Artists Opposing AI Image Generators Use Mickey Mouse to Goad Copyright Lawsuits (dailydot.com) 149
AI tools like DALL-E 2, Lensa AI, and Midjourney "can be told to create imagery in the style of a particular artist," notes this article in the Daily Dot.
Yet "The current legal consensus, much to the chagrin of many artists, concludes that AI-generated art is in the public domain and therefore not copyrighted." So... In response to concerns over the future of their craft, artists have begun using AI systems to generate images of characters including Disney's Mickey Mouse. Given Disney's history of fierce protection over its content, the artists are hoping the company takes action and thus proves that AI art isn't as original as it claims. Over the weekend, Eric Bourdages, the Lead Character Artist on the popular video game Dead by Daylight, urged his followers to create and sell merchandise using the Disney-inspired images he created using Midjourney.... "Legally there should be no recourse from Disney as according to the AI models TOS these images transcends copyright and the images are public domain."
Bourdages tweet quickly racked up more than 37,000 likes and close to 6,000 shares.
In numerous follow-up tweets, Bourdages generated images of other popular characters from movies, video games, and comic books, including Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, Mario, and Pikachu.
"More shirts courtesy of AI," he added. "I'm sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC won't mind, the AI didn't steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original...."
Just two days after sharing the images, however, Bourdages stated on Twitter that he had suddenly lost his access to Midjourney.
The article notes that Bourdages reiterated his point in a later tweet. "People's craftsmanship, time, effort, and ideas are being taken without their consent and used to create a product that can blend it all together and mimic it to varying degrees."
Yet "The current legal consensus, much to the chagrin of many artists, concludes that AI-generated art is in the public domain and therefore not copyrighted." So... In response to concerns over the future of their craft, artists have begun using AI systems to generate images of characters including Disney's Mickey Mouse. Given Disney's history of fierce protection over its content, the artists are hoping the company takes action and thus proves that AI art isn't as original as it claims. Over the weekend, Eric Bourdages, the Lead Character Artist on the popular video game Dead by Daylight, urged his followers to create and sell merchandise using the Disney-inspired images he created using Midjourney.... "Legally there should be no recourse from Disney as according to the AI models TOS these images transcends copyright and the images are public domain."
Bourdages tweet quickly racked up more than 37,000 likes and close to 6,000 shares.
In numerous follow-up tweets, Bourdages generated images of other popular characters from movies, video games, and comic books, including Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, Mario, and Pikachu.
"More shirts courtesy of AI," he added. "I'm sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC won't mind, the AI didn't steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original...."
Just two days after sharing the images, however, Bourdages stated on Twitter that he had suddenly lost his access to Midjourney.
The article notes that Bourdages reiterated his point in a later tweet. "People's craftsmanship, time, effort, and ideas are being taken without their consent and used to create a product that can blend it all together and mimic it to varying degrees."
ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
AI is just a tool, no different from a paintbrush or Photoshop.
If draw a picture of Mickey Mouse using photoshop, after seeing a picture of Mickey mouse, it's still a copyright violation.
If induce Midjourney to come up with a picture of Mickey mouse, by describing such, it's still a copyright violation.
AI is not any different!
People are prescribing far too much into this stuff!
The idea of saying an AI can't study art because it might generate something like that elsewhere. Do you have the brain worms? WTF do you think people do every day? Art is observed by people all the time, and those people go draw their own things derived from it. That's how creativity works.
Re:ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
As another reason: It's phenomenally ignorant to think that the AI's terms of service can waive a third party's copyright interests. The terms of service affect the user and the AI provider -- they don't bind Disney or other people.
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Please mod parent +1 Insightful - because his comment is spot-on (I'm assuming HINAL, or else the proper upmod would be +1 Informative). I'd do it myself, but I'm fresh out of mod points ...
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Agreed.
It is very eye-opening, and frankly depressing, how little these artists seem to even understand about the basics of intellectual property and how it works.
You would think that, since their livelihood depends on it, they would take the effort to be even basically informed.
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If Disney sets a legal precedent that the AI developers need to obtain permission for training, and implement a filter that blocks words like "Disney" from the prompts that the AI will accept, these artists will have got what they wanted.
Why would they? Disney merely needs to sue the artists for copyright infringement; theirs are the hands that are actually responsible.
There is nothing new under the sun; this is exactly the same sort of debate that happened when photography was invented in the 19th century.
