Comment by jauntywundrkind

Comment by jauntywundrkind 6 days ago

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Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine.

One thing I would say, it's interesting to consider what would make this not so obviously bad.

Like, we could ask AI to assess the physical attributes of the characters it generated. Then ask it to permute some of those attributes. Generate some random tweaks: ok but brawy, short, and a different descent. Do similarly on some clothing colors. Change the game. Hit the "random character" button on the physical attributes a couple times.

There was an equally shatteringly-awful less-IP-theft (and as someone who thinks IP is itself incredibly ripping off humanity & should be vastly scoped down, it's important to me to not rest my arguments on IP violations).... An equally shattering recent incident for me. Having trouble finding it, don't remember the right keywords, but an article about how AI has a "default guy" type that it uses everywhere, a super generic personage, that it would use repeatedly. It was so distasteful.

The nature of 'AI as compression', as giving you the most median answer is horrific. Maybe maybe maybe we can escape some of this trap by iterating to different permutations, by injecting deliberate exploration of the state spaces. But I still fear AI, worry horribly when anyone relies on it for decision making, as it is anti-intelligent, uncreative in extreme, requiring human ingenuity to budge off its rock of oppressive hypernormality that it regurgitates.

areoform 6 days ago

Theft from whom and how?

Are you telling me that our culture should be deprived of the idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset?

Indiana Jones is 44 years old. When are we allowed to remix, recreate and expand on this like humanity has done since humans first started sitting down next to a fire and telling stories?

edit: this reminds of this iconic scene from Dr. Strangelove, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9B7owHxMQ

    Mandrake: Colonel... that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
   
   Guano: That's private property.
   
   Mandrake: Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit!

   Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you?
   
   Mandrake: What?
   
   Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
I guess we all have to answer to the Walt Disney company.
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  • calmbell 6 days ago

    "idea of Indiana Jones and the feelings that character inspires in all of us forever just because a corporation owns the asset" is very different from the almost exact image of Indiana Jones.

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    • GolfPopper 5 days ago

      And a reason people are getting ticked at the AI companies is the hypocrisy. They're near-universally arguing that it's okay for them to treat copyright in a way that it is illegal for us to, apparently on the basis of, "we've got a billions in investment capital, and applying the law equally will make it hard for us to get a return on that investment".

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      • satvikpendem 5 days ago

        Hence why people should support open source AI, as otherwise, ironically, even more regulation will mean that only the big tech companies will be able to afford the licenses to content to train their AI.

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    • chongli 6 days ago

      Exactly. The idea of Indiana Jones, the adventurer archaeologist more at home throwing a punch than reading a book, is neither owned by nor unique to Lucasfilm (Disney). There is a ton of media out there featuring this trope character [1]. Yes, the trope is overwhelmingly associated with the image of Harrison Ford in a fedora within the public consciousness, but copyright does not apply to abstract ideas such as tropes.

      Some great video games to feature adventurer archaeologists:

      * NetHack (One of the best roles in the game)

      * Tomb Raider series (Lara Croft is a bona fide archaeologist)

      * Uncharted series (Nathan Drake is more of a treasure hunter but he becomes an archaeologist when he retires from adventuring)

      * Professor Layton series

      * La-Mulana series (very obviously inspired by Indiana Jones, but not derivative)

      * Spelunky (inspired by La-Mulana)

      [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdventurerArchae...

      Reply View 1 reply
      • cess11 5 days ago

        As a connoisseur of bad as well as old movies I'd like to add The Librarian movies to this list, and The Mummy, where the first from 1932 stars the inimitable Boris Karloff as the lovesick undead.

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  • _ph_ 6 days ago

    Not forever. But 75 years after the death of the creator by current international agreement. I definitely think that the exact terms of copyright should be revisited - a lot of usages should be allowed like 50 years of publishing a piece of work. But that needs to be agreed upon and converted into law. Till then, one should expect everyone, especially large corporations, to stick to the law.

    Reply View 3 replies
    • saulpw 6 days ago

      When Mickey Mouse was created (1928), copyright was 28 years that could be reupped once for an additional 28 years. So according to those terms, Mickey Mouse would have ascended to the public domain in 1984.

      IMO any change to copyright law should not be applied retroactively. Make copyright law to be what is best for society and creators as a whole, not for lobbyists representing already copyrighted material.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • debugnik 5 days ago

        > IMO any change to copyright law should not be applied retroactively.

