Multiple people can screen share at once over Slack, plus people not sharing can use a pencil tool to highlight specifics on the screen, as in “you need to change this setting”
While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5.
What kind of argument is that supposed to be? We’ve stolen his art before so it’s fine? Dickheads. This whole AI thing is already sketchy enough, at least respect the artists that explicitly want their art to be excluded.
Aside from all the artists whose work was fed into the AI learning models without their permission. That art has been stolen, and is still being stolen. In this case very explicitly, because they outright removed his work, and then put it back when nobody was looking.
Let me give you a hypothetical that’s close to reality. Say an artist gets very popular, but doesn’t want their art used to teach AI. Let’s even say there’s even legislation that prevents all this artist’s work from being used in AI.
Now what if someone else hires a bunch of cheap human artists to produce works in a style similar to the original artist, and then uses those works to feed the AI model? Would that still be stolen art? And if so, why? And if not, what is this extra degree of separation changing? The original artist is still not getting paid and the AI is still producing works based on their style.
Fine, you win the semantic argument about the use of the term “stealing”. Despite arguments about word choice, this is still a massively disrespectful and malicious action against the artist.
Comic book artists get in shit for tracing other peoples’ work all the time. Look up Greg Land. It’s shitty regardless of whether it’s a person doing it directly, or if someone built software to do it for them.
Strictly speaking it wouldn’t exactly be stealing, but I would still consider it as about equal to it, especially with regards to economic benefits. It may not be producing exact copies (which strictly speaking isn’t stealing, but is violating copyright) or actually stealing, but it’s exploiting the style that most people would assume mean that that specific artist made it and thus depriving that artist from benefiting from people wanting art from that artist/in that style.
Now, I’m not conflicted about people who have made millions off their art having people make imitations or copies, those people live more than comfortably enough. But in your example there are still other human artists benefiting, which is not the case for computationally generated works. It’s great for me to be able to have computers create art for a DnD campaign or something, but I still recognize that it’s making it harder for artists to earn a living from their skills. And to a certain degree it makes it so people who never would have had any such art now can. It’s in many ways like piracy with the same ethical framing. And as with piracy it may be that people that use AI to make them art become greater “consumers” of art made by humans as well, paying it forward. But it may also not work exactly that way.
Now you’re making a strawman. Other humans that are actually making art generally don’t fully copy a specific style, they draw inspiration from different sources and that amalgamation is their style.
Your comment reads as bad-faith to me. If it wasn’t meant as such you’re free to explain your stance properly instead of making strawman arguments.
That’s true, but only in the sense that theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different things.
Generating stuff from ML training datasets that included works without permissive licenses is copyright infringement though, just as much as simply copying and pasting parts of those works in would be. The legal definition of a derivative work doesn’t care about the techological details.
(For me, the most important consequence of this sort of argument is that everything produced by Github Copilot must be GPL.)
By the same token, a human can easily be deemed to have infringed copyright even without cutting and pasting, if the result is excessively inspired by some other existing work.
AI doesn’t “learn” anything, it’s not even intelligent. If you show a human artwork of a person they’ll be able to recognize that they’re looking at a human, how their limbs and expression works, what they’re wearing, the materials, how gravity should affect it all, etc. AI doesn’t and can’t know any of that, it just predicts how things should look based on images that have been put in it’s database. It’s a fancy Xerox.
Why do people who have no idea how some thing works feel the urge to comment on its working? It’s not just AI, it’s pretty much everything.
AI does learn, that’s the whole shtick and that’s why it’s so good at stuff computers used to suck at. AI is pretty much just a buzzword, the correct abbreviation is ML which stands for Machine Learning - it’s even in the name.
AI also recognizes it looks at a human! It can also recognize what they’re wearing, the material. AI is also better in many, many things than humans are. It also sucks compared to humans in many other things.
And I wish that people who didn’t understand the need for the human element in creative endeavours would focus their energy on automating things that should be automated, like busywork, and dangerous jobs.
If the prediction model actually “learned” anything, they wouldn’t have needed to add the artist’s work back after removing it. They had to, because it doesn’t learn anything, it copies the data it’s been fed.
Just because you repeat the same thing over and over it doesn’t become truth. You should be the one to learn, before you talk. This conversation is over for me, I’m not paid to convince people who behave like children of how things they’re scared of work.
At the heart of copyright law is the intent. If an artist makes something, someone can’t just come along and copy it and resell it. The intent is so that artists can make a living for their innovation.
AI training on copyrighted images and then reproducing works derived from those images in order to compete with those images in the same style breaks the intent of copyright law. Equally, it does not matter if a picture is original. If you take an artist’s picture and recreate it with pixel art, there have already been cases where copyright infringement settlements have been made in favor of the original artist. Despite the original picture not being used at all, just studied. Mile’s David Kind Of Bloop cover art.
You’re correct in your description of what a derivative work is, but this part is mistaken:
The intent is so that artists can make a living for their innovation.
The intent is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts” so that, in the long run, the Public Domain is enriched with more works than would otherwise exist if no incentive were given. Allowing artists to make a living is nothing more than a means to that end.
It promotes progress by giving people the ability to make the works. If they can’t make a living off of making the works then they aren’t going to do it as a job. Thus yes, the intent is so that artists can make a living off of their work so that more artists have the ability to make the art. It’s really that simple. The intent is so that more people can do it. It’s not a means to the end, it’s the entire point of it. Otherwise, you’d just have hobbyists contributing.
I like what you’re saying so I’m not trying to be argumentative, but to be clear copyright protections don’t simply protect those who make a living from their productions. You are protected by them regardless of whether you intend to make any money off your work and that protection is automatic. Just to expand upon what @grue was saying.