No one sues cameras. No one sues camera manufacturers on the grounds that their cameras can be used in an infringing manner. If someone takes a photograph of your art, and then turns around and starts selling it, you sue the human being
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Who is the artist in this case? The person who made the AI? The person who selected the training data? The website that made it publicly accessible? The person who promoted it?
Re:ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is the artist for a photograph?
Is it the person who made the camera or the film? Is it the person who operates the camera itself?
No.
It's the person who selects the subject of the picture, arranges the pose, sets up the lighting, adjusts the exposure, decides on whether to use color, or black and white, chooses the moment to capture the image, etc.
So I would say here it's the person who you didn't mention -- the person who decided what they wanted a picture of, and who kept twiddling with the AI settings until it finally popped out the desired image. That's the author. Everything else is tools.
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The oblivious difference being that a camera and film capture what is in front of them. An AI generates the image from a prompt, using the data it was trained with.
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The oblivious difference being that
Loving this. Your oblivion is willful.
Re:ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:5, Informative)
The funny thing is, that's not quite true. If I copy an image of Micky Mouse and publish or display it publicly, it's a copyright violation. If I create my own image of the Mouse and publish or display it publicly, it's a TRADEMARK violation. The AI images would be the latter. So he stands to be pounded by lawyers and still totally fail to make a point.
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If I create my own image of the Mouse and publish or display it publicly, it's a TRADEMARK violation.
It could certainly be a trademark violation, but it would also be a copyright violation as a derivative work.
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Unless it's a parody.
Re:ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Or it would violate character copyright, or a few other approaches.
But the trademark violation is the one that has to be defended against, legally, so that's what Disney will pull the big guns out for.
Re: ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:2)
You're also grossly misunderstanding copyright. Simply drawing mickey mouse is not an infringement. Displaying it publicly may be, using it for commercial purposes definitely is.
Re: ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
You're also grossly misunderstanding copyright.
I think people grossly misunderstand copyright because lawyers for organizations like Disney (and the Olympic Committee, and ... etc. etc.) have made a repeatedly intentionally misrepresenting copyright (and tradmark) law while bullying people - threatening them with these laws, even if the laws don't actually apply to the situation at hand.
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If draw a picture of Mickey Mouse using photoshop, after seeing a picture of Mickey mouse, it's still a copyright violation.
What if you draw that picture using a photoshop stamp brush with a pre-set of Mickey Mouse? Who did the copyright violation?
See where this breaks down is that AI is a tool that *someone else manages*. If I use DALL-E and it spits out a picture of Mickey Mouse, is it my copyright? I didn't create it, I didn't even train the tool to understand what Mickey Mouse looks like. Someone did.
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If I use DALL-E and it spits out a picture of Mickey Mouse, is it my copyright?
If you undertook artistic effort to get it to spit that out, then you're the creator of the work -- to the extent that it isn't a derivative work of something else.
It's not meaningfully different than a camera.
The classic case is Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company v. Sarony, 111 US 53 (1884) in which there was a dispute about copying a photograph of Oscar Wilde, and whether the photo was even copyrightable in the first place. The key part of the opinion reads:
The third finding of facts says, in regard to the photograph in question, that it is a "useful, new, harmonious, characteristic, and graceful picture, and that plaintiff made the same . . . entirely from his own original mental conception, to which he gave visible form by posing the said Oscar Wilde in front of the camera, selecting and arranging the costume, draperies, and other various accessories in said photograph, arranging the subject so as to present graceful outlines, arranging and disposing the light and shade, suggesting and evoking the desired expression, and from such disposition, arrangement, or representation, made entirely by plaintiff, he produced the picture in suit."
These findings, we think, show this photograph to be an original work of art, the product of plaintiff's intellectual [effort], of which plaintiff is the author
So it depends on how much work you put in. If a
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These findings, we think, show this photograph to be an original work of art, the product of plaintiff's intellectual [effort], of which plaintiff is the author
So it depends on how much work you put in. If all you enter at the prompt is "A person," you're probably not going to get a copyright.
The standard for copyright on a photograph today is essentially "you took it". So why should you have to do more than say "a person" to the software to get a copyright when all you have to do to get a copyright on a photo of a person is point it at them and click the trigger?