        Careful, if we were to shorten copyright, not doing so retroactively would give an economic advantage to franchises already published over those that would get published later. As if the current big studios needed any further advantages over newcomers.

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        • saulpw 5 days ago

          It seems like it would make it more palatable to the existing franchises if their precious existing copyrights were not shortened. ("We paid billions of dollars under the assumption that we'd be able to milk this IP for 35 more years!") But anyway copyrights aren't going to get shorter in the near future.

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  • jauntywundrkind 6 days ago

    Its kind of funny that everyone is harping this way or that way about IP.

    This is a kind of strange comment for me to read. Because imby tone it sounds like a rebuttal? But by content, it agrees with a core thing I said about myself:

    > and as someone who thinks IP is itself incredibly ripping off humanity & should be vastly scoped down, it's important to me to not rest my arguments on IP violations

    What's just such a nightmare to me is that the tech is so normative. So horribly normative. This article shows that AI again and again reproduced only the known, only the already imagined. Its not that it's IP theft that rubs me so so wrong, it's that it's entirely bankrupt & uncreative, so very stuck. All this power! And yet!

    You speak at what disgusts me yourself!

    > When are we allowed to remix, recreate and expand on this like humanity has done

    The machine could be imagining all kinds of Indianas. Of all different remixed recreated expanded forms. But this pictures are 100% anything but that. They're Indiana frozen in Carbonite. They are the driest saddest prison of the past. And call into question the validity of AI entirely, show something greviously missing.

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    • sothatsit 6 days ago

      > All this power! And yet!

      You are completely ignoring the fact that you can provide so much more information to the LLMs to get what you want. If you truly want novel images, ChatGPT can absolutely provide them, but you have to provide a better starting point than "An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip".

      If you just provide a teensy bit more information, the results dramatically change. Try out "An image of an Indian female archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip". Or give it an input image to work with.

      From just adding a couple words, ChatGPT produces an entirely new character. It's so easy to get it to produce novel images. It is so easy in fact, that it makes a lot of posts like this one feel like strawmen, intentionally providing so little information to the LLMs that the generic character is the only obvious output that you would expect.

      Now, would it be better if it didn't default to these common movie tropes? Sure. But the fact that it can follow these tropes doesn't mean that it cannot also be used to produce entirely new images filled with your imagination as well. You just have to actually ask it for that.

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    • dcow 6 days ago

      It strikes me that perhaps the prompts are not expansive or expressive enough. If you look at some of the prompts our new wave of prompt artists use to generate images in communities like midjourney, a single sentence doesn't cut it.

      If AI is just compression, then decompressing a generic pop-culture-seeking prompt will yield a generic uninspired image.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • sejje 5 days ago

        Exactly. The AI understands that reference. It gives you what you asked for, it doesn't try to divine that it's a weird test for IP violations. If it made up a different image, that would be exactly the thing we're mad about with "hallucinations" when we want serious, accurate responses.

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    • lupusreal 5 days ago

      I have given detailed descriptions of my own novel ideas to these image generators and they have faithfully implemented my ideas. I don't need the bot to be creative, I can do that myself. The bot is a paint brush. Give it to somebody who isn't creative and you won't get anything creative out of it. That isn't the tool's fault, it's merely an inadequacy of the user.

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  • fullstop 5 days ago

    I mean, at least shouldn't we wait until Harrison Ford has passed?

    Reply View 0 replies
littlecranky67 6 days ago

But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones, he creates a perfect copy and I hang it on my fridge. Where did I (or the artist) violate any copyright (or other) laws? It is the artist that is replaced by the AI, not the copyrighted IP.

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  • rdtsc 6 days ago

    > But I can hire an artist and ask him to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones,

    Sure, assuming the artist has the proper license and franchise rights to make and distribute copies. You can go buy a picture of Indy today that may not be printed by Walt Disney Studios but by some other outfit or artists.

    Or, you mean if the artist doesn't have a license to produce and distribute Indiana Jones images? Well they'll be in trouble legally. They are making "copies" of things they don't own and profiting from it.

    Another question is whether that's practically enforceable.

    > Where did I (or the artist) violate any copyright (or other) laws?

    When they took payment and profited from making unauthorized copies.

    > It is the artist that is replaced by the AI, not the copyrighted IP.