It’s likely copyright infringement but that’s for the courts to decide, not you or me. Additionally, “copyright infringement is a moral right” seems fairly wrong. Copyright laws currently are too steep and I can agree with that but if I make a piece of art like a book, video game, or movie, do I not deserve to protect it in order to get money? I’d argue that because we live in a capitalistic society so, yes, I deserve to get paid for the work I did. If we lived in a better society that met the basic needs (or even complex needs) of every human then I can see copyright laws being useless.
At the end of the day, the artists just want to be able to afford to eat, play games, and have shelter. Why in the world is that a bad thing in our current society? You can’t remove copyright law without first removing capitalism.
Additionally, “copyright infringement is a moral right” seems fairly wrong. Copyright laws currently are too steep and I can agree with that but if I make a piece of art like a book, video game, or movie, do I not deserve to protect it in order to get money? I’d argue that because we live in a capitalistic society so, yes, I deserve to get paid for the work I did.
No. And it’s not just me saying that; the folks who wrote the Copyright Clause (James Madison and Thomas Jefferson) would disagree with you, too.
The natural state of a creative work is for it to be part of a Public Domain. Ideas are fundamentally different from property in the sense that property’s value comes from its exclusive use by its owner, wheras an idea’s value comes from spreading it, i.e., giving it away to others.
stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. it would be curious then if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the reciever cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property. society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility. but this may, or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
Thus we see the basis for the rationale given in the Copyright Clause itself: “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” which is very different from creating some kind of entitlement to creators because they “deserve” it.
The true basis for copyright law in the United States is as a utilitarian incentive to encourage the creation of more works - a bounty for creating. Ownership of property is a natural right which the Constitution pledges to protect (see also the 4th and 5th Amendments), but the temporary monopoly called copyright is merely a privilege granted at the pleasure of Congress. Essentially, it’s a lease from the Public Domain, for the benefit of the Public. It is not an entitlement; what the creator of the work “deserves” doesn’t enter into it.
And if the copyright holder abuses his privilege such that the Public no longer benefits enough to be worth it, it’s perfectly just and reasonable for the privilege to be revoked.
At the end of the day, the artists just want to be able to afford to eat, play games, and have shelter. Why in the world is that a bad thing in our current society? You can’t remove copyright law without first removing capitalism.
This is a bizarre, backwards argument. First of all, a government-granted monopoly is the antethesis of the “free market” upon which capitalism is supposedly based. Second, granting of monopolies is hardly the only way to accomplish either goal of “promoting the progress of science and the useful arts” or of helping creators make a living!
Thus we see the basis for the rationale given in the Copyright Clause itself: “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” which is very different from creating some kind of entitlement to creators because they “deserve” it.
… You realize the reason it promotes progress is because it allows the creators to get paid for it, right? It’s not “they deserve it” it’s “they need to eat and thus they aren’t going to do it unless they make money.” Which is exactly my argument.
Ownership of property is a natural right which the Constitution pledges to protect (see also the 4th and 5th Amendments), but the temporary monopoly called copyright is merely a privilege granted at the pleasure of Congress
It’s a silly way to put that since the “privilege granted” is given in to Congress in the Constitution.
Overall though, you are referencing a 300-year-old document like it means something. The point comes down to people needing to eat in a capitalistic society.
This is a bizarre, backwards argument. First of all, a government-granted monopoly is the antethesis of the “free market” upon which capitalism is supposedly based.
Capitalism isn’t really based on a free market and never has been in practice.
Second, granting of monopolies is hardly the only way to accomplish either goal of “promoting the progress of science and the useful arts” or of helping creators make a living!
Sure but first enact those changes then try to change or break copyright. Don’t take away the only current way for artists to make money then say “Well, the system should be different.” You are causing people to starve at that point.
His art was not "stolen." That's not an accurate word to describe this process with.
It's not so much that "it was done before so it's fine now" as "it's a well-understood part of many peoples' workflows" that can be used to justify it. As well as the view that there was nothing wrong with doing it the first time, so what's wrong with doing it a second time?
People that say that have never used AI art generation apps and are only regurgitating what they hear from other people who are doing the same. The amount of arm chair AI denialists is astronomical.
There’s nothing stopping someone from licensing their art in a fashion that prohibits their use in that fashion.
No one has created that license that I know of, but there are software licenses that do similar things, so it’s hardly an unprecedented notion.
The fact of the matter is that before people didn’t think it was necessary to have specific usage licenses attached to art because no one got funny feelings from people creating derivative works from them.
His work was used in a publicly available product without license or compensation. Including his work in the training dataset was, to the online vernacular use of the word, piracy.
They violated his copyright when they used his work to make their shit.
i’m not making a moral comment on anything, including piracy. i’m saying “but it’s part of my established workflow” is not an excuse for something morally wrong.
only click here if you understand analogy and hyperboleif i say “i can’t write without kicking a few babies first”, it’s not an excuse to keep kicking babies. i just have to stop writing, or maybe find another workflow
You're using an analogy as the basis for an argument. That's not what analogies are for. Analogies are useful explanatory tools, but only within a limited domain. Kicking a baby is not the same as creating an artwork, so there are areas in which they don't map to each other.
You can't dodge flaws in your argument by adding a "don't respond unless you agree with me" clause on your comment.
You’re using an analogy as the basis for an argument. That’s not what analogies are for. Analogies are useful explanatory tools, but only within a limited domain
actually that’s exactly what i was using it for.
