[HN Gopher] An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a h...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a
       bullwhip
        
       Author : participant3
       Score  : 361 points
       Date   : 2025-04-03 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (theaiunderwriter.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (theaiunderwriter.substack.com)
        
       | CamperBob2 wrote:
       | And? What's the model supposed to do? It's just doing what many
       | human artists would do, if they're not explicitly being paid to
       | create new IP.
       | 
       | If infringement is happening, it arguably doesn't happen when an
       | infringing work product is _generated_ (or regurgitated, or
       | whatever you want to call it.) Much less when the model is
       | trained. It 's when the output is used commercially -- _by a
       | human_ -- that the liability should rightfully attach.
       | 
       | And it should attach to the human, not the tool.
        
         | khelavastr wrote:
         | Right! AI developers and directors should be culpable for
         | infringement as part of their duties to larger organizations.
        
           | CamperBob2 wrote:
           | Is that really a good-faith rejoinder to the point I'm
           | making?
        
         | 4ndrewl wrote:
         | Assuming you can identify it's someone else's IP. Clearly these
         | are hugely contrived examples, but what about text or code that
         | you might not be as familiar with?
        
           | CamperBob2 wrote:
           | It doesn't matter. Sue whoever uses it commercially.
           | 
           | If you insist on making it about the model, you will wreck
           | something wonderful.
        
             | 4ndrewl wrote:
             | Ah, so don't use the outputs of an LLM commercially?
        
               | fxtentacle wrote:
               | That, or get sued.
        
               | IAmBroom wrote:
               | If it "may" violate copyright, correct!
        
           | alabastervlog wrote:
           | https://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html
           | 
           | Given enough time (... a surprisingly short amount) and
           | enough people creating art (say, about as many as we have had
           | for the last couple hundred years) and indefinitely-long-
           | lived recording, plus very-long copyright terms, the
           | inevitable result is that it's functionally impossible to
           | create anything within the space of "things people like"
           | that's not violating copyright, for any but the strictest
           | definitions of what constitutes copying.
           | 
           | The short story treats of music, but it's easy to see how
           | visual arts and fiction-writing and the rest get at least
           | _extremely crowded_ in short order under those circumstances.
        
         | timewizard wrote:
         | >> "a photo image of an intergalactic hunter who comes to earth
         | in search of big game."
         | 
         | I can literally imagine hundreds of things that are true to
         | this description but entirely distinct from "Predator."
         | 
         | > used commercially
         | 
         | Isn't that what these AI companies are doing? Charging you for
         | access to this?
        
           | fxtentacle wrote:
           | Does their ToS say anywhere that they will come to defend you
           | if you get sued for using their images?
           | 
           | (Because proper stock agencies offer those kind of
           | protections. If OpenAI doesn't, then don't use them as a
           | replacement to a stock agency.)
        
         | Carrok wrote:
         | > It's just doing what many human artists would do
         | 
         | I really don't think so. If I paid a human artist to make the
         | prompt in the title, and I didn't explicitly say "Indiana
         | Jones" I would think it should be fairly obvious to the human
         | artist that I do _not_ want Indiana Jones. If they gave me back
         | a picture of, clearly, Indiana Jones, I would ask them why they
         | didn't create something original.
        
           | derektank wrote:
           | I actually don't think it would be obvious. By not explicitly
           | saying Indiana Jones when so obviously describing Indiana
           | Jones, there is an implication present. But I think many
           | human artists would probably ask you, "Wait, so Indiana
           | Jones, or are you looking for something different," before
           | immediately diving in.
        
             | TimorousBestie wrote:
             | So why didn't the AI ask for clarification?
        
               | fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
               | Because it wasn't prompted to? Have you not ever used
               | ChatGPT?
        
             | runarberg wrote:
             | I'm not so sure, unless you are playing a game of "name the
             | character" you generally _don't_ want Indiana Jones unless
             | you explicitly mention Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is a
             | well known character, if you want a picture of Indiana
             | Jones it is simple enough to just say: "Draw me a picture
             | of Indiana Jones". The fact that they didn't say that, most
             | likely means they don't want that.
        
             | smackeyacky wrote:
             | This seems pretty easy to test - can we just change the
             | prompt to specifically exclude Indiana Jones?
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | Meta-comment: the use of Indiana Jones, a character that was
           | a very intentional throwback to the "Pulp hero explorer" from
           | the childhoods of its creators, in this example to ponder how
           | one would get "Indiana Jones without Indiana Jones" is quite
           | humorous in its own right.
           | 
           | Indiana Jones is already a successful permutation of that
           | approach. He's Zorro, Rick Blaine, and Christopher Leiningen
           | mashed together with their serial numbers filed off.
        
         | shermantanktop wrote:
         | I agree. But massive changes in scale or leverage can undermine
         | this type of principled stand.
         | 
         | One death is a murder; 100k deaths is a war or a pandemic. One
         | piece of chewing gum on the ground will get you a caning in
         | Singapore; when everyone does it, that's NYC.
         | 
         | Up until now, one had to have some level of graphical or
         | artistic skills to do this, but not anymore. Again, I agree
         | that it attaches to the human...but we now have many more
         | humans to attach it to.
        
         | axus wrote:
         | Don't worry, the lawsuit will name a corporation that made it,
         | not the AI tool.
        
         | chimpanzee wrote:
         | > It's just doing what many human artists would do, if they're
         | not explicitly being paid to create new IP.
         | 
         | It isn't an independent human. It is a service paid for by
         | customers. The moment it provides the image to a paying user,
         | the image has thus been used commercially.
         | 
         | In fact, the user may not even necessarily have to be paying in
         | order to infringe copyright.
         | 
         | And besides, even amateur artists are ashamed to produce copies
         | unless they are demonstrating mastery of technique or
         | expressing adoration. And if it happens spontaneously, they are
         | then frustrated and try to defend themselves by claiming to
         | never have even experienced the original material. (As happens
         | with simplistic, but popular musical riffs.) But AI explicitly
         | is trained on every material it can get its hands on and so
         | cannot make such a defense.
        
           | IgorPartola wrote:
           | If I pay you to tell me the plot of Indiana Jones, privately,
           | because I don't have time to watch it, and you agree, did you
           | violate copyright laws?
           | 
           | If you do it for free, is it different?
           | 
           | If I ask a friend to draw me as Indiana Jones? Or pay an
           | artist? In either case I just want that picture to put in my
           | rec room, not to sell.
        
             | Electricniko wrote:
             | OpenAI is currently valued at $300 billion, and their
             | product is largely based on copying the copyrighted works
             | of others, who weren't paid by OpenAI. It's a bit
             | (exponentially) different from a "me and you" example.
        
               | eMPee584 wrote:
               | It's not copying - it's assimilating..
        
             | chimpanzee wrote:
             | Summarization is generally _not_ copyright infringement.
             | 
             | Private copying and transference, even once for a friend,
             | _is_ copyright infringement.
             | 
             | I don't necessarily agree with this, but it is true
             | nonetheless.
        
               | IAmBroom wrote:
               | "Private copying and transference, even once for a
               | friend, is copyright infringement."
               | 
               | Not without money or equivalent trade involved.
               | 
               | I can draw Mickey Mouse all day on my notebook, and hand
               | it to you; no legal issues.
               | 
               | If I charge you a pack of bubble gum - Disney's lawyers
               | will kick my door down and serve me notice.
        
               | chimpanzee wrote:
               | > Not without money or equivalent trade involved.
               | 
               | This isn't generally true. The copyright holder need only
               | claim that the value of their copyrighted work or the
               | profits received by its distribution has been reduced or
               | lost. I'm not sure they even need to make such a claim,
               | as courts have already determined that commerciality
               | isn't a requirement for infringement. It's a matter of
               | unauthorized use, distribution or reproduction, not
               | trade.
               | 
               | They of course will likely never know and might not
               | bother to litigate given the private and uncommercial
               | nature, but they still have the right to do so.
               | 
               | They would weigh the financial and reputational cost of
               | litigating against children sharing images and decide not
               | to. Of course if one had 10000 friends and provided this
               | service to them in a visible manner, then they'd probably
               | come knocking.
        
               | cycomanic wrote:
               | IANAL, but my understanding is that it's more complicated
               | than this. Generally commercial benefits (i.e. taking
               | money) is one of the aspects being taken into
               | consideration to decide if something is fair use, but
               | it's not the only one and not making a
               | monetary/commercial benefit does not guarantee that work
               | is considered fair use (which is the exception we're
               | talking about here).
        
               | prerok wrote:
               | Not true. There were many cease and desist orders for
               | fanfiction, which was intended as open source.
        
             | cycomanic wrote:
             | The answer is yes? The person doing the drawing is
             | violating copyright. I don't know why that is even a
             | controversial question.
             | 
             | You are asking the equivalent question of, if I put a
             | pirated copy of windows on my PC that I only use privately
             | at home am I violating copyright, or if I sell copies of
             | music for people to only listen to in their own home.
             | 
             | But this is even more damning, this is a commercial service
             | that is reproducing the copyrighted work.
             | 
             | Edit: Just to clarify to people who reflexively downvote.
             | I'm making a statement of what is it not a value judgement.
             | And yes there is fair use, but that's an exemption from the
             | rule that it is a copyright violation.
        
         | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
         | > It's when the output is used commercially -- by a human --
         | that the liability should rightfully attach.
         | 
         | I am paying OpenAI. So they are producing these copyrighted
         | works and giving them to me for their own commercial benefit.
         | Normally that's illegal. But somehow not when you're just doing
         | it en masse.
        
