appear a certain way, given the other parts of the image and the text prompts associated with the image.So it would be a stretch to say that these weights are actual copies of the original images in the way that a copyright law might recognize. In some ways, this is true about human artists: They have learned and trained their brains to understand how art is put together and in their brains somewhere there is a whole set of knowledge about how images can be generated in plausible and pleasing ways.So if a GenAI tool (or a human artist) simply keeps that knowledge internal and never uses it, it's hard to see a problem. The real concern is when it gets used.If you asked me to draw a picture in the style of X, I might be able to produce something that maybe some people could recognize as in the style of X, but it's unlikely to worry an IP lawyer or an ethics committee, because I am a terrible artist. A professional artist could almost certainly produce something that both legally and ethically steals some else's intellectual property. A GenAI tool similarly will be able to do the same sort of thing. Copying owned art is well covered by existing laws.A more concerning issue is about art which is not directly copied, but uses significant elements of style from specific artists. I'm not super-knowledgeable about art law, but my impression is that if an artist creates an image of something not previously drawn in the style of another artist, that that is not covered by copyright. Basically, copyrighting style is not possible.So why do people not worry about human artists doing this versus an AI doing this? One thought is that the cost is so much lower for an AI to do essentially what an artists does, that it makes the problem no longer a negligible one, but a pervasive one: Previously, to get a painting of a medieval battel in the style of Van Gogh, it would take a minimum of several weeks and thousands of dollars. Now it takes 30 seconds and costs cents.So my feeling is that the area of using GenAI to "be creative" (as opposed to summarization, retrieval, translation or the other more mundane uses of GenAI) will require new legislation. It's not so much that we don't want it to be possible to get images using the styles of artists, or to write novels in the style of certain writers, it's that we don't want it to become the dominant way of creating art; we don't want it to be so easy that human-created art becomes a niche market for neo-luddites. Essentially, we are looking for a form of protective legislation that ensures that human creativity is rewarded and not disadvantaged by the existence of GenAI. Fundamentally, although GenAI tools can currently be used for copyright infringing purposes, I don't think that stopping that will make the world a better place for creators. I think we need new laws that protect artists from a sea of cheap AI art. I'm not generally a fan of protectionism, but in this case, I think I might be.</blockquote>

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