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Even with a certain amount of randomization applied, the paintbrush tool is still predictable and requires skill to produce intended results. AI is mostly pushing a button and seeing what you get, which isn't much different than throwing a can of paint at the wall and calling it "art". In the future, AI will probably allow you to tweak an image interactively as part of the creative process, but right now that isn't thing, and we shouldn't pretend that it is.
I sure as hell wouldn't pay $500 for a copy ad f
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AI is mostly pushing a button and seeing what you get, which isn't much different than throwing a can of paint at the wall and calling it "art".
Throwing a can of paint at a wall can absolutely be art, and if you've got a good reputation, it can be very profitable art to boot.
I sure as hell wouldn't pay $500 for a copy ad for my magazine if the artist just pushed a damn button, and could not customize the art for my purposes. I'll give you $20. Oh, you want more dough for your work? Well, cough up some more skill that any Joe Average can't do, you slacker.
The price of art often has little to do with skill, these days, and more to do with who is doing it. Joe Average, no matter how skilled, cannot be Mark Rothko (who also, as he succumbed to illness, sometimes supervised assistants doing the actual painting, and did no painting himself).
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I sure as hell wouldn't pay $500 for a copy ad for my magazine if the artist just pushed a damn button, and could not customize the art for my purposes.
Tell us you need help with prompts without telling us.
Re: ridiculously mis-understanding copyright (Score:2)
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Not really.
Under 17 USC 103(b), no one gets copyright in the derivative parts of a derivative work, only the new, original material.
And under 103(a), if the derivative material is used unlawfully, that can bar the copyright in the original matter in that part of the work.
Anyway, Disney could definitely file a copyright infringement suit as well. A trademark suit depends in part on how you're using the art.
Trademarks vs. Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
i'm sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC [and Disney] won't mind, the AI didn't steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original...."
They will most certainly sue - this isn't about the art being "original" as much as it violates the trademarks those companies hold over the characters used in the art.
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i'm sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC [and Disney] won't mind, the AI didn't steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original...."
They will most certainly sue - this isn't about the art being "original" as much as it violates the trademarks those companies hold over the characters used in the art.
Yea, they will. They will sue the people putting these images on t-shirts and other merch and selling them in this "protest". Now will they also go after the AI companies? Maybe. But that avenue is a lot less solid since the AI image generator is a tool, and it's outputting what the operator of the tool is asking. It's a little like trying to sue Adobe because someone made fake NFL t-shirts using graphics created in Illustrator. There are some differences, and it's going to be interesting to see how it shak
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It would be interesting to see if the one(s) encouraging these actions could be sued for [contributory copyright infringement] incitement, much like certain political figures are being threatened with for other things.
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much like certain political figures are being threatened with for other things.
OK, troll
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drinkypoo says:
OK, troll
I take it your nick means you constantly spew verbal diarrhea.
Go further (Score:2)
Forget Mickey Mouse. Feed AI with Ed Sheeran music and holywood movies and claim it as your work.
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Last I checked drawn child porn, as despicable as I may consider it, is legal.
And as long as there ain't any actual children being abused, I fail to see a reason to ban it, on a purely legal level. Yes, my stomach doesn't agree, but my stomach doesn't agree with a lot of other legal porn either.
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Last I checked drawn child porn, as despicable as I may consider it, is legal.
And as long as there ain't any actual children being abused, I fail to see a reason to ban it, on a purely legal level. Yes, my stomach doesn't agree, but my stomach doesn't agree with a lot of other legal porn either.
It depends where you live. In Australia, it is illegal: https://www.theage.com.au/nati... [theage.com.au]
I'm not sure where Australian law stands on "draw the prophet."
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If the pedophiles start generating child porn with AI, then the demand for porn produced via child abuse will crater and a generation of children will grow up unharmed. And this is supposed to be bad, you say?
Mickey Copyright is Expiring Soon (Score:3)
Re:Mickey Copyright is Expiring Soon (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe since the copyright for Mickey Mouse expires next year Disney will find it isn't worth their time to enforce it in this case.
Given how aggressive Disney has been in the past, I'm sure they'll find ("buy") a way to extend it, much like patent holders uses various tricks to extend their "inventions" beyond the 20 year mark (usually by tweaking/resubmitting it every few years).
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Steamboat Willie is set to enter the public domain January 1, 2024. Disney has publicly said they are not seeking any more extensions.
Nor do they need to. Only Steamboat Willie is entering the public domain at that point, and the visual depiction was different than in later works, which will continue to be protected for many years to come. There's also character copyright [wikipedia.org], which is distinct from the artwork itself.
