this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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"Artists don't deserve to profit off their own work" is stupid as shit. Complain about copyright abuse and lobbying a la Disney and I'll be right there with you, but people shouldn't have the right to take your work and profit off it without either your consent or paying you for it.
Artists and other creatives who actually do work to create art (not shitting out text into an image generator) should take every priority over AI "creators."
No you don't understand, the machine works exactly like a human brain! That makes stealing the work of others completely justifiable and not even really theft!
/s, bc apparently this community has a bunch of dumbass tech bros that genuinely think this
This but mostly unironically. And before you go Inzulting me I'm an artist myself and wouldn't be where I am if I wasn't allowed to learn from other people's art to teach myself.
Having a masters degree in machine learning doesn't make you an artist grow tf up xD
No, but drawing for last 13 years of my life does.
don't dismiss me, I like being spit on
And this, is a strawman. If this argument is being made, it's most likely because of their own misunderstanding of the subject. They are most likely trying to make the argument that the way biological neural networks and artificial neural networks 'learn' is similar. Which is true to a certain extent since one is derived from the other. There's a legitimate argument to be made that this inherently provides transformation, and it's exceptionally easy to see that in most unguided prompts.
I haven't seen your version of this argument being spoken around here at all. In fact it feels like a personal interpretation of someone who did not understand what someone else was trying to communicate to them. A shame to imply that's an argument people are regularly making.
Equating training AI to not being able to profit is stupid as shit and the same bullshit argument big companies use to say "we lost a bazillion dollars to people pursuing out software" someone training their AI on an art work (that is probably under a creative commons licence anyway) does suck money out of an artists pocket they would have otherwise made.
Why are you the one that gets to decide what is "work" to create art? Should digital artists not count because they are computer assisted, don't require as much skill and technique as "traditional" artists and use tools that are based on the work of others like, say, brush makers?
And the language you use shows that you're vindictive and angry.
My brother in Christ, they didn't even allude to this, this is an entirely new thought.
Yeah no shit sherlok. I'm applying their flawed logic to other situations, where the conclusion is even more dumb so he can see that the logic doesn't work.
But leaping from 'copyright is made-up' to 'so artists should starve?' is totally reasonable discourse.
Explain what you think will happen if artists who depend on their art to make a living lose copyright protection.
Commissions, patronage, subscriptions, everything else rando digital artists do when any idiot can post a JPG everywhere and DMCA takedowns accomplish roughly dick.
Meanwhile - you wanna talk about people who've been fucked over by corporations that decide their original artwork is too close to something a dead guy made?
Or look into whether professional artists were having a good time, before all this? Intellectual property laws have funded and then effectively destroyed countless years of effort by artists who aren't even allowed to talk about it due to NDAs. CGI firms keep losing everything and going under while the movies they worked on make billions. The status quo is not all sunshine and rainbows. Pretending the choice is money versus nothing is deeply dishonest.
“Just internet beg” oh okay. Shows exactly how much you value the people making the art you want to feed into the instant gratification machine.
'How money?' Existing lucrative business ventures by quite a lot of artists. 'So beg!' Yeah you got me, how intellectually sincere, gold sticker, you can leave.
They said IP, IP protects artists from having their work stolen. The fact AI guzzlers are big mad that IP might apply to them too is irrelevant.
Digital artists do exactly as much work as traditional artists, comparing it to AI “art” from an AI “artist” is asinine. Do you actually think digital artists just type shit in and a 3D model appears or something?
And yeah I’m angry when my friends and family who make their living as actual artists, digital and traditional, have their work stolen or used without their permission. They aren’t fucking corporations making up numbers about lost sales, they’re spending weeks trying to get straight up stolen art mass printed on tshirts and mugs removed from online sale. They’re going outside and seeing their art on shit they’ve never sold. Almost none of them own a home or even make enough to not have a regular job, it’s literally taking money out of their pockets to steal their work. This is the shit you’re endorsing by shitting on the idea of IP.
Do you actually think artists using AI tools just type shit into the input and output decent art? It's still just a new, stronger digital tool. Many previous tools have been demonized, claiming they trivialize the work and people who used them were called hacks and lazy. Over time they get normalized.
