Comment by bayindirh

6 months ago

I think I have worded my question wrong. I asked about not about how AI affects the financials of these smaller artists, but their wellbeing in general.

There are many small artists who do this not for money, but for fun and have their renowned styles. Even their styles are ripped off by these generative AI companies and turned into a slot machine to earn money for themselves. These artists didn't consent to that, and this affects their (mental) well-beings.

With that context in mind, what do you think about these people who are not in this for money is ripped out of their years of achievement and their hard work exploited for money by generative AI companies?

It's not about IP (with whatever expansion you prefer) or laws, but ethics in general.

Substitute comics for any medium. Code, music, painting, illustration, literature, short movies, etc.

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bayindirh

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tliltocatl  6 months ago

I see your point, "AI art" sucks in general and this is ethically sketchy as hell, but AIAK style copying has never been covered by copyright in the first place. Yea, it sucks to be alienated form your works. That's one of the externalites I mentioned in the original comment. But there is simply no remedy there. That's how the reality is.

  • bayindirh  6 months ago

    Thanks for your answer, and taking your time for writing it!

    Yes, style copying is generally considered legal, but as another commenter posted in a related thread "scale matters".

    Maybe this will be reconsidered in the near future as the scale is in a much more different level with Generative AI. While there can be no technological solution to this (since it's a social problem to begin with), maybe public opinion about this issue will evolve over time.

    To be crystal clear: I'm not against the tech. I'm against abusing and exploiting people for solely monetary profit.

frozenseven  6 months ago

(1) You can't copyright an art style. That's not a thing.

(2) Once you make something publicly available, anyone can learn from it. No consent necessary.

(3) Being upset does not grant you special privileges under the law.

(4) If you don't like the idea of paying for AI art, free software is both plentiful and competitive with just about anything proprietary.

  • bayindirh  6 months ago

    (1) I think I acknowledged that on my last comment before you have written that.

    (2) Learning and copying are different. If we're going to enter to the "but AI learns just like humans" realm, let's please don't, because ML tries to mimic human learning, they are not the same, even remotely.

    (3) I don't think I said laws behave differently because "some humans are upset".

    (4) I haven't told anything about paying for (AI) art. I don't pay for AI art, but I pay for "real" art, made by humans. I also make art sometimes, and don't use AI/ML while doing that, and don't feed models with my art (I stopped sharing on multiple platforms because of that).

    (5) If we presume that every law is "correct, right and forever", then we have another name for it. It's called dogma. Moreover, we have other "unwritten" rules which generally support or sometimes supersede the laws in place, and the word for that it "ethics".

    (6) Staying in the subject of law, as somebody else noted [0], scale matters. While doing style transfer for a couple of things might be considered legal, that needs a reconsideration when scale reaches to today's levels possible with generative AI.

    [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44468480

    • frozenseven  6 months ago

      (1) Did you really? You pivoted to a version of the argument where "scale matters". That's also not a thing. If scale matters, it doesn't in terms of style. You could conceivably make an argument based on competition, but even that is very hard to prove in court.

      (2) "Copying", as in verbatim using/memorizing sizeable chunks of content and suchlike? No, the goal of ML training is to generalize across concepts. I didn't make an argument based on some direct connection to neuroscience, but I also reject the idea that there isn't one.

      (3) So it's an irrelevant point. Some people are upset about technology? I honestly don't care.

      (4) You said that the big bad corporations are making money. I'm saying that FOSS alternatives are all over the place.

      (5) That so? My code of ethics says that Luddites getting steamrolled is an immense moral good.

      (6) See (1).

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