this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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I think this is a difficult concept to tackle, but the main argument I see about using existing works as 'training data' is the idea that 'everything is a remix'.
I, as a human, can paint an exact copy of a Picasso work or any other artist. This is not illegal and I have no need of a license to do this. I definitely don't need a license to paint something 'in the style of Picasso', and I can definitely sell it with my own name on it.
But the question is, what about when a computer does the same thing? What is the difference? Speed? Scale? Anyone can view a picture of the Mona Lisa at any time and make their own painting of it. You can't use the image of the Mona Lisa without accreditation and licensing, but what about a recreation of the Mona Lisa?
I'm not really arguing pro-AI here, although it may sound like it. I've just heard the 'licensing' argument many times and I'd really like to hear what the difference between a human copying and a computer copying are, if someone knows more about the law.
Um - your examples are so old the copyright expired centuries ago. Of course you can copy them. And you can absolutely use an image of the Mona Lisa without accreditation or licensing.
Painting and selling an exact copy of a recent work, such as Banksy, is a crime.
… however making an exact copy of Banksy for personal use, or to learn, or to teach other people, or copying the style… that’s all perfectly legal.
I don’t think think this is a black and white issue. Using AI to copy something might be a crime. You absolutely can use it to infringe on copyright. The real question is who’s at fault? I would argue the person who asked the AI to create the copy is at fault - not the company running the servers.
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Huh? What does being non profit have to do with it? Private companies are allowed to learn from copyrighted work. Microsoft and Apple, for example, look at each other's software and copy ideas (not code, just ideas) all the time. The fact Linux is non-profit doesn't give them any additional rights or protection.
They're not gatekeeping llms though, there are publicly available models and data sets.
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Stability diffusion is open source. You can run local instances with provided and free training sets to query against and generate your own outputs.
https://stability.ai/
Thanks for your response. I realize I muddied the waters on my question by mentioning exact copies.
My real question is based on the 'everything is a remix' idea. I can create a work 'in the style of Banksy' and sell it. The US copyright and trademark laws state that a work only has to be 10% differentiated from the original in order to be legal to use, so creating a piece of work that 'looks like it could have been created by Banksy, but was not created by Banksy' is legal.
So since most AI does not create exact copies, this is where I find the licensing argument possibly weak. I really haven't seen AI like MidJourney creating exact replicas of works - but admittedly, I am not following every single piece of art created on Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion, or DALL-E, or any of the other platforms, and I'm not an expert in the trademarking laws to the extent I can answer these questions.
Always happy to discuss copyright. :-) Our IP laws are long overdue for an overhaul in my opinion. And the only way to make that happen is for as many people as possible to discuss the issues. I plan to spend the rest of my life creating copyrighted work, and I really hope I don't spend all of it under the current rules...
The law doesn't say that.The Blurred Lines copyright case for example was far less than 10%. Probably less than 1%, and it was still unclear if it was infringement or not. It took five years of lawsuits to reach an unclear conclusion where the first court found it to be infringing then an appeals panel of judges reached a split decision where the majority of them found it to be non-infringing.
Copyright is incredibly complex and unclear. It's generally best to just not get into a copyright lawsuit in the first place. Usually when someone accuses you of copyright infringement you try to pay them whatever amount of money (in the Blurred Lines case, there were discussions of 50% of the artist's income from the song) to make them go away even if your lawyers tell you you're probably going to get a not guilty verdict.
I don't have a source to cite, but I did read an article that showed a bad faith actor deliberately trying to use ai to copy images directly, and while the results weren't exact replicas, they were reasonable facsimiles of the original, to the extent that if a human has created it without ai, it would have been blatant copyright infringement, despite not being quite identical.
I wish I had the examples on hand to show, but it was months ago, and unfortunately I have not the skills nor time to retrieve it.
To be at fault the user would have to know the AI creation they distributed commits copyright infringement. How can you tell? Is everyone doing months of research to be vaguely sure it's not like someone else's work?
Even if you had an AI trained on only public domain assets you could still end up putting in the words that generate something copyrighted.
Companies created a random copyright infringement tool for users to randomly infringe copyright.
The same way you can tell if you repainted a Banksy yourself. If you don't realize, and monetize, then you are liable for a copyright lawsuit regardless of the way you created the piece in question.
And if noone can detect similarities beyond influences, then it's not infringing anything.
You may recognize a Banksy but to another it's like I said you aught to know your work is like one from Coinsey: who?
This is exasperated when people can create creative works via AI, having even less knowledge about your peers who know how to DIY. A potentially life-ruining lawsuit is a bad system to find out you can't monetize something.
If only there was some way to find out prior to selling stuff as if you made it. If only. Darn it!
I don't understand. If I make something that doesn't mean I'm not infringing someone's works.
Point: regardless of the HOW it was made, the process of figuring if it infringes on something is the same. It's still not always easy and due to the shittyness of current IP laws, even long time professional artists sometimes make mistakes.
In the end it's just about money.
I am familiar with SEGA owning a software patent on Crazy Taxi's "arrow above car points where to go" because my interests in creating games happened to lead me to an article stating such.
That seems related to HOW my works are made, to me. I know of no other way to find that out.
Like this one in Midtown Madness? Did MS actually have to pay SEGA to do the same thing? Both were originally released in 1999, it seems. I'm unsure which came first, but does it even matter if SEGA managed to get the patent first?
Midtown Madness 1/2/3 all have the arrows from what I've seen. At least 3 has a part where you pick up people in a taxi.
I am unsure what would happen if Midtown Madness did it first but didn't patent it, game mechanic patents are not common (I hope...). Perhaps they knew they could win but didn't want to lose money fighting the Microsoft of that time? I can find no mention of MM regarding the Sega v. Fox lawsuit where Fox privately settled over Simpson's Road Rage in 2003.
Crazy! I had never thought of this sort of arrow as something that would have a patent. Isn't it pretty common in various other driving/racing games? Maybe not?! MM1 & MM2 definitely had the arrow — I've spent way too many hours fucking around in those as a kid! However, there's no taxi mode in any of them. Sadly, I've never tried MM3, since it was never released for PC, iirc only for Xbox, but the video you shared indeed confirms it had the arrow too, and even a taxi mode! How similar is it to that of Crazy Taxi? I've never played that. At least, SEGA probably doesn't own the patent for the taxi/delivery/ambulance driver game format too?!
Looks basically the same, as you get closer to the destination in Crazy Taxi the arrow pluses in size and switches colour from green, to orange, to red.
Are you aware that mini-games during loading screens were patented (expired now)?
Your example is a dude who paints unsolicited on other people's property. What kind of copyright does a ghost have?
A surprising amount, though it would potentially be quite difficult to prove.
I should paint some shit on your house and then sue you for displaying it.
Here's the thing... Generative AI had a plagiarism/remix phase. It raised some serious questions about copyright
It lasted for a matter of weeks.
We're all still stuck up on it, but go to civit.ai
Play with it. Look at what people are creating.
If you're not convinced, put up a bounty for something extremely specific
Art has changed. There's no putting it back in the bottle, this is the tiniest leading edge of the singularity
Just a small warning, I just played around with civit. Tried to make some Images, also wanted to try to make some nsfw images. Anyway be really careful what you prompt, I accidentally generated some images with very young people I never intended.