But far more important is that the character, and pretty much all depictions if it, are trade
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There's also character copyright, which is distinct from the artwork itself.
Not meaningfully.
Characters aren't works, and aren't independently copyrightable. A character appearing in multiple works is merely a composite of elements drawn from each.
As each work falls into the public domain in turn, those elements are free for anyone to use.
So come 2024, anyone can make black and white Mickey from Steamboat Willie and The Gallopin' Gaucho (and maybe Plane Crazy). So he can definitely smoke and drink. And you get two different styles of eyes to choose from. But no gloves and no voic
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for any given MICKEY MOUSE branded cartoon, it might come from Disney or it might not. It might have the level of quality of the Disney cartoons, or it might not. The trademark can't function under those circumstances, and so it is generic and unprotectable.
OK, now do Pooh bear.
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Mickey will end up like Pooh Bear, where you can only use the original version (in Pooh's case, the pantsless one, oh joy the law of unintended consequences)
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So ... Mickey Mouse porn is legal to draw?
Asking for a friend.
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So ... Mickey Mouse porn is legal to draw?
Well, he's pretty old, so... probably.
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Actually, Mickey Mouse porn has been legal in the US for some time as it was ruled a parody and therefore fair use by the 9th circuit court of appeals [Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates [kentlaw.edu], 581 F.2d 751 (9th Cir. 1978)]. So, you can draw up Mickey banding anyone, or anything you want and there's nothing Disney can do about it, as much as they'd love to.
Re:Mickey Copyright is Expiring Soon (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, much like Dan O'Neill himself, you've totally misunderstood that ruling.
The Air Pirates case is basically the last big fair use case before the 1976 Copyright Act took effect. The courts found that it was an infringement. Disney won. Most of the comics were confiscated and destroyed. They just didn't want the bad PR of literally destroying O'Neill, although they easily could have and in any case he basically destroyed his own career in the process. There's actually a famous quote about it:
New York Law School professor Edward Samuels said of O'Neill after the judgment, "I was flabbergasted. He told me he had won the case. 'No, Dan,' I told him, 'You lost.' 'No, I won.' 'No, you lost.' To Dan O'Neill, not going to jail constituted victory." Samuels said of the Air Pirates, "They set parody back twenty years."
There's a good book about this called The Pirates and the Mouse which you may want to read.
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When the hell has Winnie the Pooh ever worn pants? The Disney one stands out because he wears a shirt.
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There is no "the copyright for Mickey Mouse." There are copyrights for individual drawings and films which individually expire at different times. The trademark however, continues.
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As I've mentioned elsewhere, here and earlier, the trademark will largely go generic. Only bits unrelated to creative works (like the Mickey Mouse ice cream bars or the mouse head shaped balloons) will survive.
Not the outcome they are looking for (Score:2)
It is much more likely that Disney will sue those, who instruct the AI system to produce the infringing images.
Then, it will strike a deal with the AI owners, whereupon any likeness of their copyrighted imagery will be "unlearned".
I do think, that inspite of the outcry, artists will need to adapt, as do we all. That said, I've seen a lot of Midjourney art and, while occasionally shiny and curious (in a sense of combinations, which are human inspired, not AI produced), it is also all very uniform looking and
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Wait, are you saying you don't have six fingers? Freak.
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copyright laws are concerned with distribution, not creation.
The question of who is "creating" the image is highly relevant to the services that generate images for you and then deliver them, like Midjourney. I run Stable Diffusion at home, so there is conclusively no distribution between program and myself.
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The question of who is "creating" the image is highly relevant
nah, its moot until you actually distribute it
Yes, very good, that's why it matters whether the software is creating the image, the company that owns the software, or the person putting in the prompts.
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Maybe the person putting in prompts could be charged with "conspiracy to commit copyright violation."
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No, they're concerned with both, and more besides. But it's hard to catch someone making copies if they don't distribute them, and they're more damaging, so those are the ones you mostly hear about.
I think there's a logical fallacy here. (Score:2)
Just because a work is not itself protectable by copyright doesn't mean that use of that work cannot violate a preexisting copyright.
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Just because a work is not itself protectable by copyright doesn't mean that use of that work cannot violate a preexisting copyright.
It gets better than that. Artists are protesting AI used their art to generate new art, without their permission [futurism.com].