Kicking a baby is not the same[^1] as creating an artwork, so there are areas in which they don’t map to each other.
if you read carefully, you’ll see that writing is analogous to creating an artwork, and kicking a baby is analogous to doing something that someone has asked you not to, and you’re continuing anyways. if you read even more carefully, you’ll see that i implied i wasn’t making a moral comment on ai, piracy, or even kicking babies
You can’t dodge flaws in your argument by adding a “don’t respond unless you agree with me” clause on your comment.
i didn’t intend to. i did it so i wouldn’t have to waste my time arguing with those who don’t understand analogies. however i seem to be doing that anyways, so if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to stop
edit: okay, i’ve been reading the rest of this thread, and you clearly don’t understand analogy. i have no idea why you clicked on my comment
[^1]: yes. analogous doesn’t mean “the same”. it means "able to draw demonstrative parallels between
Not at the point of generation, but at the point of training it was. One of the sticking points of AI for artists is that their developers didn't even bother to seek permission. They simply said it was too much work and crawled artists' galleries.
Even publicly displayed art can only be used for certain previously-established purposes. By default you can't use them for derivative works.
At the point of training it was viewing images that the artists had published in a public gallery. Nothing pirated at that point either. They don't need "permission" to do that, the images are on display.
Learning from art is one of the previously-established purposes you speak of. No "derivative work" is made when an AI trains a model, the model does not contain any copyrightable part of the imagery it is trained on.
Bring publicly viewable doesn't make them public domain. Bring able to see something doesn't give you the right to use it for literally any other reason.
Full stop.
My gods, you're such an insufferable bootlicking fanboy of bullshit code jockies. Make a good faith effort to actually understand why people dislike these exploitative assholes who are looking to make a buck off of other people's work for once, instead of just reflexively calling them all phillistines who "just don't understand".
Some of us work on machine learning systems for a living. We know what they are and how they work, and they're fucking regurgitation machines. And people deserve to have control over whether we use their works in our regurgitation machines.
Of course they need permission to process images. No computer system can merely "view" an image without at least creating a copy for temporary use, and the purposes for which that can be done are strictly defined. Doing whatever you want just because you have access to the image is often copyright infringement.
People have the right to learn from images available publicly for personal viewing. AI is not yet people. Your whole argument relies on anthropomorphizing a tool, but it wouldn't even be able to select images to train its model without human intervention, which is done with the intent to replicate the artist's work.
I'm not one to usually bat for copyright but the disregard AI proponents have for artists' rights and their livelihood has gone long past what's acceptable, like the article shows.
If you run someone's artwork through a filter is it completely fine and new just because the output is not exactly like the input and it deletes the input after it's done processing?
There is a discussion to be made, in good faith, of where the line lies, what ought to be the rights of the audience and what ought to be the rights of the artists, and what ought to be the rights of platforms, and what ought to be the limits of AI. To be fair, that's a difficult situation to determine, because in many aspects copyright is already too overbearing. Legally, many pieces of fan art and even memes are copyright infringement. But on the flipside automating art away is too far to the other side. The reason why Copyright even exists, at least ideally, is so that the rights and livelihood of artists is protected and they are incentivized to continue creating.
Lets not pretend that is just analysis for the sake of academic understanding, there is a large amount of people who are feeding artists' works into AI with the express purpose of getting artworks in their style without compensating them, something many artists made clear they are not okay with. While they can't tell people not to practice styles like theirs, they can definitely tell people not to use their works in ways they do not allow.
If you run someone's artwork through a filter is it completely fine and new just because the output is not exactly like the input and it deletes the input after it's done processing?
No, that's a derivative work. An analysis of the brightness of the pixels is not a derivative work.
There is a discussion to be made, in good faith, of where the line lies, what ought to be the rights of the audience and what ought to be the rights of the artists, and what ought to be the rights of platforms, and what ought to be the limits of AI.
Sure, but the people crying "You're stealing art!" are not making a good faith argument. They're using an inaccurate, prejudicial word for the purpose of riling up an emotional response. Or perhaps they just don't understand what copyright is and why it is, which also puts their argument in a bad state.
The reason why Copyright even exists, at least ideally, is so that the rights and livelihood of artists is protected and they are incentivized to continue creating.
Case in point. That's not why copyright exists. The reason for the American version of copyright is established right in the constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". If you want to go more fundamental than just what the US is up to, the original Statute of Anne was titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning".
The purpose of copyright is not to protect the rights or livelihood of artists. The protection of the rights and livelihood of artist is a means to the actual purpose of copyright, which is to enrich the public domain by prompting artists to be productive and to publish their works.
An artist that opposes AIs like these is now actively hindering the enrichment of the public domain.
Wow.. so in your mind there is basically no copyright and nobody owns anything. That is incredibly reductive and completely ignores centuries of legal precedence since the constitution was written.
You are basically claiming that anything that is ever put on display anywhere, ever is public domain and that piracy doesn't exist.
Because it's a required assumption to make anything you say on the subject make any sense. The fact that you deny that had convinced me that you're just a troll.
A histogram cannot output similar images, it's pointless to argue the fine details of an analogy that doesn't apply to begin with
To call it "stealing" might be inaccurate, but are the artists wrong to say that their intellectual property rights are being violated, when people using their works without consent to train AIs with the express purpose of replicating those artists' works? I have seen several artists pointing out AI users who brag to them that they are explicitly training AIs using those artists' galleries and show that it's outputting similar works.
The reason why Copyright even exists, at least ideally, is so that the rights and livelihood of artists is protected and they are incentivized to continue creating.
Case in point. That's not why copyright exists. The reason for the American version of copyright is established right in the constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts".
How is it "promoting the progress of useful arts" not the same as "incentivizing artists to continue creating"? Are you going to argue what's "useful"? If there is interest in replicating artists' styles with AI, then that is an admission the people doing it see use in those works. Otherwise, it's the same, and protecting their livelihoods through the privilege of a temporary intellectual monopoly is how that promotion of arts is done.