    Exactly, that's why LLMs and the companies which create them are called "theft machines" -- they are reproducing copyrighted material. Especially the ones charging for "tokens". You pay them, they make money and produce unauthorized copies. Show that picture of Indy to a jury and I think it's a good chance of convincing them.

    I am not saying this is good or bad, I just see this having a legal "bite" so to speak, at least in my pedestrian view of copyright law.

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    • saaaaaam 5 days ago

      The likeness of Indiana Jones is not protected in any way - as far as I know - that would stop a human artist creating, rendering and selling a work of art representing their creative vision of Indiana Jones. And even more so in a private context. Even if the likeness is protected (“archaeologist, adventurer, whip, hat”) then this protection would only be in certain jurisdictions and that protection is more akin to a design right where the likeness would need to be articulated AND registered. Many jurisdictions don’t require copyright registration and do not offer that sort of technical likeness registration.

      If they traced a photo they might be violating the copyright of the photographer.

      But if they are drawing an archaeologist adventurer with a whip and a hat based on their consumption and memory of Indiana Jones imagery there is very little anyone could do.

      If that image was then printed on an industrial scale or printed onto t-shirt there is a (albeit somewhat theoretical) chance that in some jurisdictions sale of those products may be able to be restricted based on rights to the likeness. But that would be a stretch.

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      • rdtsc 5 days ago

        The likeness of Indiana Jones, as a character, is owned by Disney

        If they show that image to a jury they’ll have no issues convincing them the LLM is infringing.

        Moreover if the LLM creators are charging for it, per token or whatever, they are profiting from it.

        Yes are there jurisdictions were this won’t work and but I think in US Disney lawyers could make viable argument.

        Reply View 4 replies
    • planb 5 days ago

      > Or, you mean if the artist doesn't have a license to produce and distribute Indiana Jones images? Well they'll be in trouble legally. They are making "copies" of things they don't own and profiting from it.

      Ok, my sister can draw, and she gifts me an image of my favorite Marvel hero she painted to hang on my wall. Should that be illegal?

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      • rdtsc 5 days ago

        The question is not whether it should but whether it is.

        The likeness of the character is owned by Marvel. Does it mean there aren’t vendors selling unlicensed versions? No. I am sure there are. But just because not everyone is being sued doesn’t mean it’s suddenly legal.

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    • alphan0n 6 days ago

      That’s not how copyright law works.

      Commissioned work is owned by the commissioner unless otherwise agreed upon by contract.

      So long as the work is not distributed, exhibited, performed, etc, as in the example of keeping the artwork on their refrigerator in their home, then no infringement has taken place.

      Reply View 5 replies
      • Velorivox 6 days ago

        As far as I know, if you're speaking of the United States, the copyright of commissioned work is owned by the creator, unless otherwise agreed upon specifically through a "work made for hire" (i.e. copyright transfer) clause in the contract.

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      • mrkstu 3 days ago

        Yep, my parents commissioned an oil back in the 70s that was a near duplicate of another artist's painting- they couldn't have afforded the original artist, so he has not lost anything and the painter did the painting as a hired work, so legally I doubt any law was broken.

        Hangs on my wall now- I know I can never sell until the copyright on the original runs out (which it most likely won't in my lifetime) it but it is a very well done painting and a family legacy piece I am glad exists.

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      • rdtsc 6 days ago

        > Commissioned work is owned by the commissioner unless otherwise agreed upon by contract.

        I think the LLM example is closer to the LLM and its creator being like a vendor selling pictures of Indiana Jones on the street corner than hiring someone and performing work for hire. Yes, if it was a human artist commissioned to create an art piece, then yeah, the commissioner owns it.

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      • Terr_ 5 days ago

        > [If commissioning some work and] keeping the artwork on their refrigerator in their home, then no infringement has taken place.

        I'd like to push back on this: Is that legally true, or is it infringement which just happens to be so minor and under-the-radar that nobody gets in trouble?

        Suppose there's a printer in my room churning out hundreds of pages of words matching that of someone's copyrighted new book, without permission.

        That sure seems like infringement is happening, regardless of whether my next step is to: (A) sell it, (B) sell many of it, (C) give it away, (D) place it into my personal library of other home-printed books, or (E) hand it to someone else who paid me in advance to produce it for them under contract.

        If (A) is infringement, why wouldn't (E) also be?

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      • Retric 5 days ago

        Ownership of artwork is independent of copyright infringement. Derivative works qualify for their own independent copyright, you just can’t sell them until after the original copyright expires.