Remember, for all the talk about AI, it has to use datasets to do whatever it is it was programmed to do. It can't magically create something from nothing (unlike humans who can come up ideas and designs out of the blue). At the moment it's nothing more than highly advanced code which finds patterns then adds a bit of randomness to generate something.
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At the moment it's nothing more than highly advanced code which finds patterns then adds a bit of randomness to generate something.
In fact it finds similarities (your "patterns") and then alters input (which is usually randomness) to be more like those similarities.
I've said it before... (Score:2)
The only way you'll get anything remotely recognizable out of models like this is if there is an unimaginable amount of repetition in the training data.
The model is fixed in size. As you add more training data, each individual image contributes less to the model. (If you have, say, 2 Billion parameters and 10 billion training images ... you get the idea.) If you do the math for any given model, it turns out that each image can really only contribute a few bytes, or less, worth of information.
If your maste
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People are giving the AI prompts like, "Paint mickey mouse in the style of Mona Lisa." It's more problematic when you tell it to copy the style of a living artist.
Re:I've said it before... (Score:4, Informative)
It's more problematic when you tell it to copy the style of a living artist.
Why? You can't protect an art style. It matter if the artist is living or dead. Norman Rockwell is free to make as many paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock as he likes and Andy Warhol is free to make a painting in the style of Norman Rockwell copying the style of Jackson Pollock if he wants.
Producing something in the style of someone else is only a problem if you then try to pass off it off as that person's work.
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It's more problematic because the artist is alive, and their works are still under copyright. Leonardo's works are free to use.
A neural network is just interpolating, it's not creating new work, it's mixing bits and pieces of what it's seen (unlike humans, who do extrapolate). Is that fair use? You're not a lawyer, you don't know.
Re:I've said it before... (Score:5, Informative)
It's more problematic because the artist is alive, and their works are still under copyright.
Again, it doesn't matter if they're alive or dead. Copyright doesn't stop at death, you know ... or maybe you don't?
A neural network is just interpolating, it's not creating new work, it's mixing bits and pieces of what it's seen
You don't seem to understand what is happening with this kind of image generator. It's not creating a collage. It's not even storing "bits and pieces" of other images like you seem to think. Any given weight is going to have been influenced by countless images.
The short version: The nn is trained to remove noise from images. We give it static and a prompt and let it remove the noise. That this results in recognizable images is nothing short of remarkable. To make the claim that it's just copying "bits of pieces of what it's seen", however, is absurd. That's not what it does and it's not something that it can do.
Is that fair use? You're not a lawyer, you don't know.
You don't need to be a lawyer for this. The fair use discussion isn't even relevant here. You won't find anything in a generated image that you could argue violates your copyright. Unless your work was included in the training data an obscene number of times, like Micky Mouse or the Mona Lisa, you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that any given generated image violates the copyright of one of your images. In fact, without making an argument based on a complete misunderstanding of the technology, I doubt you'd be able to convince anyone. You certainly wouldn't be able to do so on the basis of similarity alone.
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If the prompt is, "create an image in the style of artist X" and the program does so, then it has that artist's work included in the training data an obscene number of times.
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Fairly confident Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol are long dead, but otherwise I agree.
AI is a tool, like a pen. (Score:5, Insightful)
An artist can use a pen to draw an image of Mickey, which would violate trademark/copyright, and just like that, you can prompt AI to do the same thing. This means to me, it is the person generating the prompt that is at legal risk, not the tool.
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You are mistaken. Dangerously mistaken.
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No, copyright law applies to non-commercial uses too. And there's a difference between "not selling it" and non commercial purposes.
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No, but you can draw it for yourself and hang it in the privacy of your home. Not violation there.
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Which is completely different from "not selling it."
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Still infringing, just unlikely to get noticed.
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But what if your prompt didn't specifically request Mickey Mouse? See the issue here is that this tool isn't a completely neutral content generator that is entirely at the whim of the artist. It is very much at the whim of the training set used to build the tool. And now with the likes of Stable Diffusion 3 allowing artists to opt out of being part of a the training set so that artwork doesn't imitate their style one really has to wonder just who is in control over the final resulting image.
Good for the Artists! I love this idea! (Score:2)
The capabilities of tech will continue to come at us in ways we can't imagine. I am a nobody from nowhere and I have spent some playing around time on automated animation.
New and improved Max welcome back. News Anchors look out!
