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Valve appear to be not willing to publish games with AI generated content
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this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Let the market decide. If Valve doesn’t provide them a sales avenue, another party will. Many don’t comprehend yet is that AI generation is entirely user-driven. Without hundreds of refinements, you would only receive the most generic output. As for copyright infringement, what exactly is being violated here? When we use material X or Y to generate an original output Z, how does that infringe upon any rights? It doesn’t. Rather, it highlights that people need to adapt and evolve. The sooner this realization sets in, the better. The calligraphers and and book artisans went through this ordeal so will they.
unfettered capitalism has not, and will not work except for those already at the top.
So instead we have Valve deciding what games are permitted to go to market and which aren't? That seems like something that benefits those already at the top to me.
Valve deciding which games they host on their own platform? Isn't that what they're supposed to do?
They have such a grip on the market that their decisions fall closer to the "at all" side of things. There are other places to publish, sure, but Steam is king.
Who is the "unfettered capitalist" in this case? The artist whose artwork was used as training data without permission? Valve? It's a nice soundbite, but I'm not sure how you are applying it in this case.
Are you suggesting that an artist retains the right to prevent their art from being used to train someone on art? No artist has ever created anything in a vacuum. This whole line of reasoning is ridiculous, imo.
No, that's fine - just as we understand it.
Your stance against unfettered capitalism is that - if I make some art and aomeone puts it online, some multibillion dollar games house should be able to grab it and use it in their game for free.
I can feel the capitalists quaking in their boots already. I'm sure the Reddit admins agree with you.
Is that what you think we're talking about, directly copying artwork? There's already laws for that, regardless of who or what creates the art. What is concerning people is that AI can be trained on other people's art and then told to create new art. It's not a copy, it's a new thing, but it used old stuff to come up with the new stuff. (humans do this too)
I don't even know what this means.
Edit: I don't know if this needs to be said but I am not the original person you replied to.
What I was trying to talk about is what the commenter meant by "unfettered capitalism has not, and will not work except for those already at the top." - it wasn't clear how it related to this story - but we seem to have gone off at tangent.
Yes. It is entirely dependent on the old stuff. We have laws for that too, in terms of licences for derivative works.
My guess is that they saw the phrase "let the market decide" and took that to mean "unfettered capitalism". But yeah, sorry about the tanget I've dragged you into, haha.
but they're not derivative works, at least not in how I understand the term. They're entirely new works.
Not someone, AI. It takes years to train a person, it takes years to train a person, much less to train AI, and if that content is sold it's more akin to something selling tracings of someone else's work.
This isn't "being influenced" by someone else's work here, it's directly used to generate new content.
I am old enough to remember when "X, but on the internet" was considered a new and novel thing-- turns out that it isn't. X, but with AI is no different than X. Training a person and training an AI do not need different laws.
Most people, and so what? You think an artist gets different rights depending on how fast someone can learn their style?
Only if it's an exact copy, which would already be covered by current laws. This would be more like when people create art in the style of other art. Like, for a made up example, if someone drew the stranger things characters in the style of the Simpsons.
What does this even mean?
Edit: Sorry about all those typos!
Sounds like you might not know enough about how AI generation actually works to have this conversation, especially if your response to the nuances around the difference between human generated and AI generated content is just "so what?"
I can't help but notice you didn't answer the question. My question was more like "How is this different than when a human learns to make art"? It's to directly generate new content, is it not?
No, AI has no creativity. Everything generated by AI is a probabilistic interpretation of inputs and training data. It's purely mathematics, there's no emotion or actual thought put into it. But frankly, whether or not AI generated content is "new content" is a philosophical debate that doesn't matter while AI has the potential to displace more jobs and create more wealth inequality than ever before, and I don't necessarily mean in the "robots took my job" sense. Generative AI will push productivity to all time highs by an order of magnitude and wages will not have increased by the same, enabling a faster rate of wealth transfer to corporations and the top percentage of shareholders.
I didn't answer your question because it was vague and shows a lack of understanding of both how AI generates content and the future problems AI presents as long as it's controlled by the wealthy and corporations.
It clearly does matter if valve is rejecting games because their art was generated by an AI.
You think generative AI will be more advantageous to big corporations, versus smaller operations? How does that track?
You have no idea what my skillset is, and I am passingly familiar with the concepts of machine learning. But my question, as I already noted, was more like "why do you think this phrase doesn't also apply to humans?". Which I already clarified, and you still haven't answered.
If a person is in the art/media-for-hire business, they're going to be in a rough spot in the very near future because a computer program will likely replace them. Just like self-driving cars-- the technology doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than humans. For cars, we're a little ways away from that; for art, that time is arguably right now.
Yeah, so if you've actually read my comments instead of skimming for bits you can pick out and pedantically question you'd know that my point is that this is the problem. It's not like these people can say "oh my life as an artist is over, I'll just walk down the street and get another job that pays a living wage". Without accessible alternative wealth sources, this has the potential to severely displace skilled individuals, and not just artists.
