Comment by coderenegade

9 days ago

I don't see why this is an issue? The prompts imply obvious and well-known characters, and don't make it clear that they want an original answer. Most humans would probably give you similar answers if you didn't add an additional qualifier like "not Indiana Jones". The only difference is that a human can't exactly reproduce the likeness of a famous character without significant time and effort.

The real issue here is that there's a whole host of implied context in human languages. On the one hand, we expect the machine to not spit out copyrighted or trademarked material, but on the other hand, there's a whole lot of cultural context and implied context that gets baked into these things during training.

33 comments

coderenegade

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dgunay  9 days ago

I think the point is that for a lot of them there are endless possible alternatives to the character design, but it still generates one with the exact same design. Why can't, for example, the image of Tomb Raider have a different colored tank top? Why is she wearing a tank top and not a shirt? Why does she have to have a gun? Why is she a busty, attractive brunette? These are all things that could be different but the dominance of Lara Croft's image and strong association with the words "tomb raider" in popular culture clearly influences the model's output.

  • coderenegade  9 days ago

    Because it's not clear that that's what you want. What's the context? Are we playing a game where I guess a character? Is it a design session for a new character based on a well known one, maybe a sidekick? Is it a new take on an old character? Are you just trying to remember what a well-known character looks like, and giving a brief prompt?

    It's not clear what the asker wants, and the obvious answer is probably the culturally relevant one. Hell, I'd give you the same answers as the AI did here if I had the ability to spit out perfect replicas.

  • echoangle  9 days ago

    And how is that bad or surprising? It’s actually what I would expect from how AI works.

    • SV_BubbleTime  9 days ago

      Exactly. We designed systems that work on attention and inference… and then surprised that it returns popular results?

mvieira38  9 days ago

It's an IP theft machine. Humans wouldn't be allowed to publish these pictures for profit, but OpenAI is allowed to "generate" them?

  • victorbjorklund  9 days ago

    I would 100% be allowed to draw an image of Indiana Jones in illustrator. There is no law against me drawing his likeness.

  • why_at  9 days ago

    I'm honestly trying to wrap my head around the law here because copyright is often very confusing.

    If I ask an artist to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones and they do it would that be copyright infringement? Even if it's just for my personal use?

    • bawolff  9 days ago

      Probably that would be a derrivative work. Which means the original owner would have some copyright in it.

      It may or may not be fair use, which is a complicated question (ianal).

    • Avicebron  9 days ago

      IANAL, but if OpenAI makes any money/commercial gains from producing a Ghibli-esque image when you ask, say you pay a subscription to OpenAI. What percentage of that subscription is owed to Ghibli for running Ghibli art through OpenAI's gristmill and providing the ability to create that image with that "vibe/style" etc. How long into perpetuity is OpenAI allowed to re-use that original art whenever their model produces said similar image. That seems to be the question.

      5 replies →

    • xboxnolifes  9 days ago

      I would think yes. Consider the alternate variation where the artist proactively draws Indiana Jones, in all his likeness, and attempts to market and sell it. The same exchange is ultimately happening, but this clearly is copyright infringement.

  • pwarner  9 days ago

    To me a lot has to do with what a human does with them one the tool generates them no?

  • Smithalicious  9 days ago

    Won't somebody think of the billionaire IP holders? The horror.

    • asadotzler  9 days ago

      And the small up and coming artists whose work is also stolen, AI-washed, and sold to consumers for a monthly fee, destroying the market for those up and coming artists to sell original works. You don't get to pretend this is only going to hurt big players when there are already small players whose livelihoods have been ruined.

jmull  9 days ago

Normally (well, if you're ethical) credit is given.

Also, there are IP limits of various sorts (e.g. copyright, trademark) for various purposes (some arguably good, some arguably bad), and some freedoms (e.g., fair use). There's no issue if this follows the rules... but I don't see where that's implemented here.

It looks like they may be selling IP they don't own the right to.