         | mppm wrote:
         | > What's the model supposed to do? It's just doing what many
         | human artists would do, if they're not explicitly being paid to
         | create new IP.
         | 
         | Not really? Why would a human artist create a faithful
         | reproduction of Indiana Jones when asked to paint an
         | archeologist? And besides, if they did, it would be considered
         | clear IP infringement if the result were used commercially.
         | 
         | > If infringement is happening, it arguably doesn't happen when
         | an infringing work product is generated (or regurgitated, or
         | whatever you want to call it.) Much less when the model is
         | trained. It's when the output is used commercially -- by a
         | human -- that the liability should rightfully attach.
         | 
         | I agree. Release groups, torrent sites and seedbox operators
         | should not be wrongly accused of pirating movies. Piracy only
         | occurs in the act of actually watching a movie without paying,
         | and should not be prosecuted without definitive proof of such
         | (!_!)
        
           | whycome wrote:
           | > if they did, it would be considered clear IP infringement
           | if the result were used commercially.
           | 
           | Isn't that exactly what OP is saying?
        
       | timewizard wrote:
       | > Still, the near perfect mimicry is an uncomfortable reminder
       | that AI is getting better at copying and closer to
       | 
       | I completely disagree. It's not getting "better." It always just
       | copied. That's all it /can/ do. How anyone expected novel outputs
       | from this technology is beyond me.
       | 
       | It's highly noticeable if you do a minimal analysis, but all
       | modern "AI" tools are just copyright thiefs. They're just there
       | to whitewash away liability from blatantly stealing someone
       | else's content.
        
         | jMyles wrote:
         | > It's not getting "better." It always just copied. That's all
         | it /can/ do
         | 
         | That's true of all the best artists ever.
         | 
         | > They're just there to whitewash away liability from blatantly
         | stealing someone else's content.
         | 
         | That's because that's not a thing. Ownership of "content" is a
         | legal fiction invented to give states more control over
         | creativity. Nobody who copies bytes which represent my music is
         | a "thief". To be a thief, they'd need to, you know, come to my
         | house and steal something.
         | 
         | When someone copies or remixes my music, I'm often not even
         | aware that it has occurred. It's hard to imagine how that can
         | be cast as genuine theft.
        
           | IAmBroom wrote:
           | OK, you're plunging deep into the ethos of IP piracy, and
           | staking your claim that "None exists." If that is deemed
           | TRUE, then there's nothing to ever discuss about AI... or
           | animated pornography where a well-known big-eared mouse bangs
           | a Kryptonian orphan wearing a cape.
           | 
           | The reality of our current international laws, going back
           | centuries, disagrees. And most artists disagree.
        
             | jMyles wrote:
             | > The reality of our current international laws, going back
             | centuries, disagrees
             | 
             | Perhaps I need a bit of education here, but have there been
             | _international_ laws regarding intellectual property for
             | centuries?!
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | > Perhaps I need a bit of education here, but have there
               | been _international_ laws regarding intellectual property
               | for centuries?!
               | 
               | AFAICT, the first major international IP treaties were in
               | the 1880s (the Paris Convention on Intellectual Property
               | Rights in 1883 and the Berne Convention covering
               | copyrights in 1886; so only ~140 years.)
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | > _Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction [...] To be a
           | thief, they'd need to, you know, come to my house and steal
           | something._
           | 
           | That's just a legal fiction invented so people can pretend to
           | own physical objects even though we should all know that in
           | this world you can never truly _own_ anything.
           | 
           |  _Everything_ we do or protect is made up. You 've just drawn
           | the arbitrary line in the sand as to what can be "owned" in a
           | different place than where other people might draw it.
        
             | jMyles wrote:
             | Well, one rudimentary difference is that bytes can be (and
             | seem wont to be) copied, whereas if you steal my jeans, I'm
             | standing there in my underwear.
        
           | janalsncm wrote:
           | > That's true of all the best artists ever.
           | 
           | Just to play Devil's advocate for a moment, why should we
           | require human artists to be held to the same standards as
           | automated software? We can make whatever rules we want to.
           | 
           | A human might implicitly copy, but they are not infinitely
           | scalable. If I draw a picture that in some way resembles Buzz
           | Lightyear I am much less of a threat to Disney than an
           | always-available computer program with a marginal cost of
           | zero.
        
             | jMyles wrote:
             | > why should we require human artists to be held to the
             | same standards as automated software?
             | 
             | Isn't this the same question as, "why should we allow
             | general purpose computing?" If the technology of our age is
             | our birthright, don't we have the right to engage whatever
             | mathematics we find inspiring with its aid?
             | 
             | > If I draw a picture that in some way resembles Buzz
             | Lightyear I am much less of a threat to Disney than an
             | always-available computer program with a marginal cost of
             | zero.
             | 
             | ...that sounds like a good argument in favor of the always-
             | available computer program.
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction invented to give
           | states more control over creativity.
           | 
           | Ownership is a legal fiction invented because it is perceived
           | to encourage behavior that is seen as desirable; this is no
           | more true of ownership of intellectual property or other
           | intangible personal property than it is of tangible personal
           | property or real estate.
        
             | ls612 wrote:
             | He has a point that in a society with strong legal
             | protections on freedom of expression, copyright is one of
             | the main tools the state has to stop expression that is
             | deleterious to the ruling class.
        
       | flenserboy wrote:
       | the guardrails are probably going to end up being way too close
       | together when the dust settles -- imagine if something as simple
       | as "young wizard" would be enough to trip the warnings. someone
       | could be looking to do an image from Feist's early novels, or of
       | their own work, & that will be verboten. it may turn out that
       | we're facing the strongest copyright holders being able to limit
       | everyone's legitimate use of these tools.
        
         | bluefirebrand wrote:
         | I would expect "young wizard" to generate something similar to
         | Harry Potter more than Pug, tbh
        
           | prerok wrote:
           | That's exactly what they meant.
        
         | foxglacier wrote:
         | Unless it can exclude the copyright outputs and provide
         | something else instead of blocking the inputs. I'm sure there's
         | AI that can check if a picture is close enough to something in
         | their database of copyrighted characters built up from some
         | kind of DMCA-like process of copyright holders submitting
         | examples of their work to be blocked.
        
           | prerok wrote:
           | Indeed, but where does it stop? Looks like Potter? No go.
           | Hmm, looks like an illustration of Pug? No go. Looks like
           | Simon the sorcerer. No go. Hmm, looks like a wizard from
           | Infocom's Sorcers get all the girls. No go.
           | 
           | The problem is that it regurgitates what already exists and
           | if you really want to abide by all the permissions then there
           | is nothing left.
        
       | burnished wrote:
       | Oooh those guardrails make me angry. I get why they are there
       | (dont poke the bear) but it doesn't make me overlook the self
       | serving hypocrisy involved.
       | 
       | Though I am also generally opposed to the notion of intellectual
       | property whatsoever on the basis that it doesn't seem to serve
       | its intended purpose and what good could be salvaged from its
       | various systems can already be well represented with other
       | existing legal concepts, i.e deceptive behaviors being prosecuted
       | as forms of fraud.
        
         | teddyh wrote:
         | The _problem_ is people at large companies creating these AI
         | models, wanting the freedom to copy artists' works when using
         | it, but these large companies _also_ want to keep copyright
         | protection intact, for their regular business activities. They
         | want to eat the cake and have it too. And they are arguing for
         | essentially eliminating copyright for _their_ specific purpose
         | and convenience, when copyright has virtually never been
         | loosened for the public's convenience, even when the exceptions
         | the public asks for are often minor and laudable. If these
         | companies were to argue that copyright should be _eliminated_
         | because of this new technology, I might not object. But now
         | that they come and ask... no, they _pretend to already have_ ,
         | a copyright exception for their specific use, I will _happily_
         | turn around and use their own copyright maximalist arguments
         | against them.
         | 
         | (Copied from a comment of mine written more than three years
         | ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33582047>)
        
           | ToValueFunfetti wrote:
           | I don't care for this line of argument. It's like saying you
           | can't hold a position that trespassing should be illegal
           | while also holding that commercial businesses should be
           | legally required to have public restrooms. Yes, both of these
           | positions are related to land rights and the former is pro-
           | while the latter is anti-, but it's a perfectly coherent set
           | of positions. OpenAI can absolutely be anti-copyright in the
           | sense of whether you can train an an NN on copyrighted data
           | and pro-copyright in the sense of whether you can make an
           | exact replica of some data and sell it as your own without
           | making it into hypocrisy territory. It does suggest they're
           | self-interested, but you have to climb a mountain in Tibet to
           | find anybody who isn't.
           | 
           | Arguments that make a case that NN training is copyright
           | violation are much more compelling to me than this.
        
             | TremendousJudge wrote:
             | No, the exception they are asking for (we can train on
             | copyrighted material and the image produced is non-
             | copyright infringing) is copyright infringing in the most
             | basic sense.
             | 
             | I'll prove it by induction: Imagine that I have a service
             | where I "train" a model on a single image of Indiana Jones.
             | Now you prompt it, and my model "generates" the same image.
             | I sell you this service, and no money goes to the copyright
             | holder of the original image. This is obviously
             | infringment.
             | 
             | There's no reason why training on a billion images is any
             | different, besides the fact that the lines are blurred by
             | the model weights not being parseable
        
               | slidehero wrote:
               | >There's no reason why training on a billion images is
               | any different
               | 
               | You gloss over this as if it's a given. I don't agree. I
               | think you're doing a different thing when you're sampling
               | billions of things equallly.
        
             | belorn wrote:
             | The example you gave with public restroom do not work
             | because of two main concept: They are usually getting paid
             | for it by the government, and operating a company usually
             | holds benefits given by the government. Industry
             | regulations as a concept is generally justified in that
             | industry are getting "something" from society, and thus
             | society can put in requirements in return.
             | 
             | A regulation that require restaurants to have a public
             | bathroom is more akin to regulation that also require
             | restaurants to check id when selling alcohol to young
             | customers. Neither requirement has any relation with land
             | rights, but is related to the right of operating a company
             | that sell food to the public.
        