        Just because I own my car doesn’t mean I can break the speed limit, these are orthogonal concepts legally.

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  • Velorivox 6 days ago

    That does infringe copyright...you're just unlikely to get in trouble for it. You might get a cease and desist if the owner of the IP finds out and can spare a moment for you.

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    • RajT88 6 days ago

      Totally agree. LLM's are just automating that infringement process.

      If you make money off it, it's no longer fair use; it's infringement. Even if you don't make money off it, it's not automatically fair use.

      My own favorite crazy story about copyright violations:

      Metallica sued Green Jello for parodying Enter Sandman (including a lyric where it says "It's not Metallica"):

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Harley_House_(of_Love...

      They lost that case. The kicker? Metallica were guest vocalists on that album.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • the_af 6 days ago

        > LLM's are just automating that infringement process.

        That's my take as well.

        Gen AI is turning small potatos, "artisanal" infringement into a potentially large scale automated process.

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    • ryandrake 6 days ago

      This doesn't make any sense to me. No media is getting copied, unless the drawing is exactly the same as an existing drawing. Shouldn't "copy"right apply to specific, tangible artistic works? I guess I don't understand how the fantasy of "IP" works.

      What if the drawing is of Indiana Jones but he's carrying a bow and arrow instead of a whip? Is it infringement?

      What if it's a really bad drawing of Indiana Jones, so bad that you can't really tell that it's the character? Is that infringement?

      What if the drawing is of Indiana Jones, but in the style of abstract expressionism, so doesn't even contain a human shape? Is it infringement?

      What if it's a good drawing that looks very much like Indiana Jones, but it's not! The person's name is actually Iowa Jim. Is that infringement?

      What if it's just an image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip, but otherwise doesn't look anything like Indiana Jones? Is it infringement?

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  • piyh 6 days ago

    Presumably the artist is a human who directly or indirectly paid money to view a film containing an archaeologist with the whip.

    I don't think this is about reproduction as much as how you got enough data for that reproduction. The riaa sent people to jail and ruined their lives for pirating. Now these companies are doing it and being valued for hundreds of billions of dollars.

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    • RataNova 5 days ago

      You're right, it's not just about reproduction, it's about how the data was collected

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    • the_af 6 days ago

      Plus the scale of it all.

      A human friend can get tired and there's so many request he/she can fulfill and at a max rate. Even a team of human artists have a relatively low limit.

      But Gen AI has very high limits and speeds, and it never gets tired. It seems unfair to me.

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  • layer8 6 days ago

    The artist is violating copyright by selling you that picture. You can’t just start creating and distributing pictures of a copyrighted property. You need a license from the copyright holder.

    You also can’t sell a machine that outputs such material. And that’s how the story with GenAI becomes problematic. If GenAI can create the next Indiana Jones or Star Wars sequel for you (possibly a better one than Disney makes, it has become a low bar of sorts), I think the issue becomes obvious.

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  • the_af 6 days ago

    I think framing this as "IP theft" is a mistake.

    Nobody can prevent you from drawing a photo realistic picture of Indy, or taking a photo of him from the internet and hanging it on your fridge. Or asking a friend to do it for you. And let's be honest -- because nobody is looking -- said friend could even charge you a modest sum to draw a realistic picture of Indy for you to hang on your fridge; yes, it's "illegal" but nobody is looking for this kind of small potatos infringement.

    I think the problem is when people start making a business out of this. A game developer could think "hey, I can make a game with artwork that looks just like Ghibli!", where before he wouldn't have anyone with the skills or patience to do this (see: the 4-second scene that took a year to make), now he can just ask the Gen AI to make it for them.

    Is it "copyright infringement"? I dunno. Hard to tell, to be honest. But from an ethical point of view, it seems odd. And before you actually required someone to take the time and effort to copy the source material, now it's an automated and scalable process that does this, and can do this and much more, faster and without getting tired. "Theft at scale", maybe not so small potatos anymore.

    --

    edit: nice, downvotes. And in the other thread people were arguing HN is such a nice place for dissenting opinions.

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    • eb0la 5 days ago

      I believe when we talk about this there's a big misunderstanding between Copyright, Trademarks, and Fair use.

      Indy, with its logo, whiplash, and hat, is a trademark from Disney. I don't know the specific stuff; but if you sell a t-shirt with Indiana Jones, or you put the logo there... you might be sued due to trademark violation.