Again, who gives a crap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Smart move! (Score:3)
I think the resolution will be quite obvious: I can create Mickey Mouse images all I want, just like I can (if I could draw, that is) sketches of Mickey for my personal use, and even Disney wont bat an eye.
But if I generate or draw Mickey Mouse, and publish those pictures, and even worse: profit from them, I will get sued to hell.
The remaining issue is where Mickey Mouse ends, and where some Mickey Mouse inspired image which is not Mickey Mouse starts. But that's not a new issue, either. And even DIsney wont sue me for generating images that have a stylistic resemblance to some of their cartoons, as long as I don't use obvious clones of their characters.
Real life trolls... (Score:3)
*sigh*
There needs to be an in-real-life way to slap a "-1 Troll" on people this these, or... better yet... an in-real-life equivalent to the old "bitchslap" script that would get them out of our hair entirely. It really has become tedious and misanthropy-inducing as hell over the decades to have the luddite brigade continuously using every dirty trick they can think of to attack technological progress and... all too often... succeed in holding it back.
Both sides are wrong (Score:2)
AI should not be trained on anything that has a license prohibiting free use. This is more obvious with GitHub's Copilot, but the principle is the same.
On the other side, copyrights need to expire in a reasonable period of time. In the olden days, when tech moved more slowly, they thought 17 years was good. Today, it should probably be shorter.
The latter would solve the first issue, by throwing lots of stuff into the public domain, where it belongs.
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AI should not be trained on anything that has a license prohibiting free use
Why?
This is more obvious with GitHub's Copilot, but the principle is the same.
What principle is that?
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that programs like this can reproduce anything they've "seen" before. That's complete nonsense, as I've explained endlessly before, and again in my earlier post. In short, the amount of information any individual image contributes to models like this is absurdly small, a few bytes at most. It's not going to violate anyone's copyright.
The few examples you'll find of generated images that could possibly violate someones intellectual p
Re: Both sides are wrong (Score:2)
Training doesn't wind up smearing evenly across all the inputs. Copilot, for example, has repeatedly been caught spitting out verbatim copies of sections of its input material.
Also: just because something is on the internet doesn't mean you can use it however you see fit. Images are often displayed in hopes that someone will buy (license) them. You cannot legally just take them for whatever purpose you want.
Back to Copilot: my code is under an attribution license. Copilot owes me attribution if they trai
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Copilot, for example, has repeatedly been caught spitting out verbatim copies of
I explained that phenomenon already. Did you just completely ignore my post?
Training doesn't wind up smearing evenly across all the inputs.
It comes pretty close. Each parameter is influenced by thousands upon thousands of images during the training. What ends up encoded is what is most similar between images, that's why it'll only get you something recognizable if it's included an absurd number of times. You can get a recognizable Mona Lisa, but not Lena, the Mona Lisa of computer graphics, even though she was bound to be included quite a few times.
Copilot owes me attribution if they trained on it,
LOL! You're not
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If I go to DALL-E, and enter 'amateur radio operators operating field day', what I get back looks an awful lot like photos from actual Field Day operations. Makes me wonder how much they've really changed from the originals it was trained with.
Re:Both sides are wrong (Score:4, Informative)
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening. It's not storing images in the model and producing slightly modified versions! Neither does a unique image contribute more than an image that is less unique, as some people seem to think. What ultimately ends up being encoded are the things that are most similar between training images, not what is most unique.
Each parameter is going to be influenced by countless images. The idea that any generated image is just a modified version of some specific training image is perfectly absurd. That's just not how these things work.
If field day pictures look similar, well, it's because field day images really do look similar. They're either older men standing around a poll outside or older men sitting at a table with boxes taken from the perspective of someone standing up. These are similar to lots of other kinds of images as well, not just field day images.
Your field day image, or a noticeable portion of it, will never be generated. If it was included at all, it was likely included just once. At most, you can expect just a few bytes of information from your image to end up in the model. Not directly, of course, it's just that is the most influence it could realistically have on the parameters.
This is outright false (Score:2, Informative)
"The current legal consensus, much to the chagrin of many artists, concludes that AI-generated art is in the public domain and therefore not copyrighted."
Absolutely not. This is one of those "not even wrong" situations.
The current legal working theory is that diffusion models are legal because the training set is openly accessible.