           | jofla_net wrote:
           | I guess the best explanation for what we're witnessing is the
           | notion that 'Money Talks', and sadly nothing more. To think
           | thats all that fair use activists lacked in years passed..
        
       | MgB2 wrote:
       | Idk, the models generating what are basically 1:1 copies of the
       | training data from pretty generic descriptions feels like a
       | severe case of overfitting to me. What use is a generational
       | model that just regurgitates the input?
       | 
       | I feel like the less advanced generations, maybe even because of
       | their limitations in terms of size, were better at coming up with
       | something that at least feels new.
       | 
       | In the end, other than for copyright-washing, why wouldn't I just
       | use the original movie still/photo in the first place?
        
         | stevage wrote:
         | Why? For fan content, using the original characters in new
         | situations, mashups, new styles etc.
        
         | o11c wrote:
         | It's not a single image though. Stitching 3 or so input images
         | together clearly makes copyright laundering legal.
        
         | gertlex wrote:
         | What if the word "generic" were added to a lot of these image
         | prompts? "generic image of an intergalactic bounty hunter from
         | space" etc.
         | 
         | Certainly there's an aspect of people using the chat interface
         | like they use google: describe xyz to try to surface the name
         | of a movie. Just in this case, we're doing the (less common?)
         | query of: find me the picture I can vaguely describe; but it's
         | a query to a image /generating/ service, not an image search
         | service.
        
           | squeaky-clean wrote:
           | Generic doesn't help. I was using the new image generator to
           | try and make images for my Mutants and Masterminds game (it's
           | basically D&D with superheroes instead of high fantasy), and
           | it refuses to make most things citing that they are too close
           | to existing IP, or that the ideas are dangerous.
           | 
           | So I asked it to make 4 random and generic superheroes. It
           | created Batman, Supergirl, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.
           | Then at about 90% finished it deleted the image and said I
           | was violating copyright.
           | 
           | https://imgur.com/a/eG6kmqu
           | 
           | I doubt the model you interact with actually knows why the
           | babysitter model rejects images, but it claims to know why
           | and leads to some funny responses. Here is it's response to
           | me asking for a superhero with a dark bodysuit, a purple
           | cape, a mouse logo on their chest, and a spooky mouse mask on
           | their face.
           | 
           | > I couldn't generate the image you requested because the
           | prompt involved content that may violate policy regarding
           | realistic human-animal hybrid masks in a serious context.
        
             | gertlex wrote:
             | Yeah... so much for that hope on my end! Thanks for
             | testing.
             | 
             | (hard to formulate why I was too lazy to test myself :) )
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | > I feel like the less advanced generations, maybe even because
         | of their limitations in terms of size, were better at coming up
         | with something that at least feels new.
         | 
         | Ironically that's probably because the errors and flaws in
         | those generations at least made them different from what they
         | were attempting to rip off.
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | Idk, a couple of the examples might be generic enough that you
         | wouldn't expect a very specific movie character. But most of
         | the prompts make it extremely clear which movie character you
         | would expect to see, and I would argue that the chat bot is
         | working as expected by providing that.
        
           | grotorea wrote:
           | Even if I'm thinking of an Indiana Jones-like character
           | doesn't mean I want literally Indiana Jones. If I wanted
           | Indiana Jones I could just grab a scene from the movie.
        
       | zparky wrote:
       | Here's what Ars got out of GPT-4 a year ago:
       | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york...
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | So, no speculation as to why Spiderman and Harry Potter were
       | forbidden but Terminator and James Bond were allowed?
        
         | psychoslave wrote:
         | They casted avada arachna on it, and basta.
        
         | nkingsy wrote:
         | I think the unstated assumption is that there's a block list
         | somewhere being fed into a guardian model's context
        
         | salamanderman wrote:
         | If I were doing this, I would have the system generate the
         | image, and then I would have it run a secondary estimate saying
         | "probability that this is a picture of [list of characters that
         | Disney has given us reference input for]". If the picture has a
         | "looks like Spiderman" score greater than X, then block it.
         | EDIT - To answer the question, I'm guessing Disney provided a
         | reference set of copyrighted images and characters, and somehow
         | forgot Indiana Jones.
        
           | stevage wrote:
           | There seemed to be so many that weren't blocked, which is
           | curious.
        
       | psychoslave wrote:
       | Well, property is theft, as we all know.
       | 
       | Unlike what they name in physics, laws in juristic field are not
       | a given by the cosmos. That's all human fantasy, and generally
       | not enacted by the most altruistic and benevolent wills.
       | 
       | Call me back when we have no more humble humans dying from cold,
       | hunger and war, maybe I'll have some extra compassion to spend on
       | soulless megacorps which pretend they can own the part of our
       | brain into which they inject their propaganda and control what we
       | are permitted to do starting from that.
        
       | jauntywundrkind wrote:
       | Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine.
       | 
       | One thing I would say, it's interesting to consider what would
       | make this not so obviously bad.
       | 
       | Like, we could ask AI to assess the physical attributes of the
       | characters it generated. Then ask it to permute some of those
       | attributes. Generate some random tweaks: ok but brawy, short, and
       | a different descent. Do similarly on some clothing colors. Change
       | the game. Hit the "random character" button on the physical
       | attributes a couple times.
       | 
       | There was an equally shatteringly-awful less-IP-theft (and as
       | someone who thinks IP is itself incredibly ripping off humanity &
       | should be vastly scoped down, it's important to me to not rest my
       | arguments on IP violations).... An equally shattering recent
       | incident for me. Having trouble finding it, don't remember the
       | right keywords, but an article about how AI has a "default guy"
       | type that it uses _everywhere_ , a super generic personage, that
       | it would use repeatedly. It was so distasteful.
       | 
       | The nature of 'AI as compression', as giving you the most median
       | answer is horrific. Maybe maybe maybe we can escape some of this
       | trap by iterating to different permutations, by injecting
       | deliberate exploration of the state spaces. But I still fear AI,
       | worry horribly when anyone relies on it for decision making, as
       | it is anti-intelligent, uncreative in extreme, requiring human
       | ingenuity to budge off its rock of oppressive hypernormality that
       | it regurgitates.
        
         | shadowgovt wrote:
         | > Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine.
         | 
         | I mean... If I go to Google right now and do an image search
         | for "archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a
         | bullwhip," the first picture is a not-even-changed image of
         | Indiana Jones. Which I will then copy and paste into whatever
         | project I'm working on without clicking through to the source
         | page (usually because the source page is an ad-ridden mess).
         | 
         | Perhaps the Internet itself is the hideous theft machine, and
         | AI is just the most efficient permutation of user interface
         | onto it.
         | 
         | (Incidentally, if you do that search, you will also,
         | hilariously, turn up images of an older gentleman dressed in a
         | brown coat and hat who is clearly meant to be "The Indiana
         | Jones you got on Wish" from a photo-licensing site. The entire
         | exercise of trying to extract wealth via exclusive access to
         | memetic constructs is a fraught one).
        
           | rurp wrote:
           | The key difference is that the google example is clearly
           | copying someone elses work and there are plenty of laws and
           | norms that non-billionaires need to follow. If you made a
           | business reselling the image you copied you would expect to
           | get in trouble and have to stop. But AI companies are doing
           | essentially the same thing in many cases and being rewarded
           | for it.
           | 
           | The hypocrisy is much of the problem. If we're going to have
           | IP laws that severely punish people and smaller companies for
           | reselling the creative works of others without any
           | compensation or permission then those rules should apply to
           | powerful well-connected companies as well.
        
         | littlecranky67 wrote:
         | But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture of
         | Indiana Jones, he creates a perfect copy and I hang it on my
         | fridge. Where did I (or the artist) violate any copyright (or
         | other) laws? It is the artist that is replaced by the AI, not
         | the copyrighted IP.
        
           | mcmcmc wrote:
           | Depends on if you paid him or not. If he sold it to you, then
           | he is infringing on Disney's IP and depriving them of that
           | revenue.
        
           | Velorivox wrote:
           | That does infringe copyright...you're just unlikely to get in
           | trouble for it. You might get a cease and desist if the owner
           | of the IP finds out and can spare a moment for you.
        
             | RajT88 wrote:
             | Totally agree. LLM's are just automating that infringement
             | process.
             | 
             | If you make money off it, it's no longer fair use; it's
             | infringement. Even if you don't make money off it, it's not
             | automatically fair use.
             | 
             | My own favorite crazy story about copyright violations:
             | 
             | Metallica sued Green Jello for parodying Enter Sandman
             | (including a lyric where it says "It's not Metallica"):
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Harley_House_(of_Lov
             | e...
             | 
             | They lost that case. The kicker? _Metallica were guest
             | vocalists on that album._
        
               | the_af wrote:
               | > _LLM 's are just automating that infringement process._
               | 
               | That's my take as well.
               | 
               | Gen AI is turning small potatos, "artisanal" infringement
               | into a potentially large scale automated process.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | This doesn't make any sense to me. No media is getting
             | copied, unless the drawing is exactly the same as an
             | existing drawing. Shouldn't "copy"right apply to specific,
             | tangible artistic works? I guess I don't understand how the
             | fantasy of "IP" works.
             | 
             | What if the drawing is of Indiana Jones but he's carrying a
             | bow and arrow instead of a whip? Is it infringement?
             | 
             | What if it's a really bad drawing of Indiana Jones, so bad
             | that you can't really tell that it's the character? Is that
             | infringement?
             | 
             | What if the drawing is of Indiana Jones, but in the style
             | of abstract expressionism, so doesn't even contain a human
             | shape? Is it infringement?
             | 
             | What if it's a good drawing that looks very much like
             | Indiana Jones, but it's not! The person's name is actually
             | Iowa Jim. Is that infringement?
             | 
             | What if it's just an image of an archeologist adventurer
             | who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip, but otherwise doesn't
             | look anything like Indiana Jones? Is it infringement?
        