And as far as training data being considered stealing IP, I don't buy it. I don't think anyone who's actually looked into what the training process is and understands it properly would either. For IP concerns, the output should be the only meaningful measure. It's just as shitty to copy art manually as it is to copy it with AI. Just because an AI used an art piece in training doesn't mean it infringed until someone tries to use it to copy it. Which, agreed, is a super shitty thing to do. But again, it's a tool, how it's used is more important than how it's made.
Lmao, I’ve used AI image generation, you’re not going to be able to convince me any skill was involved in what I made. The fact some people type a lot more and keep throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks doesn’t make it art or anything they’ve done with their own skill. The fact none of them can control what they’re making every time the sauce updates is proof of that.
If it’s so obviously not IP violating to train with it then I’m sure it’ll be totally fine if they train them without using artists’ work without permission, since it totally wasn’t relying on those IP violating images. Yet for some reason they fight this tooth and nail. 🤔
Except they totally could. But a data source of such size of material where everyone opted in to use for AI explicitly does not exist. The reason they fight it is in part also because training such models isn't exactly free. The hardware that it's done on costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and must run for long periods. You would not just do that for the funsies unless you have to. And considering the data by all means seems to be collected in legal ways, they have cause to fight such cases.
It's a bit weird to use that as an argument to begin with since a party that knows they are at fault usually settles rather than fight on and incur more costs. It's almost as if they don't agree with your assertion that they needed permission, and that those imagines were IP violating 🤔
Oh no it costs money to use the art stealing machine to make uncopyrightable trash? 🥺
"But a data source of such size of material where everyone opted in to use for AI explicitly does not exist. "
Dang I wonder why 🤔🤔🤔🤔
Because AI wasn't a big thing before 2020, and no such permission in obtained material has been legally necessary so far (lawsuits are pending of course). If something has no incentive to exist it will not be created. There's plenty of ethical justifications why no such permission is needed as well.
Oh cool, you think art theft is ethically justified as long as it's a robot doing it
But sure, go ahead! I'm sure you'll change so many minds by immediately disregarding everything they say by putting them in a box of "thiefs" because they said something that didn't fit very specifically within your "Guidebook to hating anything related to AI".
Now back to a serious discussion if you're up for it. Creative freedom is built on the notion that ideas are the property of nobody, it is a requirement since every artist in existence has derived their work from the work of others. It's not even controversial, using your definition of stealing means all artists 'steal' from each other all the time, and nobody cares. But because a robot does it (despite that robot being in 100% control of the artist using it), it's suddenly the most outrageous thing.
I know for sure my ideas have been 'stolen' from my publicized works, but I understand I had no sole right to that idea to begin with. I can't copyright it. And if a 'thief' used those ideas in a transformative manner rather than create something that tries to recreate what I made (which would be actual infringement), they have every right to as without that right literally nobody would be allowed to make anything since everything we make is inspired by something that we don't hold a copyright over. Most of the people actually producing stuff that will be displayed publicly so other people will experience and pull it apart to learn from understand we have no right to those ideas to begin with, except in how we applied those ideas in a specific work.
Think of how much actual art you could've made in the time it took you to shill for the thing that's stealing art and fucking over creatives and using personal data to spy on people
Oh yeah, shame on me, spending a part of my day 'shilling' for myself and my friends and colleagues. And 'shilling' for a better future for us all by dissuading people from weaponizing bad arguments and misunderstandings to defend themselves, because that will not help them one bit. The latter part of you sentence is such utter nonsense that I don't even need to respond to that.
First of all, your second point is very sad to hear, but also a non-factor. You are aware people stole artwork before the advent of AI right? This has always been a problem with capitalism. It's very hard to get accountability unless you are some big shot with easy access to a lawyer at your disposal. It's always been shafting artists and those who do a lot of hard work.
I agree that artists deserve better and should gain more protections, but the unfortunate truth is that the wrong kind of response to AI could shaft them even more. Lets say inspiration could in some cases be ruled to be copyright infringement if the source of the inspiration could be reasonably traced back to another work. This could allow companies big companies like Disney an easier pathway to sue people for copyright infringement, after all your mind is forever tainted in their IP after you've watched a single Disney movie. Banning open source models from existing could also create a situation where the same big companies could create internal AI models from the art in their possession, but anyone with not enough materials could not. Which would mean that everyone but the people already taking advantage of artists will benefit from the existence of the technology.
