this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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I'm absolutely on the side of the artists here, but I do wonder if the AI company's defense will be that the software is no different than another artists drawing inspiration from earlier works. Every art student studies the masters and has assignments to produce works in their style, and current artists have absolutely been influenced by contemporaries. No one evolves their creative style in a vacuum: that's impossible, short of living on a deserted island.
But this is a fundamentally different problem since the AI can produce millions of tailored works quickly, replacing vast numbers of creatives, threatening their livelihood. That's not as much of a concern with one-off artists creating things similar to something they saw earlier (although the individual concept may be the same).
This is going to be a really interesting legal case.
What AI does lands more on "tracing" side than "referencing" side though
That's not true at all. AI uses latent noise as a medium to draw images, there's nothing left of the original image in its dataset.
Legitimately, it's like these people have no understanding of the actual technology.
The other response you've received talked about a very small subset of overtrained images, which makes sense on why they can be replicated. anyone who trained on creating a specific image a million times would be able to replicate that image easily. Even then it takes a lot of luck and effort to accurately replicate the exact image to any degree.
If you are not specifically trying to recreate an overly popular image, then there is practically no element left from any particular image that you can consider represented to any thieving extent.
Considering that it is effectively acting on a pareidolia interpretation of static represented by countless possible prompt and setting combinations, the copyright issue should only really be relevant when people use the tool specifically trying to recreate a particular work. Literally any other paint program would be more effective for that style of theft.
As an artist, in regards to the pareidolia aspect, I do virtually the same thing when illustrating an image. Disney/Warner can already afford as many peasants to learn or recreate whatever styles they want. I can't afford a team of lackeys. I can however use an open source diffusion model to create entirely unique and personally tailored and designed illustrations that suit my artistic objective.
Existing concept of copywrite does not work for this scenario, and if people should argue anything, it should be that wealthy businesses specifically have much more restriction and responsibility in use of tools and in excessive control of the artistic market.
I'm personally excited for a future where peasant artists can also create complex beautiful works using these tools.
Think about ending up with holodeck level of personal creative freedom, and being able to create things in that experience the you can share with others.
The current system already robs and suppresses actual art.
Just like every other aggressive reaction to AI, the focus is misdirected and not actually helpful for anyone in any way.