               | squeaky-clean wrote:
               | These are more questions for a lawyer and would matter on
               | a case-by-case basis, but as not-a-lawyer I think in
               | those examples it's more of a trademark violation rather
               | than a copyright violation. People just say copyright
               | infringement to mean any kind of intellectual property
               | infringement.
               | 
               | Like you'd be safe to make a green character. You'd
               | probably be safe to make a character that becomes super
               | strong when he's angry. You probably aren't safe to make
               | a character who turns green and super strong when he's
               | angry.
        
           | piyh wrote:
           | Presumably the artist is a human who directly or indirectly
           | paid money to view a film containing an archaeologist with
           | the whip.
           | 
           | I don't think this is about reproduction as much as how you
           | got enough data for that reproduction. The riaa sent people
           | to jail and ruined their lives for pirating. Now these
           | companies are doing it and being valued for hundreds of
           | billions of dollars.
        
             | the_af wrote:
             | Plus the scale of it all.
             | 
             | A human friend can get tired and there's so many request
             | he/she can fulfill and at a max rate. Even a team of human
             | artists have a relatively low limit.
             | 
             | But Gen AI has very high limits and speeds, and it never
             | gets tired. It seems unfair to me.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | The artist is violating copyright by selling you that
           | picture. You can't just start creating and distributing
           | pictures of a copyrighted property. You need a license from
           | the copyright holder.
           | 
           | You also can't sell a machine that outputs such material. And
           | that's how the story with GenAI becomes problematic. If GenAI
           | can create the next Indiana Jones or Star Wars sequel for you
           | (possibly a better one than Disney makes, it has become a low
           | bar of sorts), I think the issue becomes obvious.
        
           | the_af wrote:
           | I think framing this as "IP theft" is a mistake.
           | 
           | Nobody can prevent you from drawing a photo realistic picture
           | of Indy, or taking a photo of him from the internet and
           | hanging it on your fridge. Or asking a friend to do it for
           | you. And let's be honest -- because nobody is looking -- said
           | friend could even charge you a modest sum to draw a realistic
           | picture of Indy for you to hang on your fridge; yes, it's
           | "illegal" but nobody is looking for this kind of small
           | potatos infringement.
           | 
           | I think the problem is when people start making a business
           | out of this. A game developer could think "hey, I can make a
           | game with artwork that looks just like Ghibli!", where before
           | he wouldn't have anyone with the skills or patience to do
           | this (see: the 4-second scene that took a year to make), now
           | he can just ask the Gen AI to make it for them.
           | 
           | Is it "copyright infringement"? I dunno. Hard to tell, to be
           | honest. But from an ethical point of view, it seems odd. And
           | before you actually required someone to take the time and
           | effort to copy the source material, now it's an automated and
           | scalable process that does this, and can do this and much
           | more, faster and without getting tired. "Theft at scale",
           | maybe not so small potatos anymore.
           | 
           | --
           | 
           | edit: nice, downvotes. And in the other thread people were
           | arguing HN is such a nice place for dissenting opinions.
        
             | kridsdale3 wrote:
             | I would argue that countless games have already been made
             | by top tier professional artists that IP-Steal the Ghibli
             | theme.
             | 
             | Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom should be
             | included there.
        
               | the_af wrote:
               | I don't think those look like Ghibli. Maybe they drew
               | inspiration, but are different enough. I would never
               | confuse one for the other.
               | 
               | Regardless, those games required the hard work and
               | countless hours of animators. Gen AI doesn't.
        
           | rdtsc wrote:
           | > But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture
           | of Indiana Jones,
           | 
           | Sure, assuming the artist has the proper license and
           | franchise rights to make and distribute copies. You can go
           | buy a picture of Indy today that may not be printed by Walt
           | Disney Studios but by some other outfit or artists.
           | 
           | Or, you mean if the artist doesn't have a license to produce
           | and distribute Indiana Jones images? Well they'll be in
           | trouble legally. They are making "copies" of things they
           | don't own and profiting from it.
           | 
           | Another question is whether that's practically enforceable.
           | 
           | > Where did I (or the artist) violate any copyright (or
           | other) laws?
           | 
           | When they took payment and profited from making unauthorized
           | copies.
           | 
           | > It is the artist that is replaced by the AI, not the
           | copyrighted IP.
           | 
           | Exactly, that's why LLMs and the companies which create them
           | are called "theft machines" -- they are reproducing
           | copyrighted material. Especially the ones charging for
           | "tokens". You pay them, they make money and produce
           | unauthorized copies. Show that picture of Indy to a jury and
           | I think it's a good chance of convincing them.
           | 
           | I am not saying this is good or bad, I just see this having a
           | legal "bite" so to speak, at least in my pedestrian view of
           | copyright law.
        
         | mcmcmc wrote:
         | So if it's a theft machine, how is the answer to try teaching
         | it to hide the fact that it's stealing by changing its outputs?
         | That's like a student plagiarizing an essay and then swapping
         | some words with a thesaurus pretending that changes anything.
         | 
         | Wouldn't the more appropriate solution in the case of theft be
         | to remunerate the victims and prevent recidivism?
         | 
         | Instead of making it "not so obviously bad" why not just...
         | make it good? Require AI services to either prove that 100% of
         | their training corpus is either copyright free or properly
         | licensed, or require them to compensate copyright holders for
         | any infringing outputs.
        
           | chrisweekly wrote:
           | (below is my shallow res, maybe naive?) That might inject a
           | ton of $ into "IP", doing further damage to the creative
           | commons. How can we support remix culture for humans, while
           | staving off ultimately-destructive AI slop? Maybe copyleft /
           | creative-commons licenses w/ explicit anti-AI prohibitions?
           | Tho that could have bad ramifications too. ALL of this makes
           | me kind of uncomfortable and sad, I want more creativity and
           | fewer lawyers.
        
             | mcmcmc wrote:
             | > doing further damage to the creative commons
             | 
             | Not sure I understand this part. Because creators would be
             | getting paid for their works being used for someone else's
             | commercial gain?
        
               | chrisweekly wrote:
               | Because it reinforces the idea that creative works should
               | usually involve lawyers.
        
         | Pet_Ant wrote:
         | > Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine.
         | 
         | I hate how it is common to advance a position to just state a
         | conclusion as if it were a fact. You keep repeating the same
         | thing over and over until it seems like a concensus has been
         | reached instead of an actual argument reasoned from first
         | principle.
         | 
         | This is no theft here. Any copyright would be flimsier than
         | software patents. I love Studio Ghibli (including $500/seat
         | festival tickets) but it's the heart and the detail that make
         | them what they are. You cannot clone that. Just some surface
         | similarity. If that's all you like about the movies... you
         | really missed the point.
         | 
         | Imagine if in early cinema someone had tried to claim
         | mustachioed villian, ditsy blonde, or dumb jock? These are just
         | tropes and styles. Quality work goes much much much deeper, and
         | that cannot be synthesised. I can AI generate a million
         | engagement rings, but I cannot pick the perfect one that fits
         | you and your partners love story.
         | 
         | PS- the best work they did was "When Marnie was There". Just
         | fitted together perfectly.
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | Can we not call it "theft"? It's such a loaded term and doesn't
         | really mean the same thing when we're talking about bits and
         | bytes.
        
           | moolcool wrote:
           | OK, but then we need a common standard. If Facebook is
           | allowed to use libgen, I should also be allowed.
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | Do google pay anyone when I use image search and the results
         | are straight from their website?
        
         | areoform wrote:
         | Theft from whom and how?
         | 
         | Are you telling me that our culture should be deprived of the
         | idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires
         | in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset?
         | 
         | Indiana Jones is 44 years old. When are we allowed to remix,
         | recreate and expand on this like humanity has done since humans
         | first started sitting down next to a fire and telling stories?
         | 
         | edit: this reminds of this iconic scene from Dr. Strangelove,
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ
         | Mandrake: Colonel... that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to
         | shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
         | Guano: That's private property.                Mandrake:
         | Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to
         | you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when
         | they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the
         | President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off!
         | Shoot! With a gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit!
         | Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't
         | get the President of the United States on that phone, you know
         | what's gonna happen to you?                Mandrake: What?
         | Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
         | 
         | I guess we all have to answer to the Walt Disney company.
        
       | willvarfar wrote:
       | This is a tangent but I think that this neat illustration of how
       | LLMs regurgitate their training material makes me voice a little
       | prediction I've been nursing recently:
       | 
       | LLMs are better at generating the boilerplate of todays
       | programming languages than they will be with tomorrows
       | programming languages.
       | 
       | This is because not only will tomorrows programming languages be
       | newer and lacking in corpus to train the models in but, by the
       | time a corpus is built, that corpus will consist largely of LLM
       | hallucinations that got checked into github!?
       | 
       | The internet that that has been trawled to train the LLMs is
       | already largely SEO spam etc, but the internet of the future will
       | be much more so. The loop will feed into itself and become ever
       | worse quality.
        
         | jetrink wrote:
         | That sounds like a reasonable prediction to me if the LLM
         | makers do nothing in response. However, I'll bet coding is the
         | easiest area for which to generate synthetic training data. You
         | could have an LLM generate 100k solutions to 10k programming
         | problems in the target language and throw away the results that
         | don't pass automated tests. Have humans grade the results that
         | do pass the tests and use the best answers for future training.
         | Repeat until you have a corpus of high quality code.
        
       | GPerson wrote:
       | I just think it's stealing, and honestly not that cool once
       | you've seen it once or twice, and given the ramifications for
       | humanity.
        
         | shadowgovt wrote:
         | I know of no other type of theft that results in more of
         | something existing in the world. Stealing deprives someone of
         | something; copying data (from training an AI all the way to
         | pedestrian "YoU wOuLdN'T DoWnLoAd a cAr" early-aughts file-
         | sharing) decreases scarcity, it doesn't increase it.
        