I get that you want to speak up for your friends and family, and perhaps they do different work than I imagine, but do you actually talk to them about what they do in their work? Because digital artist also use non-AI algorithms to generate meshes and images. (And yes, that could be summed down to 'type shit in and a 3D model appears') They also use building blocks, prefabs, and use reference assets to create new unique assets. And like all artists they do take (sometimes direct) inspiration from the ideas of others, as does the rest of humanity. Some of the digital artists I know have embraced the technology and combined it with the rest of their skills to create new works more efficiently and reduce their workload. Either by being able to produce more, or being able to spend more time refining works. It's just a tool that has made their life easier.
All of that is completely irrelevant to the fact that image generators ARE NOT PEOPLE and the way that people are inspired by other works has absolutely fuck all to do with how these algorithms generate images. Ideas aren’t copyrightable but these algorithms don’t use ideas because they don’t think, they use images that they very often do not have a legal right to use. The idea that they are equivalent is a self serving lie from the people who want to drive up hype about this and sell you a subscription.
I watch my husband work every day as a professional artist and I can tell you he doesn’t use AI, nor do any of the artists I know; they universally hate it because they can tell exactly how and why the shit it makes is hideous. They spot generated images I can’t because they’re used to seeing how this stuff is made. The only thing remotely close to an algorithm that they use are tools like stroke smoothing, which itself is so far from image generation it would be an outright lie to equate them.
Companies aren’t using this technology to ease artist workloads, they’re using it to replace them. There’s a reason Hollywood fought the strike as hard as they did.
The fact they are not people does not mean they can't use the same legal justifications that humans use. The law can't think ahead. The justification is rather simple, the output is transformative. Humans are allowed to be inspired by other works because the ideas that make up such a concept can't be copyrighted because they can be applied to be transformative. If the human uses that idea to produce something that's not transformative, it's also infringement. AI currently falls into that same reasoning.
You call it a self serving lie, but I could easily say that about your arguments as well that you only have this opinion because you don't like AI (it seems). That's not constructive, and since I hope you care about artists as well, I implore you actually engage in good faith debate other than just assuming the other person must be lying because they don't share your opinion. You are also forgetting that the people that benefit from image generators are people. They are artists too. Most from before AI was a thing, and some because it became a thing.
Again, sorry to hear your husband feels that way. I feel he is doing himself a disservice to dismiss a new technology, as history has not been kind to those who oppose inevitable change, especially when there are no good non-emotional reasons against this new technology. Most companies have never cared about artists, that fact was true without AI, and that fact will remain true whatever happens. But if they replace their artists with AI they are fools, because the technology isn't that great on it's own (currently). You need human intervention to use AI to make high quality output, it's a tool, not the entire process.
The Hollywood strikes is a good example of what artists should be doing rather than making certain false claims online. Join a union, get protection for your craft. Just because something is legal doesn't mean you can't fight for your right to demand specific protections from your employer. But they do not affect laws, they are organizational. It has no ramifications on people not part of the guilds involved. If a company which while protecting their artists, allows them to use AI to accelerate their workflow, and comes out on top against the company that despite their best intentions, made their art department not as profitable anymore, that will also cause them to lose their jobs. Since AI is very likely not to go away completely even in the most optimistic of scenarios, it's eventually a worse situation than before.
And lastly, I guess your husband does different work than the digital artists I work with then. You have a ton of generation tools for meshes and textures. I also never equated it directly to AI, but you stated that they use no tools which do all the work for them (such as building a mesh for them), which is false. You wouldn't use the direct output of AI as well. I implore you to look at "algorithmic art": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_art
"I can" and "you can't" are not opposites.
I have no idea what you're trying to convey here.
“Artists don’t deserve to profit off their own work” is not what anyone said.
Even if people can just take your shit and profit off it - so can you.
This is not a complete rebuttal, but if you need the core fallacy spelled out, let's go slowly.
Why are you entitled to profit off the labor of someone else?
Why am I not entitled to profit from my own work building on stories I enjoy?
Isn't this a completely different conversation than the one we were having and kind of missing the point? Yes, imo you should be allowed to do that. Still, AI Companies are using the labor of millions of artist for free to train their AIs, which are then threatening to eliminate ways of these artist to gather income.
How is that related in any way to the ways that copyright has been exploited against fanmade art?