The USPTO has denied copyright protection for specific submitted software-generated works because either they were submitted in the name of the software (which is not a person and therefore cannot hold a copyright) or because they lacked sufficient human input [ipwatchdog.com]. They have not stated that the entire class of work is uncopyrightable.
I
Derivative Works (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with AI is that it's training on copyrighted material to generate derivative works without attribution, compensation or even permission of the original artists.
It should be illegal to train AI on copyrighted material without permission of the artists.
This is why artists are coming forward and complaining because it's obvious their art was used to train the robot.
Re:Derivative Works (Score:4, Interesting)
It should be illegal to train AI on copyrighted material without permission of the artists.
On what basis? Copyright and trademark law exist only to restrict the trade of a final created image and it doesn't even restrict the creation of said image. I can sit at home and draw pictures of Mickey Mouse until the cows come up, and there's nothing that the ghost of Walt can do about it.
In this regard why should it be illegal to train anything, be it an AI model, or my own art style? That comment has no basis in any copyright law.
Re: (Score:2)
It shouldn't be illegal to train it. Any more than it should be illegal to learn how to program by reading copyrighted books on programming, for example.
The output that may be produced by training, however, could definitely resemble a copyrighted work sufficiently to be considered a derivative work, and I think in such cases it should be treated as such.
In the case of AI generated work, however, the question becomes who do you hold responsible for the infringement? I think that the most reasonable
Re: (Score:2)
It should be illegal to train AI on copyrighted material without permission of the artists. Why, though? Considering how the underlying technology works, and what it is attempting to simulate in its inner workings, and what actually happens under the hood?
Re: (Score:3)
It should be illegal to train AI on copyrighted material without permission of the artists.
Maybe so, but there's good reason to believe that it is not illegal now.
Further, it's difficult to see why it should be illegal. An artistic style is not something that merits protection or that has ever enjoyed it in the past, and indeed, learning how to copy others' styles has been a staple of learning to be an artist and often of actually being one.
And why stop at fine arts? Should it be illegal to write a book in the terse style of Hemingway, or the melodramatic and picaresque style of Dickens?
There's
analysis: "You Get Nothing!" (Score:3)
A company called Midjourney provides an art creation service that works by taking creative user input (instructions), creative (geneally copyrighted) art by other people, and Midjourney’s own (creative?) algorithm. Midjourney claims copyrights on all the art that they thus produce. They go on to say that they automatically place all that art in the public domain.
Artists who use Midjourney’s service are upset, because they feel they have a legal interest in the art, which was created at their sole direction using their creative instructions.
The art that Midjourney’s service produces are Derivative Works, based on images from, for example, Disney Corporation. The users recognize this, and decide to use the Midjourney-produced art in a wider commercial context.
The users are relying on their contract with Midjourney, which stiplulated that the copyrights to the art are owned by Midjourney (and not the users or anyone else) and that Midjourney has placed the art in the Public Domain.
They are hoping that the copyright owners whose work this art is obviously derived from will take a legal stance against Midjourney. The users are hoping that this will in turn bolster their own claim of creative input, and (partial, derivative, or perhaps sometimes full) rights to the produced art.
Midjourney didn’t say that Users could not print the produced art on T-shirts. Rather, Midjourney explicitly said that Midjourney owned the art, and that you absolutely could do this. That it’s in the public domain, so anyone could copy it freely.
If Disney sues User who made and sold the T-shirts, then User can defend by their reliance on Midjourney’s guarantee that the art was public domain.
Sometimes Midjourney produces art that may not be recognizable as a Derived Work. But it does so based on allegedly creative instructions from the User. A court will have to rule on whether the instructions are creative or not. But at least there will be a precedent that the underlying basis of all of the art is derivation. But copyright cases are very fact-specific, so it’s not clear if general legal guidelines could be developed from the specific actions we’re discussing here.
The most they can hope for is, "Sometimes the user’s instructions may be creative". In response, Midjourney will change their Terms Of Service to
(1) Produced art is may sometimes be a Derived Work of some third party (2) User is liable for producing any such Derived Work (3) User’s input may be creative (4) User hereby transfers and assigns all rights to any creative input to Midjourney (5) Notwithstanding #1, Midjourney hereby transfers all procued art into Public Domain.
So the users still aren't going to get anything.
Is there some other legal theory I'm missing?
Re: (Score:2)
Is there some other legal theory I'm missing?
I outlined it mainly from the user’s hopes, but in actual court there would be some wrinkles.