           | Velorivox wrote:
           | Identity theft...more of you exist!
        
             | shadowgovt wrote:
             | Identity theft is the greatest con merchants ever pulled on
             | the public. Turning the responsibility around from "A
             | merchant got scammed because their KYC policy was too thin,
             | because they make more money if they do more business with
             | fewer verifications (until someone comes along and cheats
             | them)" to "when they _do_ get scammed, maybe it can be the
             | fault of the person who was impersonated instead of the
             | scammer " was some _brilliant_ sleight-of-hand.
             | 
             | It isn't your responsibility if a bank you've never set
             | foot in gave a bunch of money to someone who isn't you and
             | said they were you... And it never should have been. The
             | moment companies started trying to put that into credit
             | ratings, they should have been barred for discriminatory
             | practices against the unlucky.
        
         | whycome wrote:
         | The majority of human creation is like this. All language.
         | Process. Even the US anthem was "stolen"
        
           | pier25 wrote:
           | Huge difference is you cannot scale a single human a billion
           | times to industrialize his knowledge.
        
       | alkonaut wrote:
       | This isn't surprising in any way is it? And it just goes to show
       | that no model will ever be a box from which you can trust the
       | output isn't tainted by copyrights, or that you don't
       | inadvertently use someones' likeness. It's not a copyright
       | laundering machine. Nor will it be used as one. "But I used an AI
       | model" isn't some magic way to avoid legal trouble. You are in as
       | much legal trouble using these images as you are using the
       | "originals".
        
         | why_at wrote:
         | Yeah I don't really understand what the thesis of this article
         | is. Copyright infringement would apply to any of those images
         | just the same as if you made them yourself.
         | 
         | I don't think it's possible to create an "alien which has acid
         | for blood and a small sharp mouth within a bigger mouth"
         | without anybody seeing a connection to Alien, even if it
         | doesn't look anything like the original.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | Your second paragraph may be true, but the mere abstract
           | presence of those features wouldn't infringe copyright.
        
       | xnx wrote:
       | Worth remembering that this is ChatGPT and not all image
       | generators. I couldn't get Google's Gemini/Imagen 3 to produce IP
       | images anything like those in the article.
        
       | TrackerFF wrote:
       | I found this older photo of myself and a friend, 25 years old
       | now, in some newspaper scan.
       | 
       | The photo was of poor quality, but one could certainly see all
       | the features - so I figured, why not let ChatGPT try to play
       | around with it? I got three different versions where it simply
       | tried to upscale it, "enhance" it. But not dice.
       | 
       | So I just wrote the prompt "render this photo as a hyper
       | realistic photo" - and it really did change us - the people in
       | the photo - it also took the liberty to remove some things, alter
       | some other background stuff.
       | 
       | It made me think - I wonder what all those types of photos will
       | be like 20 years from now, after they've surely been fed through
       | some AI models. Imagine being some historian 100 years from now,
       | trying to wade through all the altered media.
        
         | HenryBemis wrote:
         | I think that upon closer inspections the (current) technology
         | cannot make 'perfect' fake photos, so for the time being, the
         | historian of the future will have no issue to ask his/her AI:
         | "is that picture of Henry Bemis, with Bruce Willis, Einstein,
         | and Ayrton Senna having a beer real?" And the AI will say "mos-
         | def-nope!"
        
         | elpocko wrote:
         | >hyper realistic photo
         | 
         | Never use the words "hyper realistic" when you want a photo. It
         | makes no sense and misleads the generator. No one would
         | describe a simple photograph as "hyper realistic," not a single
         | real photo in the dataset will be tagged as "(hyper)
         | realistic."
         | 
         | Hyperrealism is an art style and only ever used in the context
         | of explicitely non-photographic artworks.
        
         | meatmanek wrote:
         | This is similar to my experience trying to get Stable Diffusion
         | to denoise a photo for me. (AIUI, under the hood they're
         | trained to turn noise into an image that matches the prompt.)
         | It would either do nothing (with settings turned way down) or
         | take massive creative liberties (such as replacing my friend's
         | face with a cartoon caricature while leaving the rest of the
         | photo looking realistic).
         | 
         | I've had much better luck with models specifically trained for
         | denoising. For denoising, the SCUNet model run via chaiNNer
         | works well for me most of the time. (Occasionally SCUNet likes
         | to leave noise alone in areas that are full of background blur,
         | which I assume has to do with the way the image gets processed
         | as tiles. It would make sense for the model to get confused
         | with a tile that only has background blur, like maybe it
         | assumes that the input image should contain nonzero high-
         | frequency data.)
         | 
         | For your use case, you might want to use something like Real-
         | ESRGAN or another superresolution / image restoration model,
         | but I haven't played much in that space so I can't make
         | concrete recommendations.
        
       | traverseda wrote:
       | I don't understand why problems like this aren't solved by vector
       | similarity search. Indiana Jones lives in a particular part of
       | vector space.
       | 
       | Two close to one of the licensed properties you care to censor
       | the generation of? Push that vector around. Honestly detecting
       | whether a given sentence is a thinly veiled reference to indiana
       | jones seems to be exactly the kind of thing AI vector search is
       | going to be good at.
        
         | htrp wrote:
         | Not worth it to compute the embedding for Indy and a "bull-whip
         | archaeologist" most guardrails operate at the input level it
         | seems?
        
           | gavmor wrote:
           | > Not worth it to compute the embedding for Indy
           | 
           | If IP holders submit embeddings for their IP, how can image
           | generators "warp" the latent space around a set of embeddings
           | so that future inferences slide around and avoid them--not
           | perfectly, or literally, but as a function of distance, say,
           | following a power curve?
           | 
           | Maybe by "Finding non-linear RBF paths in GAN latent
           | space"[0] to create smooth detours around protected regions.
           | 
           | 0. https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/ICCV2021/papers/Tzel
           | ep...
        
         | genericone wrote:
         | Thinking of it in terms of vector similarity does seem
         | appropriate, and then definition of similarity suddenly comes
         | into debate: If you don't get Harrison Ford, but a different
         | well-known actor along with everything else Indiana-Jones, what
         | is that? Do you flatten the vector similarity matrix to a
         | single infringement-scale?
        
       | htrp wrote:
       | Guardrails seem to be ass ..... that or certain IP is already
       | licensed
        
       | mcv wrote:
       | That's a really blatant lack of creativity. Even if obviously all
       | of those prompts would make anyone think of exactly those iconic
       | characters (except possibly a different version of James Bond or
       | Lara Croft), any human artist could easily produce a totally
       | different character that still fits the prompt perfectly. This AI
       | can't, because it really is just a theft machine.
       | 
       | To be honest, I wouldn't mind if AI that just reproduces existing
       | images like that would just be banned. Keep working on it until
       | you've got something that can actually produce something new.
        
       | fidotron wrote:
       | One tangential thing with these generators is they're sort of
       | brilliant at data compression, in aggregate at least. The whole
       | user experience, including the delay, is oddly reminiscent of
       | using Encarta on CD ROM in the mid 90s.
        
       | SLHamlet wrote:
       | Like actual creative person Ted Chiang (who moonlights at
       | Microsoft) put it, you _might_ be able to get an LLM to churn out
       | a genuinely original story, but only after creating an extremely
       | long and detailed prompt for it to work with. But if you even
       | need to write that long-ass prompt, might as well just write the
       | story yourself!
       | 
       | https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2024/09/ted-chiang-ai-new-yorker-c...
        
       | coderenegade wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | mvieira38 wrote:
         | It's an IP theft machine. Humans wouldn't be allowed to publish
         | these pictures for profit, but OpenAI is allowed to "generate"
         | them?
        
           | pwarner wrote:
           | To me a lot has to do with what a human does with them one
           | the tool generates them no?
        
           | why_at wrote:
           | 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?
        
             | Avicebron wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | why_at wrote:
               | Yeah that's fair, I'm trying to create an analogy to
               | other services which are similar to help me understand.
               | 
               | If e.g. Patreon hosts an artist who will draw a picture
               | of Indiana Jones for me on commission, then my money is
               | going to both Patreon and the artist. Should Patreon also
               | police their artists to prevent reproducing any
               | copyrighted characters?
        
               | bawolff wrote:
               | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Derivative_wor
               | ks has some commentary on how this works you might find
               | interesting
        
               | why_at wrote:
               | Thanks for the link.
               | 
               | I get that copyright is a bit of a minefield, and there's
               | some clear cases that should not be allowed, e.g. taking
               | photos of a painting and selling them
               | 
               | That said, I still get the impression that the laws are
               | way too broad and there would be little harm if we
               | reduced their scope. I think we should be allowed to post
               | pictures of Pokemon toys to Wikipedia for example.
               | 
               | I'm willing to listen to other points of view if people
               | want to share though
        
               | Avicebron wrote:
               | The Patreon-Artist analogy is wrong because the artist
               | (sentient human capable of liability) enters into an
               | agreement with Patreon (which presumably/contractually
               | frees Patreon of the liability of an Artist making money
               | off of copyrighted material), so if the Artist starts
               | selling all of that copyrighted material and it gets
               | noticed, then yeah seems like they would have claim that
               | the artist hadn't licensed the material. The difference
               | is that the Artist can be held liable.
               | 
               | Here the analogy is more like a bunch of chefs figured
               | out how to make a magical oven that spits out food almost
               | as good as the original created by an original outside
               | chef. But in order to do that they had to go around to
               | each original restaurant and steal the recipe sheet. The
               | disagreement is about how to handle 1. That original
               | theft of those recipes, now that less people are going to
               | the original restaurants (theoretically) 2. Handle the
               | reality that more theft will occur knowing that there is
               | a market for "theft"->"faster/low-quality product"
        
             | bawolff wrote:
             | 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).
        