I definitely see the value of the Public Domain, but if expanding it at any cost was the primary goal of copyright we wouldn't have roughly century-long copyright. Which I don't think is good per see but that's another discussion. Still, the existence of copyright at all is a concession that grants that for artists and creators to develop their works and ultimately enrich humanity's culture, they need to be able to control their works and have a guarantee to a stable career, to the extent that they can sell their own work. It's a protection so that not everyone can show up imitating that artist and undercut them, undermining their capability to make new creative works. Which is what many people have been doing with AI.
If anything that could enrich the Public Domain was enough reason to drop Copyright, we wouldn't have any Copyright. The compromise is that Public Domain as a whole will be enriched when the artist's Copyright expires.
The models themselves are the derivative works. Those artists' works were copied and processed to create that model. There is a difference between a person viewing a piece of work and putting that work to be processed through a system. The way copyright works as defined, being allowed to view a work is not the same as being allowed to use it in any way you see fit. It's also innacurate to speak of AIs as if they have the same abilities and rights as people.
No, it wasn't. Theft is a well-defined word. When you steal something you take it away from them so that they don't have it any more.
It wasn't even a case of copyright violation, because no copies of any of Rutkowski's art were made. The model does not contain a copy of any of the training data (with an asterisk for the case of overfitting, which is very rare and which trainers do their best to avoid). The art it produces in Rutkowski's style is also not a copyright violation because you can't copyright a style.
There is no ethical stance for letting billion dollar tech firms hoover up all the art ever created to the try and remix it for profit.
So how about the open-source models? Or in this specific instance, the guy who made a LoRA for mimicking Rutkowski's style, since he did it free of charge and released it for anyone to use?
Yes copies were made. The files were downloaded, one way or another (even as a hash, or whatever digital asset they claim to translate them into) then fed to their machines.
If I go into a Ford plant, take pictures of their equipment, then use those to make my own machines, it’s still IP theft, even if I didn’t walk out with the machine.
Make all the excuses you want, you’re supporting the theft of other people’s life’s work then trying to claim it’s ethical.
Copies that were freely shared for the purpose of letting anyone look at them.
Do you think it’s copyright infringement to go to a website?
Typically, ephemeral copies that aren’t kept for a substantial period of time aren’t considered copyright violations, otherwise viewing a website would be a copyright violation for every image appearing on that site.
Downloading a freely published image to run an algorithm on it and then deleting it without distribution is basically the canonical example of ephemeral.
Yes copies were made. The files were downloaded, one way or another (even as a hash, or whatever digital asset they claim to translate them into) then fed to their machines.
They were put on the Internet for that very purpose. When you visit a website and view an image there a copy of it is made in your computer's memory. If that's a copyright violation then everyone's equally boned. When you click this link you're doing exactly the same thing.
When we put works in our online portfolio, send mailers or physical copies of our portfolios we're doing it as promotional works. There is no usage license attached to it. If loaded into memory for personal viewing, that's fine since its not a commercial application nor violating the intent of that specific release: viewing for promotion.
Let's break down your example to help you understand what is actually going on. When we upload our works to third party galleries there is often a clause in the terms of service which states the artist uploading to the site grants a usage license for distribution and displaying of the image. Let's look at Section 17 of ArtStation's Terms of Service:
License regarding Your Content
Your Content may be shared with third parties, for example, on social media sites to promote Your Content on the Site, and may be available for purchase through the Marketplace. You hereby grant royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, licenses (the “Licenses”) to Epic and our service providers to use, copy, modify, reformat and distribute Your Content, and to use the name that you provide in association with Your Content, in connection with providing the Services; and to Epic and our service providers, members, users and licensees to use, communicate, share, and display Your Content (in whole or in part) subject to our policies, as those policies are amended from time-to-time
This is in conjunction with Section 16's opening line:
Ownership
As between you and Epic, you will retain ownership of all original text, images, videos, messages, comments, ratings, reviews and other original content you provide on or through the Site, including Digital Products and descriptions of your Digital Products and Hard Products (collectively, “Your Content”), and all intellectual property rights in Your Content.
So when I click your link, I'm not engaging in a copyright violation. I'm making use of ArtStation's/Epic's license to distribute the original artist's works. When I save images from ArtStation that license does not transfer to me. Meaning if I were to repurpose that work it could be a copyright violation depending on the usage the artist agrees to. Established law states that I hold onto the rights of my work and any usage depends on what I explicitly state and agree to; emphasis on explicitly because the law will respect my terms and compensation first, and your intentions second. For example, if a magazine uses my images for several months without a license, I can document the usage time frame, send them an invoice, and begin negotiating because their legal team will realize that without a license they have no footing.
Yes, this also applies to journalism as well. If you've agreed to let a news outlet use your works on a breaking story for credit/exposure, then you provided a license for fair compensation in the form of credit/exposure.
I know this seems strange given how the internet freely transformed works for decades without repercussions. But as you know from sites like YouTube copyright holders are not a fan of people repurposing their works without a mutually agreed upon terms in the form of a license. If you remember the old show Mystery Science Theater 3000, they operated in the proper form: get license, transform work, commercialize. In the case of ArtStation, the site agrees to provide free hosting in compensation for the artist providing a license to distribute the work without terms for monetization unless agreed upon through ArtStation's marketplace. At every step, the artist's rights to their work is respected and compensated when the law is applied.
If all this makes sense and we look back at AI art, well...
Meaning if I were to repurpose that work it could be a copyright violation depending on the usage the artist agrees to.
Training an AI doesn't "repurpose" that work, though. The AI learns concepts from it and then the work is discarded. No copyrighted part of the work remains in the AI's model. All that verbiage doesn't really apply to what's being done with the images when an AI trains on them, they are no longer being "used" for anything at all after training is done. Just like when a human artist looks at some reference images and then creates his own original work based on what he's learned from them.
Here is where a rhethorical sleight of hand is used by AI proponents.
