Comment by CamperBob2

Comment by CamperBob2 3 days ago

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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.

Carrok 3 days ago

> 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.

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  • derektank 3 days ago

    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.

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    • runarberg 3 days ago

      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.

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    • smackeyacky 3 days ago

      This seems pretty easy to test - can we just change the prompt to specifically exclude Indiana Jones?

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  • shadowgovt 3 days ago

    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.

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chimpanzee 3 days ago

> 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.

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  • IgorPartola 3 days ago

    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.

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    • Electricniko 3 days ago

      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.

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    • chimpanzee 3 days ago

      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.

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      • IAmBroom 3 days ago

        "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.

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    • cycomanic 3 days ago

      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.

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      • IgorPartola 3 days ago

        This would be more like if you reimplemented Windows from scratch if you have violated copyright law.

        Let’s put it another way: if you decide you want to recreate Indiana Jones shot for shot, and you hire actors and a director etc. which individuals are actually responsible for the copyright collation? Do caterers count too? Or is it the person who actually is producing the movie?

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shermantanktop 3 days ago

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.

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  • eagleislandsong 3 days ago

    > One piece of chewing gum on the ground will get you a caning in Singapore

    This is not true, by the way. You will be fined for littering; or, if you are a repeat offender, be sentenced to cleaning public areas while wearing an offensively bright-coloured uniform (so that everyone can see that you are being punished). Source: https://www.nea.gov.sg/media/news/news/index/nea-increases-v...

    But no, you won't be caned for littering. Caning is reserved for more serious offences like vandalism, or much worse crimes like rape and murder.

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VWWHFSfQ 3 days ago

> 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.

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  • CamperBob2 3 days ago

    It's not legal or illegal. That hasn't been decided yet. Nothing like this has ever existed before, and it will take some time for the law to deal with it.

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4ndrewl 3 days ago

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?

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  • alabastervlog 3 days ago

    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.

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  • CamperBob2 3 days ago

    It doesn't matter. Sue whoever uses it commercially.

    If you insist on making it about the model, you will wreck something wonderful.

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axus 3 days ago

Don't worry, the lawsuit will name a corporation that made it, not the AI tool.

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timewizard 3 days ago

>> "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?

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  • fxtentacle 3 days ago

    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.)

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mppm 3 days ago

> 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 (¬‿¬)

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  • CamperBob2 3 days ago

    Torrent sites deliver the movie in its original form. AI models maintain abstract descriptions of the content as individually-unrecognizable high-dimensional representations in latent space.

    Over the years we've spent a lot of time on this and similar sites questioning the sanity of a legal system that makes math illegal, and, well, that's all this is. Math.

    To the extent the model reproduces images from Indiana Jones and the others, it is because these multibillion-dollar franchises are omnipresent cultural icons. The copyright holder has worked very hard to make that happen, and they have been more than adequately repaid for their contribution to our shared culture. It's insane to go after an AI model for simply being as aware of that imagery and as capable of reproducing it as a human artist would be.

    If the model gives you infringing material as a prompt response, it's your responsibility not to use that material commercially, just as if you had tasked a human artist with the same vague requirement and received a plagiarized work product in return.

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  • whycome 3 days ago

    > if they did, it would be considered clear IP infringement if the result were used commercially.

    Isn’t that exactly what OP is saying?

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khelavastr 3 days ago

Right! AI developers and directors should be culpable for infringement as part of their duties to larger organizations.

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  • CamperBob2 3 days ago

    Is that really a good-faith rejoinder to the point I'm making?

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