           | victorbjorklund wrote:
           | I would 100% be allowed to draw an image of Indiana Jones in
           | illustrator. There is no law against me drawing his likeness.
        
             | pier25 wrote:
             | No, you aren't allowed to _monetize_ an image of Indiana
             | Jones even if you made it yourself.
        
               | bawolff wrote:
               | That depends. There are situations where you are. Satire
               | in particular would be a common one, but there can be
               | others.
               | 
               | Rules around copyright (esp. Fair use) can be very
               | context dependent.
        
               | pier25 wrote:
               | Those are the exceptions that confirm the rule, as they
               | say.
        
             | echoangle wrote:
             | But would you be allowed to publish it in the same way the
             | AI companies do?
        
             | kod wrote:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_fict
             | i...
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_Sta
             | t...
        
               | recursive wrote:
               | Copyright protection doesn't prevent an illustrator from
               | drawing the thing.
        
               | bawolff wrote:
               | I don't think those links support the point you are
               | trying to make (i assume you are disagreeing with
               | parent). Copyright law is a lot more complex then just a
               | binary, and fictional characters certainly don't enjoy
               | personality rights.
        
               | kod wrote:
               | harrison ford certainly does
               | 
               | edit - also, I wasn't making a binary claim, the person I
               | was responding to was: "no law". There are more than zero
               | laws relevant to this situation. I agree with you that
               | how relevant is context dependent.
        
           | Smithalicious wrote:
           | Won't somebody think of the billionaire IP holders? The
           | horror.
        
         | dgunay wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | echoangle wrote:
           | And how is that bad or surprising? It's actually what I would
           | expect from how AI works.
        
             | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
             | Exactly. We designed systems that work on attention and
             | inference... and then surprised that it returns popular
             | results?
        
           | coderenegade wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | jmull wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | runarberg wrote:
         | Overfitting is generally a sign of a useless model
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfitting
        
       | froh wrote:
       | Creepy Craig is hilarious. can't be Daniel Craig because the
       | physiology is too different. And whoever this is they're Daniel
       | Craig's dark younger brother.
       | 
       | https://theaiunderwriter.substack.com/p/an-image-of-an-arche...
       | 
       | and I'm all in on this conclusion:
       | 
       | > It's stealing, but also, admittedly, really cool.
        
       | alabastervlog wrote:
       | > Yes- LLMs and internet search are two different things, but
       | LLMs train on the entirety of the internet, so you would think
       | there would be some obvious overlap.
       | 
       | Mmm, kinda, but those image results only don't show 1,000 of the
       | exact same image before showing anything else because they're
       | tuned to avoid showing too many similar images. If you use one
       | without that similarity-avoidance baked in, you see it
       | immediately. It's actually super annoying if what you're trying
       | to find _is in fact_ variations on the same image, because they
       | 'll go way out of their way to avoid doing that, though some have
       | tools for that ("show me more examples of images almost exactly
       | like this one" sorts of tools)
       | 
       | The data behind the image search, before it goes through a
       | similarity-classifier (or whatever) and gets those with too-close
       | a score filtered out (or however exactly it works) probably looks
       | a lot like "huh, every single adventurer with a hat just looks
       | exactly like Harrison Ford?"
       | 
       | There's similar diversity-increasers at work on search results,
       | it's why you can search "reddit [search terms]" on DDG and
       | exactly the first 3 results are from reddit (without modifying
       | the search to limit it to the site itself, just using it as a
       | keyword) but then it switches to giving you other sites.
        
       | macleginn wrote:
       | With some work, works with politicians as well:
       | https://chatgpt.com/share/67eefb1c-ceac-8012-ad90-3b64356744...
        
       | Keyframe wrote:
       | Today I finally caved in and tried the ghibli style transfer in
       | chatgpt. I gave it a photo of my daughter and said the thing
       | (prompt shared about). It said it couldn't due to copyright
       | issues. Fine. I removed ghibli from the prompt and replaced it
       | with a well-known japanese studio where Hayao Miyazaki works.
       | Still nothing, copyright reasons my fellow human. I thought they
       | finally turned it off due to the pressure, but then something
       | caught my eye. My daughter, on the image, had a t-shirt with
       | Mickey Mouse on it! I used the original prompt with ghibli in it
       | and added to "paint a unicorn on the t-shirt instead to avoid
       | copyright issues". It worked.
       | 
       | tl;dr; Try the disney boss and see what happens!
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | reserving moral judgment and specifically explaining why gpt4o
       | cant do spiderman and harry potter but can do ghibli: i havent
       | seen anyone point it out but japan has pretty ai friendly laws
       | 
       | https://petapixel.com/2023/06/05/japan-declares-ai-training-...
        
       | pier25 wrote:
       | If OpenAI is ok with this then they should be ok with sharing
       | their code and models so that others can profit from their work
       | (without giving anything back to OpenAI).
        
       | phtrivier wrote:
       | Soon, the only thing that will make "Ready Player One" a fiction
       | is that, in the end of the movie, they agree to shut the thing
       | down once in a while.
       | 
       | That will never happen under Silicon Valley's watch.
        
       | ALLTaken wrote:
       | I remember when google news was fined be the EU for just linking
       | and using some preview + trailer text to actual news websites.
       | The news are owned by a few monopolies and they don't like giving
       | up control.
       | 
       | I received so many Copyright and DMCA takedowns for early youtube
       | videos posted in the early 2010's for no reason except some
       | background music blaring a hit. It had millions of views and NO
       | ADs. Now the ad-infested copies with whatever tricks they use can
       | still be found, while my videos predating all had to be deleted.
       | Google. You like their product? Don't like it too much, it may
       | cease to exist, or maybe just for you for arbitrary reasons and
       | simultaneously remove your access to hundreds of websites via
       | their monopoly on Single-Sign-On.
       | 
       | Then there are those takedown notices for honest negative reviews
       | on Google Maps by notorious companies having accumulated enough
       | money via scams that they now can afford to hire lawyers. These
       | lawyers use their tools and power to manipulate the factual
       | scoring into a "cleansed one".
       | 
       | OpenAI seriously has not received any court orders from all the
       | movie studios in the world? How is that even possible?
       | 
       | I previously posted in a comment that I have video evidence with
       | a friend being eye witness how OpenAI is stealing data. How?
       | Possibly by abusing access granted by Microsoft.
       | 
       | Who is still defending OpenAI and why? There are so many highly
       | educated and incredibly smart people here, this is one of the
       | most glaring and obvious hardcore data/copyright violations, yet
       | OpenAI roams free. It's also the de-facto most ClosedAI out
       | there.
       | 
       | OpenAI is: - Accessing private IP & data of millions of
       | organisations - Silencing and killing whitleblowers like Boing -
       | Using $500B tax-payer money to produce closed source AI - Founder
       | has lost it and straight up wants to raise trillion(s)
       | 
       | For each of these claim there is easily material that can be
       | linked to prove it, but some like ChatGPT and confuse the
       | usefulness of it with the miss-aligned and bad corporate
       | behaviour of this multi-billion dollar corporation.
        
       | afarah1 wrote:
       | >AI is supposed to be able to [...] make extremely labor
       | intensive things much easier
       | 
       | ... as showcased by the cited examples?
       | 
       | More so, this derivative work would otherwise be unreachable for
       | regular folk with no artistic talent (maybe for lack of time to
       | develop it), but who may aspire to do such creative work
       | nevertheless. Why is that a bad thing? Sure, simple posts on
       | social media don't have much work or creativity put into them,
       | but are enjoyable nevertheless, and the technology _can_ be used
       | in creative ways - e.g. Stable Diffusion has been used to turn
       | original stories drawn with stick figures into stylized
       | children's books.
       | 
       | The author argues against this usage for "stealing" the original
       | work, but how does posting a stylized story on social media
       | "steal" anything? The author doesn't present any "pirated" copies
       | of movies being sold in place of the originals, nor negative
       | impact on sales figures. In the case of the trending Studio
       | Ghibli, I wouldn't be surprise to see a positive impact!
       | 
       | As for the "soulless 2025 fax version of the thing", I think it
       | takes a very negative mindset to see it this way. What I've seen
       | shared on social media has been nothing but fun examples, people
       | playing around with what for them is a new use of technology,
       | using it on pictures of fond memories, etc.
       | 
       | I'm inclined to agree with the argument made by Boldrin and
       | Levine:
       | 
       | >"Intellectual property" has come to mean not only the right to
       | own and sell ideas, but also the right to regulate their use.
       | This creates a socially inefficient monopoly, and what is
       | commonly called intellectual property might be better called
       | "intellectual monopoly."
       | 
       | >When you buy a potato you can eat it, throw it away, plant it or
       | make it into a sculpture. Current law allows producers of a CDs
       | and books to take this freedom away from you. When you buy a
       | potato you can use the "idea" of a potato embodied in it to make
       | better potatoes or to invent french fries. Current law allows
       | producers of computer software or medical drugs to take this
       | freedom away from you. It is against this distorted extension of
       | intellectual property rights that we argue.
       | 
       | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4980956_The_Case_Ag...
        
       | bawolff wrote:
       | Its kind of weird how everyone is complaining about copyright
       | infringemet in memes now.
       | 
       | Memes are pretty inherently derrivative. They were always someone
       | elses work. The picard face palm meme was obviously taken from
       | star trek. All your base is obviously from that video game.
       | Repurposing someone else's work with new meaning is basically
       | what a meme is. Why do we suddenly care now?
        