It's displayed for people's appreciation. AI is not people, it is a tool. It's not entitled to the same rights as people, and the model it creates based on artists works is itself a derivative work.
Even among AI proponents, few believe that the AI itself is an autonomous being who ought to have rights over their own artworks, least of all the AI creators.
I use tools such as web browsers to view art. AI is a tool too. There's no sleight of hand, AI doesn't have to be an "autonomous being." Training is just a mechanism for analyzing art. If I wrote a program that analyzed pictures to determine what the predominant colour in them was that'd be much the same, there'd be no problem with me running it on every image I came across on a public gallery.
You wouldn't even be able to point a camera to works in public galleries without permission. Free for viewing doesn't mean free to do whatever you want with them, and many artists have made clear they never gave permission that their works would be used to train AIs.
By that logic I can sell anything I download from the web while also claiming credit for it, right?
And that's the logic I can't follow. Who's downloading and selling Rutkowski's work? Who's claiming credit for it? None of that is being done in the first place, let alone being claimed to be "ok."
Because that is what they’re doing, just with extra steps.
The company pulled down his work, fed it to their AI, then sold the AI as their product.
Their AI wouldn’t work, at all, without the art they “clicked on”.
So there is a difference between me viewing an image in my browser and me turning their work into something for resell under my name. Adding extra steps doesn’t change that.
They put his art in, only when called out did they remove it.
Once removed, they did nothing to prevent it being added back.
As for them selling the product, or not, at this point, they still used the output of his labor to build their product.
That’s the thing, everyone trying to justify why it’s okay for these companies to do it keep leaning on semantics, legal definitions or “well, back during the industrial revolution…” to try and get around the fact that what these companies are doing is unethical. They’re taking someone else’s labor, without compensation or consent.
No, but you can download Rutkovski’s art, learn from it how to paint in his exact style and create art in that style.
Which is exactly what the image generation AIs do. They’re perhaps just a bit too good at it, certainly way better than an average human.
Which makes it complicated and morally questionable depending on how exactly you arrive at the model and what you do with it, but you can’t definitively say it’s copyright infringement.
What makes it even trickier is that taking AI generated art and using it however you want definitively isn’t copyright infringement because only works by humans can be protected by copyright.
I think my initial reply to you was meant to go somewhere else but Connect keeps dropping me to the bottom of the thread instead of where the reply I’m trying to get to is.
I’m going to leave it (for consistency sake) but I don’t think it makes much sense as a reply to your post.
You keep comparing what one person, given MONTHS or YEARS of their life could do with one artists work to a machine doing NOT THE SAME THING can do with thousands of artists work.
The machine is not learning their style, it’s taking pieces of the work and dropping it in with other people’s work then trying to blend it into a cohesive whole.
The analogy fails all over the place.
And I don’t care about copyright, I’m not an artist or an IP lawyer, or whatever. I can just look at a company stealing the labor of an entire industry and see it as bad.
The speed doesn't factor into it. Modern machines can stamp out metal parts vastly faster than blacksmiths with a hammer and anvil can, are those machines doing something wrong?
That's not the aspect you were arguing about in the comment I'm responding to. You said:
You keep comparing what one person, given MONTHS or YEARS of their life could do with one artists work to a machine doing NOT THE SAME THING can do with thousands of artists work.
And that's what I'm talking about here. The speed with which the machine does its work is immaterial.
Though frankly, if the machine stamping out parts had somehow "learned" how to do it by looking at thousands of existing parts, that would be fine too. So I don't see any problem here.
And that’s where we have a fundamental difference of opinion.
A company hiring an engineer to design a machine that makes hammers, then hiring one (or more) people to make the machine to then make hammers is the company benefiting from the work product of people they hired. While this may impact the blacksmith they did not steal from the blacksmith.
A company taking someone else’s work product to then build their product, without compensation or consent, is theft of labor.
At least now you're admitting that it's a difference of opinion, that's progress.
You think it should be illegal to do this stuff. Fine. I think copyright duration has been extended ridiculously long and should be a flat 30 years at most. But in both cases our opinions differ from what the law actually says. Right now there's nothing illegal about training an AI off of someone's lawfully-obtained published work, which is what was done here.
I’m not a fan of our copyright system. IMO, it’s far to long and should also include clauses that place anything not available for (easy) access in the public domain.
Also, I’m not talking about what laws say, should say or anything like that.
I’ve just been sharing my opinion that it’s unethical and I’ve not seen any good explanation for how stealing someone else’s labor is “good”.
Speed aside, machines don't have the same rights as humans do, so the idea that they are "learning like a person so it's fine" is like saying a photocopier machine's output ought to be treated as an independent work because it replicated some other work, and it's just so good and fast at it. AI's may not output identical work, but they still rely on taking an artist's work as input, something the creator ought to have a say over.
Lol tf is this absolute trash. It has every red flag in the book. First off, a wait-list, wtf? It’s closed source obviously, which immediately means it’s privacy invasive and anti freedom. It’s Apple only, which how did they absolutely fuck that up when it’s just a reskinned chromium which already did all the cross platform work for them? Who is this browser for? What can it do that Firefox + extensions cannot do? And lastly, why would you support internet monopolies and support the 1 millionth generic chromium reskin? What complete garbage of software.
So the solution is to all but ban any discussion of him or his companies, all of which are pretty important topics, particularly in US tech news?
I can't stand the dude, he's garbage. I wish he'd fade out of the limelight and let smart people take his companies forward. But to functionally ban any discussions because he's too present is a big over-correction.
I’m pretty sure most of the people running Beehaw are more than happy with people saying bad things about Musk. But it does get a little spammy, it’s honestly not all that interesting after a while?