If you don't see that as a problem then this conversation isn't worth having and your views are unimportant.
My views only matter if they align with yours? This is a pretty ignorant way to go through life.
In any event, I guess it depends on what you mean by:
If, by "displace" you mean they can't get paid to do something they used to get paid to do, then no, I do not see that as a problem. That's just how technological progress works.
However, if by displace you mean "they end up destitute on the streets", then yes, I do see that as a problem. A problem that should be solved by something that disconnects the need to work with the ability to live comfortably-- something like a UBI, not by trying to hold back technological progress to artificially keep those jobs in demand.
So, does my view matter?
No, your views only matter if you can show a basic level of empathy and respect for your fellow humans.
Your line of thinking is just littered with inconsistencies. You recognize that people will be displaced, but that's "just how technology works" so you don't want to impede technological progress with restriction and regulation, however you also recognize that UBI should exist to assist those who are displaced, and even though it doesn't exist, and we're nowhere near a social structure where UBI could exist, you don't think artists should be paid for their work being used to train AI because of some edgy philosophical false equivalence that training an AI is just like teaching someone to paint.
You've shown no empathy to your fellow humans. You getting games with AI generated content is more important than people's livelihoods and you can hand-wave the guilt away by telling yourself that someone else should be working on universal basic income.
So to answer your question, no, your view doesn't matter.
How bad do you feel when your phone calls are routed without a human making the connections? How terrible do you feel when your refrigerator makes ice for you for essentially free, instead of having to pay someone to get it to your door?
This is not a new thing, and it's draconian to suggest that technology be held back to keep people artificially in demand.
Your silly stance on this reminds me of an equally silly quote from the late great Douglas Adams:
You're comparing the current exponential growth of technology to a time where a family could afford to live off a single minimum wage income and I'm the one with the silly stance? Lol
The principle doesn't change. Yes, your stance is silly. So silly that I'm guessing you're financially impacted in some way.
The entire situation has changed. The factors that we are discussing and directly impact the ethics of generative AI, i.e. wealth inequality, have literally changed. You don't live in a vacuum.
And now my argument is so silly that I must be "financially impacted"? There it is, can't care about something if it doesn't affect me personally right? My income has not been affected, I'm actually a data engineer who works directly with generative AI, so I actually understand how it works.
The situation is exactly the same. Technology is rendering some human labor unnecessary. Like it has many times before. Like it will many times in the future. You can gnash your teeth and beat your breast about how gosh darn unfair it is, but it won't change it, or stop it, or even slow it down.
And yes, when people take irrational, emotional stances against change, it's almost always because they have financial skin in the game.
You noticed that, did you? If I ask a small child to draw a picture of a sunflower - and they have never seen a picture of a sunflower, but they are sitting in a field of sunflowers - is it your contention that they would be unable, because they've never seen a picture?
Because I think the small child will manage it. And the AI with no training data won't.
But yes, to answer your broader question, I think it is reasonable to have legislation around automated or large scale processes that don't pertain to something an individual can do. Which is why there is regulation around robocalling, sending spam and photocopying and selling books.
I am not sure why you're starting another thread with me, but I don't think the distinction you're making between a live stream of a flower and a picture of a flower is sensical.
I don't want to get too bogged down in the details of your analogy. (It's really bad.) but in either case, you have to explain what a flower is when you request a picture of a flower. If you ask a child that doesn't speak English to draw you a picture of a "sunflower", they won't be able to do so even if they're sitting in a field of sunflowers.
You make a good point regarding the legislation of the output of an automated process, but we were talking about the input; whether the AI needed to be trained only one works with permission. This is certainly not how the law works now, and I argue that it makes no sense to implement such a law.
Intellectual property of the original art creators? OP says "unlicensed", if you take any piece of art someone else created, and you use it to make your own stuff without their authorization, you're committing a crime.
And risk being sued? Valve is right in being wary of this, especially since there's no real regulation about it.
Let's have regulations first, then we can tell people to adapt.
This is not accurate. No art is made in a vacuum; all artists are influenced by other art. That's even before we bring in fair use, which may or may not apply depending on specifics.
Copyright does not restrict who/what can be trained on copyrighted works. That's just not a real thing. It's becoming an issue because AI is rapidly becoming "good enough" that human artists are worried they will be replaced, so they're scrambling to find a way to hold back technology. This happens every time a new technology is used in reference to media. Every. Single. Time. It never works.
Exactly, that's the problem.
The problem is plagiarism, easy to control when humans do it, not so much when AIs are involved, that's why we need regulations.
What do you think counts as plagiarism, in this context? If I draw a picture of the stranger things characters in the style of the simpsons, have I plagiarized anything?
Valve is part of the market, that they can decide what can be and can't be on their plattform is part of the market deciding.