       | mlsu wrote:
       | I was really hoping that the conversation around AI art would at
       | least be partially centered on the perhaps now dated "2008 pirate
       | party" idea that intellectual property, the royalty system, the
       | draconian copyright laws that we have today are deeply silly,
       | rooted in a fiction, and used over and over again, primarily by
       | the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back
       | cultural innovation.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, it's just the opposite. It seems most people have
       | fully assimilated the idea that information itself must be
       | entirely subsumed into an oppressive, proprietary, commercial
       | apparatus. That Disney Corp can prevent you from viewing some
       | collection of pixels, because THEY own it, and they know better
       | than you do about the culture and communication that you are and
       | are not allowed to experience.
       | 
       | It's just baffling. If they could, Disney would scan your brain
       | to charge you a nickel every time you thought of Mickey Mouse.
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | Not just some particular collection of pixels, but _an infinite
         | number of combinations of collections of pixels_ , any of which
         | remotely invoke a shadow of similarity to hundreds of
         | "properties" that Disney lays claim to.
        
         | ToucanLoucan wrote:
         | I can't speak for everyone obviously, but my anti-AI sentiment
         | in this regard is not that IP law is flawless and beyond
         | reproach, far from it. I'm merely saying that as long as we're
         | all required to put up with it, that OpenAI and company should
         | _also_ have to put up with it. It 's incredibly disingenuous
         | the way these companies have taken advantage of publicly
         | available material on an industrial scale, used said material
         | to train their models "for research" and as soon as they had
         | something that vaguely did what they wanted, began selling
         | access to them.
         | 
         | If they are indeed the output of "research" that couldn't exist
         | without the requisite publicly available material, then they
         | should be accessible by the public (and arguably, the products
         | of said outputs should also be inherently public domain too).
         | 
         | If they are instead created products to be sold themselves,
         | then what is utilized to create them should be licensed for
         | that purpose.
         | 
         | Additionally, if they can be used to generate IP violating
         | material, then IMHO, makes perfect sense for the rights holders
         | of those IPs to sue their asses like they would anyone else who
         | did that and sold the results.
         | 
         | Again, for emphasis: I'm not endorsing any of the effects of IP
         | law. I am simply saying that we should all, from the poorest
         | user to the richest corporation, be playing by the same rules,
         | and it feels like AI companies entire existence is hinging on
         | their ability to have their IP cake and eat it too: they want
         | to be able to restrict and monetize access to their generative
         | models that they've created, while also having free reign to
         | generate clearly, bluntly plagiarizing material.
        
           | flats wrote:
           | Very well put. I'm open to a future in which nothing is
           | copyrighted & everything is in the public domain, but the
           | byproduct of that public domain material should _also_ be
           | owned by the public.
           | 
           | Otherwise, we're making the judgement that the originators of
           | the IP should not be compensated for their labor, while the
           | AI labs should be. Of course, training & running the models
           | take compute resources, but the ultimate aim of these
           | companies is to profit above & beyond those costs, just as
           | artists hope to be compensated above & beyond the training &
           | resources required to make the art in the first place.
        
         | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
         | > to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation.
         | 
         | How is copyright stifling innovation?
         | 
         | You could not rip something off more blatantly than Gravity,
         | which had the lawsuit dismissed entirely.
         | 
         | Taurus vs Stairway to Heaven, the list goes on and on and on.
         | 
         | You can often get away with nearly murder ripping off other
         | people's stuff.
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | Because it's self indulgent wankery. If I, as writer and an
           | artist, have just the most absolutely brilliant thoughts, and
           | write them down into a book or draw the most beautiful
           | artwork, I can earn money off that well into my afterlife
           | with copyright. Meanwhile the carpenter who is no less
           | bright, can only sell the chair he's built once. In order to
           | make money off of it, he must labor to produce a second or
           | even a third chair. Why does one person have to work harder
           | than the other because of the medium they chose?
           | 
           | Meanwhile in China, just because you invented a thing, you
           | don't get to sit back and rest on your laurels. sipping
           | champagne in hot tubs, because your competitor isn't staying
           | put. He's grinding and innovating off your innovation so
           | you'd also better keep innovating.
        
             | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
             | This has nothing to do with stifling innovation.
             | 
             | I am yet to meet a writer who doesn't even attempt to write
             | for fear that whatever they write will be found to be in
             | violation of copyright (unless they are the type of writer
             | that is always finding excuses not to write).
             | 
             | Several people have made successful careers out of fan
             | fiction...
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | JK Rowling never has to work again in her life because
               | she wrote a couple of books that were exceedingly
               | popular. Because she doesn't have to work, she's not been
               | forced to come up with new stuff. How is that not
               | stifling?
        
               | jfim wrote:
               | The same analogy could be applied to business though.
               | Some Colonel invented a fried chicken recipe and started
               | a chain of restaurants, now he doesn't need to work
               | anymore.
               | 
               | In my opinion, if someone creates something that has
               | value for a lot of people, they should get rewarded for
               | it.
        
               | Wowfunhappy wrote:
               | ...it's worth noting that J.K. Rowling _is_ still coming
               | up with new stuff. I quite like her ongoing Comoran
               | Strike detective series. They 're published under a pen
               | name, but it's Rowling.
        
               | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
               | She comes up with new stuff all the time. She's had a
               | separate career as a writer of thrillers, and is still
               | working in the PotterVerse.
               | 
               | She's an awful person for other reasons, but that's
               | beside the point here.
               | 
               | Reality is most trad-pub authors have full-time jobs
               | anyway to pay the bills. If you're not one of a handful
               | of publishing superstars, trad-pub pays incredibly badly
               | as a result of corporate consolidation and monopoly
               | dominance.
               | 
               | To be clear - there are far more people living
               | parasitically off investments, producing nothing at all
               | and extracting value from everyone else, than there are
               | talented creators living the high life.
        
               | rpdillon wrote:
               | Notch (Marcus Persson of Minecraft fame) is probably a
               | more compelling example.
        
             | halfnormalform wrote:
             | The carpenter can sell the design of the chair.
        
             | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
             | The only people making chairs by hand today are
             | exceptionally well-paid artisanal craft carpenters and/or
             | designers/studios.
             | 
             | It's not at all unusual for popular/iconic furniture
             | designs to be copyrighted.
             | 
             | Reality is people who invent truly original, useful,
             | desirable things are the most important human beings on the
             | planet.
             | 
             |  _Nothing_ that makes civilisation what it is has happened
             | without original inventiveness and creativity. It 's the
             | single most important resource there is.
             | 
             | These people should be encouraged and rewarded, whether
             | it's in academia, industry, as freelance
             | inventors/creators, or in some other way.
             | 
             | It's debatable if the current copyright system is the best
             | way to do that, because often it isn't, for all kinds of
             | reasons.
             | 
             | But the principle remains. Destroy rewards for original
             | invention and creativity and you destroy all progress.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | You're right--original inventiveness drives progress. But
               | IP protection isn't the only (or best) way to reward it.
               | Removing it often accelerates innovation.
               | 
               | Look at open source. If Linux had been closed-source with
               | licensing fees, the internet wouldn't exist as we know
               | it. Open ecosystems build faster. Contributors innovate
               | because they can build on each other's work freely.
               | 
               | Market pressure drives innovation. Reputation beats
               | monopoly. Monopolies slow everything down. And
               | collaboration multiplies progress.
        
               | chimpanzee wrote:
               | There's plenty of people who create without external
               | reward.
               | 
               | Or simply for the most minimal of external rewards:
               | recognition and respect.
               | 
               | Or for the purest: seeing others live longer and happier
               | as a result.
        
               | rpdillon wrote:
               | This position suggests that there was no progress before
               | we had copyright. I think you're vastly overstating the
               | power of the incentives we've set up to drive creative
               | behavior, and even with your caveats I think you're
               | overstating their efficacy. Copyright and patents have
               | done more to consolidate wealth within middleman
               | industries that aggregate these properties than they have
               | to enrich the actual creatives doing the work, as it is
               | with all systems. For every system we put in place to
               | reward behavior that we enjoy, the system always benefits
               | those that choose to game the system more than those that
               | were originally intended to be rewarded.
               | 
               | And the results are observable empirically: very few
               | people are told by anyone that's been out in the world
               | that they should choose to become a writer or an
               | inventor, because writers and inventors simply don't make
               | that much money. The system you claim is so necessary
               | seems to be completely failing in its core mission.
               | 
               | For example, take a look at writers making a decent
               | living on a platform like Substack. Copyright is
               | literally doing nothing for them. People can freely copy
               | their substack and post it everywhere online. The value
               | is that the platform provides a centralized location for
               | people to follow the person's writing, and to build a
               | community around it. In cases where artists and inventors
               | have become rich, I look at the mechanism behind it, and
               | often it's an accident that had nothing to do with
               | intellectual property rights at all.
        
             | salynchnew wrote:
             | One reason so many people are amenable to the copyright
             | argument is at least partly because of these
             | counterarguments that posit that every writer must be an
             | elitist or fabulously wealthy vs. instead of someone who
             | spent X years toiling away at their craft or skill while
             | working menial/multiple jobs.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | yeah we should abolish copyright and make it so that
               | creators get paid for every eyeball that's looking at
               | your content. first, we establish a total panopticon. and
               | then you get paid when people engage with your content,
               | like, the system records that a person watches your
               | movie, doesn't matter how they got a copy of your movie,
               | but this person watches your movie, and that watch gets
               | sent into the system and you get paid out from it. no
               | more copyright, just horribly invasive tracking of
               | everything everywhere. Call it copythrough.
               | 
               | That would never work, but like writing sci-fi.
        
             | absolutelastone wrote:
             | The income from the book is scaling by its number of
             | customers, versus roughly one person at a time who can
             | enjoy the chair. It incentivizes finding ways to entertain
             | more people with your effort.
        