Because lemmy, like Reddit, is not conducive to the concept of a megathread. It’s the format that’s the problem, not the contents. You expect people to constantly stop what they’re doing and deliberately navigate to an old megathread and then sort through all the comments/conversations happening with days - weeks even - of gaps between them? Nobody does that.
There’s nothing to evaluate. Megathreads were designed to kill topics on Reddit (unless it was a MAJOR, developing, current event) and they do the same here. You’re the first person to comment at all in this thread in over a month.
Most of the Musk and Twitter posts don’t even have many comments as it is anyway. And when they do it’s people saying the same thing over and over in multiple splintered comment sections.
Besides, I don’t think lemmy is that way for megathreads yet like reddit can be. Partly because the userbase is smaller and more engaged, and partly because “active” sort exists.
People are treating this platform exactly like reddit because the churn of posts is exactly the same. You participate in the first hours or you miss it entirely.
I think it’s a bit silly to have megathreads just because some users can’t scroll past posts that doesnt interest them.
The problem is there are so goddamn many, to the extent that I’m working on a userscript that lets me entire hide posts that contain keywords. Checking my frontpage using Subscribed/Active, 5 of the first 20 posts are about this “news”. And that’s a full day after it happened, yesterday was far worse
Of course there are a lot of posts about it. There are big changes happening over at Twitter right now. It will obviously settle down eventually, but it’s an ongoing, pretty significant event.
IMO the important thing is removing duplicates and pushing people to post to the most relevant communities (and for us regular users, only upvoting the post in the most relevant community). As well, Lemmy itself needs better means of combining the same post across many communities.
When I say removing duplicates, I also mean for a given event, not a literal duplicate link. We don’t need 5 posts from different media sites on the same event unless a new one is significantly different.
That’s the issue I’ve been noticing a lot. Every major news site wants to post their own opinion piece on how dumb Musk is (can’t blame em) and it feels like every single one of those will get posted to some Lemmy community.
Mega threads should be per event though. Eg, “Trump gets convicted” would be a mega thread. You wouldn’t have an “everything Trump related” mega thread.
Understandably, it has become an increasingly hostile or apatic environment over the years. If one checks questions from 10 years ago or so, one generally sees people eager to help one another.
Now they often expect you to have searched through possibly thousands of questions before you ask one, and immediately accuse you if you missed some – which is unfair, because a non-expert can often miss the connection between two questions phrased slightly differently.
On top of that, some of those questions and their answers are years old, so one wonders if their answers still apply. Often they don’t. But again it feels like you’re expected to know whether they still apply, as if you were an expert.
Of course it isn’t all like that, there are still kind and helpful people there. It’s just a statistical trend.
Possibly the site should implement an archival policy, where questions and answers are deleted or archived after a couple of years or so.
The worst is when you actually read all that questions and clearly stated how they don’t apply and that you already tried them and a mod is still closing your question as a duplicate.
No, they shouldn’t be archived. I say that because technology can change. At some point they added a new sort method which favors more recent upvotes and it helps more recent answers show above old ones with more votes. This can happen on very old posts where everyone else might not use the site anymore. We shouldn’t expect the original asker to switch the accepted answer potentially years down the line.
There’s plenty of things wrong with SE and their community but I don’t think this is one that needs to change.
Charitably, we could assume it’s just from removing Google and various carriers background apps meant to improve my experience.
Uncharitably, I have my suspicions. For the last five or so versions of Android something always seemed to be using processor cycles and battery when I wasn’t actually doing much with my phone.
But I never saw evidence of usage data exfiltration via Google apps - at least after I turned off the related optional settings.
In any case, switching to GrapheneOs was a startling and pleasant speed boost for me, whatever the real root cause.
I don’t remember what my breaking point was, but since I dropped gmail there have been 2 or 3 announcements about it that would have gotten me to that point again.
To everyone: Please remove at least as much Google products/services as you can from your life. Start with the easiest ones. Have a plan and gradually find alternatives for all other products/services of them. Remove them from your life. It will help even if you do this partly. This is for the benefit of us all.
Also, let's do the same to Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Reddit etc. Let's not let our lives depend on them. They are corporations. They are programmed to maximize profit.
I know there's currently not a lot of good alternatives out there, but if enough of us ditch these ass-companies, more and more open-source, decentralized, not-for-benefit services will pop up, and the existing ones will improve greatly. These are not for-profit projects that can be bought by corporations later and used to their benefit. They will only benefit their users.
gradually find alternatives for all other products/services of them
The difficult part is finding real alternatives that fundamentally improve the situation. Most of the alternatives out there are just shams, which have all the same problems, but are more expensive, less reliable or otherwise fundamentally flawed. Be it the Feddiverse (literally just a central server, all the federation is optional), Firefox (Google’s way to fend of monopoly lawsuits and stop real alternatives from arising, still telemetry, constantly tries to sell you something) or self hosting (pay more, get less).
Linux on a PC works well enough as Windows alternative, but as soon as it comes to anything networking/Web/cloud related things are a f’n wasteland. The part I don’t get is why we still don’t even have a reliable way to hole-punch through NAT and an alternative to DNS in the Free Software world. That has been the major pain point for at least the last 20 years and is the major stopping block for true P2P alternative software, but it’s still largely an unsolved problems (libp2p is one way to deal with it, but not in widespread use and still has numerous problems from what I understand).
Use invidious to watch YT videos “outside YT”. I think viewing from there doesn’t count towards their metrics, so you’re “freeloading” on their content. Some instances:
I use FreeTube, which is opensource and allows you to subscribe to channels without an account. The awesome thing is that you can categorize channels under different "profiles".
However, I think it won't take too long for Google to paywall YouTube APIs and do what it can to prevent web scraping (through disabling login-less use or attempts such as the one linked in this thread.). So our best option would be to ask our favorite Youtubers to move (or duplicate) their videos to other platforms such a peertube, and start using those platforms ourselves.