Mainly, defending User has publicly admitted that they were deliberately producing art that would be recognized as Derivate Works of Disney Corporation. This raises issues that transcend any arguments about Midjourney and what they are doing.
But however you get there, regardless of who winds up in court and what they do, Midjourney will certainly cover their own ass with the kind of TOS that I wrote.
(I haven
Re: (Score:2)
Is there some other legal theory I'm missing?
I outlined it mainly from the user’s hopes, but in actual court there would be some wrinkles.
Mainly, defending User has publicly admitted that they were deliberately producing art that would be recognized as Derivate Works of Disney Corporation. This raises issues that transcend any arguments about Midjourney and what they are doing.
But however you get there, regardless of who winds up in court and what they do, Midjourney will certainly cover their own ass with the kind of TOS that I wrote.
(I haven’t looked or anything, but I’m surprised it doesn’t already say that. Just going on TFS.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the protesting User is using "Mickey Mouse Legal Reasoning" all around.
Re: (Score:2)
The art that Midjourneyâ(TM)s service produces are Derivative Works
Not unless there are recognizable elements, usually taken to mean literally duplicated — though it's more complicated than that, too.
Re: (Score:3)
Artists who use Midjourneyâ(TM)s service are upset, because they feel they have a legal interest in the art, which was created at their sole direction using their creative instructions.
Then don't use that service.
Copyright law should not treat authors like children, who have to be protected from themselves. They're adults, and should be as free to make agreements that are good for them or as bad for them as anyone else.
The art that Midjourneyâ(TM)s service produces are Derivative Works, based on images from, for example, Disney Corporation.
Depends on the specific circumstances; the mere fact that copyrighted works were used for training may not render the AI's output derivative.
The users recognize this, and decide to use the Midjourney-produced art in a wider commercial context.
Then they're fools.
The users are relying on their contract with Midjourney, which stiplulated that the copyrights to the art are owned by Midjourney (and not the users or anyone else) and that Midjourney has placed the art in the Public Domain.
An author can only get a copyright as to their own work. Where a work is derivative, only the original parts are
Boy are they missing the point (Score:2)
Most of the protesting artists think the simulated neural net actually stores a copy of their work and then somehow makes a collage of their copyrighted works to produce new images.
Or at least they claim to believe that. When it comes right down to it, the real fear is "who will pay me to make largely generic decorative art work if this AI can make something good enough".
After hearing all the hype, I installed a version of Stable Diffusion on my PC. It's available on GitHub and not too hard to install. If y
Re:Automation and Dystopia (Score:2)
> It will be incredibly dystopian if a few at the top accrue all the benefits and the rest are thrown to the wolves (as seems to be the current plan).
I call collectively call automation, robotics, software, and AI "Smart Tools". These require less human attention to operate than "dumb tools". The components in smart tools, like motors and computer chips, are cheap enough for average people to have multiple units. I count several dozen in my house, not including vehicles.
Modern life is complicated, but
I'm pretty sure that's not how copyright works (Score:2)
Copy an artist's style = Lawsuit ... wth? (Score:2)
If you create something and try to profit by claiming it was made by someone else, then you are at best false advertising or infringing on copyright, no? So that's fair game for a lawsuit and anger, etc.
If you create something in the style of someone else but make no claims but that it is your own work ... then what is the problem? The person whose style you copied can certainly be afraid that you might do it better or choose more appealing subjects but basically that's their problem.
The problem seems to
Re:Poor cry baby artists. (Score:5, Insightful)
We can create visual assets without having to hire scummy artists. Their monopoly is over. Good riddance.
Yeah, sure. Let us know when AI can generate all the art needed for a video game. Or the art for a movie. Or for a comic book.
I always found it amusing when people laughed at all those people getting art degrees, claiming they were worthless, then ooing and ahhing over art in vdeo games, movies, and elsewhere. Because obviously no artist had a hand in producing that art.
Re: (Score:3)
Video games these days are more about artists than programmers.
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly, I was never oohing and aahing at video game art.
If anything, AAA games lately showed that graphics means jack shit when it comes to value. AAA games have kick-ass graphics but are boring as all fuck.
Re: (Score:3)
"All art" no idea, but following the lead of an art director or two and maybe same "art QA people" to check results.. that will happen in not too distant future.
At that point the number of digital artists needed will drop by maybe a factor of 100.
So useless: No very soon
Very rare as a job: Yes fairly soon