           | ppseafield wrote:
           | Copyright makes the legality of arXiv and SciHub questionable
           | at best. It locks publicly funded research behind paywalls.
           | It makes being able to search the law (including case law) of
           | the US incredibly expensive. It puts a burden on platforms to
           | be beholden to DMCA takedowns, lest the content owner go to
           | their hosting or DNS provider, has happened to itch.io. It
           | adds licensing fees onto public musical performances (ASCAP).
           | 
           | Additionally plenty of people making videos for YouTube have
           | had their videos demonetized and their channels even removed
           | because of the Content ID copyright detection scheme and
           | their three strikes rule. In some cases to a ridiculous
           | extent - some companies will claim ownership of music that
           | isn't theirs and either get the video taken down or take a
           | share of the revenue.
           | 
           | I watched a video where someone wrote a song and registered
           | it via CDBaby, which YouTube sources for Content ID. Then
           | someone claimed ownership of the song, so YouTube assigned
           | the third party 50% of the ad revenue of the video.
        
         | masfuerte wrote:
         | I don't really care.
         | 
         | Either enforce the current copyright regime and sue the AI
         | companies to dust.
         | 
         | Or abolish copyright and let us all go hog wild.
         | 
         | But this halfway house where you can ignore the law as long as
         | you've got enough money is disgusting.
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | Or treat AI training as within the coverage of the current
           | fair use regime (which is certainly defensible within the
           | current copyright regime), while prosecuting the _use_ of AI
           | models to create infringing copies and derivative works that
           | do not themselves have permission or a reasonable claim to be
           | within the scope of fair use as a violation (and prosecuted
           | _hosted_ AI firms for contributory infringement where their
           | actions with regard to such created infringements fit the
           | existing law on that.)
        
             | Wowfunhappy wrote:
             | ^ I feel like I almost never see this take, and I don't
             | understand why because it frankly seems obvious to me! Of
             | _course_ the tool isn 't responsible, and the person who
             | uses it is.
        
         | kokanee wrote:
         | The idea of open sourcing everything and nullifying patents
         | would benefit corporations like Disney and OpenAI vastly more
         | than it would benefit the people. The first thing that would
         | happen is that BigCorp would eat up every interesting or useful
         | piece of art, technology, and culture that has ever been
         | created and monetize the life out of it.
         | 
         | These legal protections are needed by the people. To the Pirate
         | Party's credit, undoing corporate personhood would be a good
         | first step, so that we can focus on enforcing protections for
         | the works of humans. Still, attributing those works to CEOs
         | instead of corporations wouldn't result in much change.
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | >The first thing that would happen is that BigCorp would eat
           | up every interesting or useful piece of art, technology, and
           | culture that has ever been created and monetize the life out
           | of it.
           | 
           | Wait, I'm still trying to figure out the difference between
           | your imaginary world and the world we live in now?
        
             | dragontamer wrote:
             | Thor would have red hair in the imaginary world, rather
             | than being a Blonde man which was made to be a somewhat
             | distinguished comic book character.
             | 
             | The Disney or otherwise copyrighted versions allow for
             | unique spins on these old characters to be re-copyrighted.
             | This Thor from Disney/Marvel is distinguished from Thor
             | from God of War.
        
         | tastyface wrote:
         | A different way of looking at it: AI, by design, defaults to
         | regurgitating the poppiest of pop culture content. Every whip-
         | wielding archaeologist is now Harrison Ford. Every suave
         | British spy is now Daniel Craig. With the power of AI,
         | creativity is dead and buried.
        
         | chimpanzee wrote:
         | Essentially: "information wants to be free".
         | 
         | I agree.
         | 
         | But this must include the dissolution of patents. Otherwise
         | corporations and the owners of the infrastructure will simply
         | control _everything_ , including the easily replicable works of
         | individuals.
        
         | elicksaur wrote:
         | Gonna submit that business model to a YC 2026 batch.
        
         | xorcist wrote:
         | I think what you observe is more like a natural blowback to the
         | prevailing idea that this is somehow beyond critique because it
         | will fundamentally change culture and civilization forever.
         | 
         | There's a bit of irony here too. The intellectual discourse
         | around intellectural property, a diverse and lively one from an
         | academic standpoint, the whole free and open source software
         | movements, software patents, the piracy movement and so on have
         | analyzed the history, underlying ideas and values in detail for
         | the past thirty years. Most people know roughly what is at
         | stake, where they stand, and can defend their position in an
         | honest way.
         | 
         | Then comes new technology, everyone and their mother gets
         | excited about it, and _steamrolls_ all those lofty ideas into
         | "oh look at all the shiny things it can produce!". Be careful
         | what you wish for.
        
         | jason_pomerleau wrote:
         | > If they could, Disney would scan your brain to charge you a
         | nickel every time you thought of Mickey Mouse.
         | 
         | This reminds me of Tom Scott's "Welcome to Life: The
         | Singularity, Ruined by Lawyers" [1]
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
        
         | egypturnash wrote:
         | Getting the megacorporations to sit up and take notice of this
         | is about the only way the average independent artist has any
         | hope of stopping this crap from destroying half our jobs.
         | What'm I gonna do, sue OpenAI? Sam Altman makes more money
         | sitting on the toilet taking a dump than I do in an entire
         | year.
         | 
         | I have no love for the Mouse but if I can get them and the
         | image slop-mongers to fight then that's _absoutely fine_. It
         | would be nice to have a functioning, vibrant public domain but
         | it is also nice to not have some rich asshole insisting that
         | all copyright laws must be ignored because if they properly
         | licensed even a fraction of what they 've consumed then it
         | would be _entirely_ too expensive to train their glorified
         | autocomplete databases on _the entire fucking internet_ for the
         | purpose of generating even more garbage  "content" designed to
         | keep your attention when you're mindlessly scrolling their
         | attention farms, regardless of how it makes you feel, and if I
         | can choose one or the other then _I am totally behind the
         | Mouse_.
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | I'm fascinated by the fact that the images are _almost_ right,
       | but never totally.
       | 
       | Harrison Ford's head is way too big for his body. Same with
       | Alicia Vikander's and Daniel Craig's too. Daniel Craig is way too
       | young too. Bruce Willis's just looks fake, and he's holding his
       | lighter in the opposite hand from the famous photo.
       | 
       | So it's not reproducing any _actual_ copyrighted images directly.
       | It 's more like an artist trying to paint from memory. Which
       | seems like an important distinction.
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | According to some of the replies in this discussion, even
         | "artist trying to paint from memory" is guilty of infringement,
         | as long as the subject matter can be linked in any way to
         | someone's "IP". Im not legally trained to evaluate these
         | claims, but some of them seem outlandish!
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > According to some of the replies in this discussion, even
           | "artist trying to paint from memory" is guilty of
           | infringement
           | 
           | Yes, making a copy or derivative work of something under
           | copyright from memory is infringement, unless it falls under
           | an exception in copyright law such as fair use (which does
           | not categorically apply to everything with "memory" as an
           | intermediary between the original work and the
           | copy/derivative, otherwise, copyright law would never have
           | had any effect other than on mechanical duplication.)
        
       | armchairhacker wrote:
       | You're allowed to draw IP and share your drawings. You're allowed
       | to screenshot and photoshop IP. You're allowed to sell tools that
       | help others draw and photoshop IP*. You're not allowed to sell
       | these drawings and photoshops.
       | 
       | I don't see why an AI can't generate IP, even if the AI is being
       | sold. What's not allowed is selling the generated IP.
       | 
       | Style is even more permissive: you're allowed to sell something
       | in any style. AFAIK the only things that can be restricted are
       | methods to achieve the style (via patents), similar brands in
       | similar service categories (via trademarks), and depictions of
       | objects (via copyrights).
       | 
       | Note that something being "the original" gives it an intrinsic
       | popularity advantage, and someone being "the original creator"
       | gives their new works an intrinsic advantage. I believe in
       | _attribution_ , which means that if someone recreates or closely
       | derives another's art or style, they should point to the
       | original**. With attribution, IP is much less important, because
       | a recreation or spin-off must be significantly better to out-
       | compete the original in popularity, and even then, it's extra
       | success usually spills onto the original, making it more popular
       | than it would be without the recreation or spin-off anyways. Old
       | books, movies, and video games like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and
       | Sonic have many "recreations" which copy all but their IP, and
       | fan recreations which copy even that; yet they're far more
       | popular than all the recreations, and when Warner Bros, Disney,
       | or SEGA release a new installment, the new installment is far
       | more popular too, simply because it's an original.
       | 
       | * IANAL, maybe there are some technicalities, but in practice
       | this is true.
       | 
       | ** Or others can do it. As long as it shows up alongside their
       | work, so people don't see the recreation or close derivation
       | without knowing about the original.
        
         | lmm wrote:
         | > You're allowed to draw IP and share your drawings.
         | 
         | No you're not, not in general. The copyright holder has the
         | exclusive right to prepare and distribute derivative works.
         | 
         | > You're allowed to screenshot and photoshop IP.
         | 
         | Again, no, not in general.
         | 
         | > You're allowed to sell tools that help others draw and
         | photoshop IP*.
         | 
         | Sort of. You're allowed to sell tools that might be used for
         | those purposes. You're not allowed to sell tools as "for that
         | purpose" or advertise those use cases.
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | So, one would like an AI that can reasonably answer questions
       | about various aspects of human culture, or at least to take said
       | culture into account? At the same time, you want it to _not_ use
       | the most obvious, most relevant examples from the culture,
       | because they are somehow verboten, and a less relevant,
       | completely made-up character should be presented instead? Come
       | on, computes have _logic_. If you ask the machine to produce a
       | picture of a man who was sent to humans to save them, then was
       | executed, and after that came back alive, who do you think the
       | machine should show you, for Christ 's sake?
       | 
       | Picture-based industries had a mild shock when "Photoshop" kind
       | of software became widely available. Remixing visuals in ways
       | that the copyright holders won't approve of became equally
       | widespread. Maybe that added some grey hairs to the heads of some
       | industry execs, the sky has not fallen. I suppose the same is
       | going to happen this time around.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-04-03 23:00 UTC)