I used to rely almost exclusively on Google for almost anything online. Fortunately, I’m much less dependent on Google and their services now. I’m even self-hosting some of my own services nowadays!
Every single one of these apps/services used to be provided by google, so I think it’s safe to say I’ve come a long way!
Of course, things could be better. I still use Google Contacts for synchronizing my, hum, contacts. I also use YouTube quite a bit, but as a paying customer my experience with it is just fine. I also use gboard on my phone — for bilingual speakers there’s just no good alternative, imho. And, finally, I download/update most of my phone apps through Google Play.
Well, that makes it even easier to never visit Twitter again. Right now I was sometimes tempted to follow a link and see what it was about, but I’ll be happy to quit that habbit too.
Let them test, I will just use container(so they can’t track my account). And if ad block not working, I will just not watch that video. And eventually move away from YouTube if it’s annoying.
Behind the Bastards just did a two-parter on this phenomenon but with children’s “books.” Icky stuff. Great episodes, but ugh that this is even a thing.
Saw this post and this was my first thought. I am morbidly pleased that Robert called it so hard. I hope everyone becomes aware of these scumbag grifts
When I say we abide by the various open source licenses that apply to our code, I mean it.
So he's saying that Red Hat intends to abide by licenses such as the GNU GPL, and yet...
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source...
Red Hat is claiming that redistribution (which is explicitly allowed and encouraged by the GPL) is a threat to open source. They are also threatening to penalize customers who do exercise the rights granted to them by the licenses that Red Hat claims that they will "abide by".
According to Red Hat the GNU GPL is a threat to open source. And they think this won't make people angry?
Currently RedHat is publishing the sources of the components together with the build scripts, in form of source RPMs. The build scripts mostly are property of RedHat - GPL conditions are fulfilled if they provide you with the sources and changes they made to the sources if you request them. They don’t have to provide build scripts, they don’t have to provide sources unless you request them.
The phrase “free software” (or “FOSS,” “libre,” or “FLOSS”) doesn’t appear once in this article.
That irritates me. We’re talking about the GPL, and the right to look at source code is only one of the freedoms that the GPL protects. The right to redistribute is also key.
Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source…
This is beginning to sound like they're calling open source piracy.
"Noooo, you can't copy it. That's not fair."
Actually, they're beginning to sound a lot like Microsoft. It's their job to complain about FOSS but still contribute.
Hm. Perhaps Red Hat is trying to take Microsoft's place. In that case...
"Simply ignoring licenses, without acknowledging their terms and dismissing open source practices while still contributing to the FOSS community, represents a threat to closed source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to closed source..."
Yo, Microsoft. Don't worry about the Activision acquisition. You have new competition to acquire.
Sarcasm aside, this is what we should have expected once they were acquired by IBM. You know, that company which has only ever behaved in an ethical manner for the last... century? Some fun history there. People should read up about it. Especially the '30s and '40s. And then jump to the '80s and '90s where they seem to still be stuck because they're kind of pulling a "pirates of Silicon Valley" thing here.
Etsy employee #3 or so here but haven’t worked there in more than a decade. Rob is a great guy, but I don’t think he could have grown Etsy the way it has. I’m sure some people will say that’s not a bad thing but my response is you probably wouldn’t know about Etsy if he stayed on.
I think on the whole, the new CEO has done more good than bad for the company. They’ve always had criticism of non handmade stuff being sold on there. I think they could do more to that end, and if the video is right that the new CEO is allowing non handmade stuff on there, I don’t agree with him on that. I haven’t seen that myself and I do still use the site. While he’s made other decisions I don’t agree with, encouraging sellers to do free shipping was a good move. Many buyers expect that thanks to Amazon. The fee increases while for sure had an impact on sellers bottom lines, don’t compare to what Amazon Handmade (if that still exists) and ebay charge (not to get into most other marketplaces like the app stores that charge 30%). The current CEO in my opinion understands Etsy way more than the other two they had after Rob was out.
Also in terms of Fred Wilson, she should have done a little more homework on him. He was one of the original investors. He understands Etsy. He’s also entitled to some return for making a very risky investment on 4 kids (they were like 20 when they started it). I haven’t spoken to Fred in some time so maybe he’s changed, but I doubt it.
Anyway, I don’t mean to be so negative about the video, but I also don’t think Etsy has lost its way as much as the video implies. Granted I am not a seller, just a user at this point.
Great fucking article. Nice look into the history of proprietary software. This part stuck out to me:
But there’s one thing my own experience with XMPP and OOXML taught me: if Meta joins the Fediverse, Meta will be the only one winning. In fact, reactions show that they are already winning: the Fediverse is split between blocking Meta or not. If that happens, this would mean a fragmented, frustrating two-tier fediverse with little appeal for newcomers.
We need to convince instance owners not to federate with Meta. History tends to repeat itself and I'd rather not see this nice little corner of the internet die.
Discord. God I hated how I was one of my friends that got everyone to switch, and now I'm the first one out. I don't think they have added a feature that hasn't been an annoyance for a while, and after a year of no mobile notifications working and their staff being incompetent (especially if you are a free user) I'm just over it.
Everyone worshipping it is kind of a turn off too. It's a service y'all, I've had everything from AIM to Slack and I'm sure there will be a million others. Worshipping a corp is gross.
A question I was asked interviewing for my only marketing position: "What's a brand you admire?" I would have turned right the fuck around were I not supporting stepkids and looking at a 50% raise.
I don't understand the ability to have an emotional connection to a corporation.
I looked at my clothes and said Eddie Bauer and then came up with a wildly embellished tale of how I grew up with their sleeping bags in my closet, and now they're the only jacket I'll buy because they make quality products. I don't know ... I did well enough through the blind rage to get the job.