The conversation began with 'fuck copyright,' so no, restraints on new works are at least as relevant as money.
Restraints on derivative works seem directly relevant to railing against AI training. I don't think fanart goes on your side of the table. You're taking a stand for amateur references to immense professional works. Presumably on the basis that Disney can keep doing its thing no matter how many people draw their own weird Zootopia comics - yeah? I for one would argue the environment someone grew up in is fair game for them to build from, as much for Star Wars as for ancestral fairy tales.
The environment of the internet is a pile of everyone's JPGs. We think nothing of amateur galleries where people mimic popular styles, borrow characters, and draw frankly unreasonable quantities of low-quality pornography. I'm not up-in-arms about AI because it's more of the same. I barely understand the objection. An entity learned English from library books? Yeah, that's how everything that can read English learned to read English. You couldn't understand this sentence without exposure to countless examples of text that were not explicitly provided for your education. So if there's a pile of linear algebra that can emit drawings, and it was shaped by looking at a ton of drawings that other people posted-- then-- as opposed to what?
The economic concerns are simpler: Hollywood is doomed. This is refrigeration, and they sell ice for iceboxes. They imagine it's going to make ice much easier to sell, since they won't need people to harvest and import it. In reality their entire business model is fucked, because their customers also won't need people to harvest and import it.
If they don't need a studio full of artists to make a cartoon movie... neither do you. Neither do all the artists they cast off. We cannot be far from models that tween pretty damn well on their own, and can be guided to tween flawlessly. The near future is not about to have less human art. No more than when Flash obviated colored paint on clear plastic.
Whether or not that's going to make anyone appropriate amounts of money under late capitalism is another question entirely, but it's not like artists were famously well-off before, and in any case Disney delenda est.
Even if text to image generators are able to improve to be better than human artists, people won't stop making art just because a computer can do it faster.
But they will stop hiring artists, and that's more to the point of what they were saying. We're already seeing some jobs being replaced with algorithms (mostly stuff like shitty click bait journalism, but still), and art has long been considered a skill not worth paying for. In centuries past, art used to be something only the rich could afford. Now, people get upset if artists charge $60 for a commission.
The algorithms won't need to produce work better than we can, or even equal. It just needs to make stuff that seems value appropriate. People have already made algorithms to imitate certain popular artists' styles, and they've seen a hit to their income as a result. Why get a commission done from one of them when you can go online and get 50 for free that are kinda close, and then just pick the one you like.
People have been getting automated out of their jobs for well over a century. Technology shouldn't stop advancing; everyone should be compensated for the human labor saved through the use of automation.
What entitles someone to take another person's work and profit off it?
No.
The subject is intellectual property, in general.
Why am I not entitled to share culture?
Why am I not entitled to create, if similarity exists?
Why does someone get to own an idea, just because they wrote it down first?
Is the world's copyright system flawed? Yes. Should it be completely removed? No, because otherwise a lot of creative branches would be unsustainable. Artists need money, musicians need money etc.
I'm not against copyright. I'm trying to guide this other use through why their post is a nonsensical response to someone who is.
If you don't want to defend what you said that's fine but I'm not going to pretend we were actually talking about something else. 🤷♂️ "Share culture" is not when you take someone else's drawing and dropship hundreds of shittily made tshirts on the Facebook marketplace. That's what IP protects artists from and fighting stuff like that takes up a stupid amount of time for anyone that isn't a corporation.
If you are creating that's absolutely fine. But shit you typed into AI isn't creating anything and literally couldn't exist without the people that actually create art.
So you still have no idea what I'm trying to convey here.
You're fixated on one aspect, and ignoring all other consequences. "If you are creating that’s absolutely fine" is NOT what any version of copyright law says. Not ever. So demanding an answer to an explanation of why your first response was a strawman is not the mic-drop you think it is.
Again:
“Artists don’t deserve to profit off their own work” is a position you made up. They're your words. It's a thing you, and you alone, have said. But that's never the same thing as whether anyone else can. This is such a basic 'not-all doesn't mean none' distinction, and it is the only reason I wrote the only words you chose to read.
Look at who they responded to. The statement is not a straan when the person that was responded to doesn't believe in respect the rights of creators.
As if copyright never censors creators.
Fuck your sophistry.
If you don't want to discuss this, leave.