Turned out my new boss' background was in journalism, so what I thought was a liability was actually an asset. The job wasn't terrible. I hated coming up with flowery descriptions of pedestrian English muffins and exhausted any and all citrus and citrus-adjacent puns known to man. And then we lost the contract less than a year later.
I found out about that the day I got back from hauling a truck from New Mexico to get my stuff out of storage.
Omg I would have absolutely no script for that. They would get the blankest expression and something snarky like "it was impressive how Nestle was able to get market share on water and baby formula in the African market" but knowing my luck I'd probably get unironicly hired with that line when I was trying to be sarcastic. 😭
Turns out, pretending the entire Internet is equal to 5 apps from mega corps (largely fueled by pretend money) wasn't the best long term play.
Who would have thought?
This has become the prevailing opinion for most of the tech-savvy folks that I know, but it's gaining traction with a wider audience.
Having steeped in corpo-climate for two decades, it's naïve to say that the C-Suite has ever maintained a realistic perspective on the business that they run; but it is baffling to me that corporations like Reddit have completely lost sight of their actual product - a clearinghouse of perpetually donated content - and seem to believe that their platform cannot be easily duplicated, or made obsolete nearly overnight.
It's exciting to be an insider as new paradigms like the fediverse become more widely known. If the last week is any indicator, there is a non-zero chance that ultra-capitalist hubris will be punished.
The fact of the matter is that I don't care if something is a monopoly as long as it's a monopoly for it's quality. Reddit used to be that, a hub for damn near all of my interests, and I used Boost to make the experience great.
But reddit is getting worse with this change, so I'm here now.
Yeah. There's nothing inherently wrong with monopolies. The problem with them is just the behaviour that they tend to slip into, the squeezing of their customers for maximum revenue while not bothering to invest any of it in improving their services. There are some "natural" monopolies that manage to do okay, though usually as a result of government regulation.
Some monopolies are so solidly "okay" that we don't even notice that they're monopolies. The Internet, for example. What alternatives to it exist? None, really. But since it's a decentralized protocol rather than some sort of Internet Incorporated with shareholders and quarterly profits to maximize and whatnot it's managed to stay good and the fact that it's a monopoly is actually beneficial in many ways.
As for monopolies.. they are inherently bad because of the lack of motivation to innovate, or improve. You have no other option, and no ability to create one.
I don't want to stray too far from the topic, but I feel like I need to address the mention of the internet as a monopoly.
If you're talking about TCP/IP, it's just a protocol that the most widely used - but others exist, and outperform it in their niches.
The internet is a collection of technologies that are owned and operated by thousands of companies. All have competition in their arenas.
ISPs have constructed local fiefdoms - but there are nearly always multiple services that one can use. Backbone companies own the major routes, but you can almost always go around one if it misbehaves. Myriad email providers, websites, etc exist to offer choices, as well.
Categorically, the internet can not be or become a monopoly. It's core purpose is to provide as many avenues as possible to connect machines to AVOID monopolization.
Interestingly, the downfall of Communism was precisely that political communism forms a government-managed monopoly, exhibiting exactly the characteristics you outline. People who rail against communism are really railing against monopoly and the stagnancy and corruption it creates. And yet somehow some of these people are all-in on libertarianism.
I don't care if something is a monopoly as long as it's a monopoly for it's quality.
But the problem with social media is that monopolies in this area aren't about quality, they are about user base size. Which makes them impossible to dethrone once they hit critical mass. Reddit and other social media sites have a massive amount of content with people willing to figure out a way to sift through the garbage.
It will be interesting to see how bad things get once reddit moderators can no longer use bots and other tools in order to help them sift through content due to the API changes.
Whether their hubris is punished or not is of no consequence to me. In some ways the ultimate karma is waking up every day to find out we are ourselves. I'm more concerned with building cool stuff for us to use than with anyone getting what I think is their comeuppance.
seem to believe that their platform cannot be easily duplicated, or made obsolete nearly overnight.
As much as it pains me to say it, I think they are right. The value in social media is in the size of their user base and I don't see a mass migration to another platform really happening unless reddit itself went completely offline for several weeks. People do not like change and Reddit will continue to be just "good enough" despite the API changes. If anything their decline will be extremely gradual since moderators will have lost most of their third party moderation tools. And niche communities can probably keep ticking along without them for the most part.
I don't mind if most of reddit users stay there, we just need to attract the valuable ones. Back on reddit I wouldn't have welcomed the entirety of Twitter for example, too many bad contributors.
Contributors also want their content to be seen and communities with 500 subscribers aren't all that attractive. So I don't expect anyone to abandon the mainstream options. The most we can hope for (and all I'm really asking for) is cross-site posting and participation.
Go ahead and visit Reddit, just be sure to post/comment on on the fediverse as well.
Previous sites died because there was a continual stream of new VC funded initiatives still in the 'seduce new users' phase of low-zero monetization for people to jump to. That tap of new, user-friendly sites has been shut off by the recent interest rate hikes curtailing VC funding.
Worried we'll eventually settle into semi-collusive model we see Cell Carriers and ISPs have. If all 5 major social media sites stay in lock step of monetization, who are you going to go to? And without VC money, what new site will be able to truly scale?
What I really don't understand is, how all these C suites are apparently a) completely unaware of theor cost structure and b) never seem to understand what they're actually selling.
Reddit is nothing special, do you really need a bunch of Valley bros earning 200k or more?
Do you really need all those stupid extras like NFTs? Reddit launched their NFTs way too late, when even the pretty big idiots started to doubt the concept.
The older I get, the less I understand the whole world of business administration. Nothing makes sense, it feels like 90% of the CEO are working really hard to ram their companies hard enough into the ground to hit magma.
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