      If you make copies of anything developed, sold, or licensed by Disney (movies, comics, books, etc) you'll have a copyright violation.

      The issue we have with AI and LLM is that: - The models compress information and can make a lot of copies of it very cheaply. - Artist wages are quite low. Higher that what you'd pay OpenAI, but not enough to make a living even unless you're hired by a big company (like Marvel or DC) and they give you regular work ($100-120 for a cover, $50-80/page interior work. One page needs about one day to draw.) - AI used a lot of images from the internet to train models. Most of them were pirated. - And, of course, it is replacing low-paying jobs for artist.

      Also, do not forget it might make verbatim copies of copyrighted art if the model just memorized the picture / text.

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    • kridsdale3 6 days ago

      I would argue that countless games have already been made by top tier professional artists that IP-Steal the Ghibli theme.

      Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom should be included there.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • the_af 6 days ago

        I don't think those look like Ghibli. Maybe they drew inspiration, but are different enough. I would never confuse one for the other.

        Regardless, those games required the hard work and countless hours of animators. Gen AI doesn't.

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  • mcmcmc 6 days ago

    Depends on if you paid him or not. If he sold it to you, then he is infringing on Disney’s IP and depriving them of that revenue.

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    • eb0la 5 days ago

      If you're paying for tokens used to generate that...

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      • mcmcmc 4 days ago

        Then the service that sold you tokens and delivered copyright infringing content is violating the law

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  • [removed] 6 days ago
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airstrike 6 days ago

Can we not call it "theft"? It's such a loaded term and doesn't really mean the same thing when we're talking about bits and bytes.

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  • moolcool 6 days ago

    OK, but then we need a common standard. If Facebook is allowed to use libgen, I should also be allowed.

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  • bigyabai 6 days ago

    Only if we stop calling software distribution "piracy" under the false pretenses that anything is being stolen.

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shadowgovt 6 days ago

> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine.

I mean... If I go to Google right now and do an image search for "archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip," the first picture is a not-even-changed image of Indiana Jones. Which I will then copy and paste into whatever project I'm working on without clicking through to the source page (usually because the source page is an ad-ridden mess).

Perhaps the Internet itself is the hideous theft machine, and AI is just the most efficient permutation of user interface onto it.

(Incidentally, if you do that search, you will also, hilariously, turn up images of an older gentleman dressed in a brown coat and hat who is clearly meant to be "The Indiana Jones you got on Wish" from a photo-licensing site. The entire exercise of trying to extract wealth via exclusive access to memetic constructs is a fraught one).

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  • WhyOhWhyQ 6 days ago

    Your position cannot distinguish stealing somebody's likeness and looking at them.

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    • shadowgovt 5 days ago

      I agree without argument. I have also thoroughly enjoyed the animatronic dead Presidents at Disney World.

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  • rurp 6 days ago

    The key difference is that the google example is clearly copying someone elses work and there are plenty of laws and norms that non-billionaires need to follow. If you made a business reselling the image you copied you would expect to get in trouble and have to stop. But AI companies are doing essentially the same thing in many cases and being rewarded for it.

    The hypocrisy is much of the problem. If we're going to have IP laws that severely punish people and smaller companies for reselling the creative works of others without any compensation or permission then those rules should apply to powerful well-connected companies as well.

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Pet_Ant 6 days ago

> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine.

I hate how it is common to advance a position to just state a conclusion as if it were a fact. You keep repeating the same thing over and over until it seems like a concensus has been reached instead of an actual argument reasoned from first principle.

This is no theft here. Any copyright would be flimsier than software patents. I love Studio Ghibli (including $500/seat festival tickets) but it's the heart and the detail that make them what they are. You cannot clone that. Just some surface similarity. If that's all you like about the movies... you really missed the point.

Imagine if in early cinema someone had tried to claim mustachioed villian, ditsy blonde, or dumb jock? These are just tropes and styles. Quality work goes much much much deeper, and that cannot be synthesised. I can AI generate a million engagement rings, but I cannot pick the perfect one that fits you and your partners love story.

PS- the best work they did was "When Marnie was There". Just fitted together perfectly.

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  • satvikpendem 5 days ago

    > I hate how it is common to advance a position to just state a conclusion as if it were a fact. You keep repeating the same thing over and over until it seems like a concensus has been reached instead of an actual argument reasoned from first principle.

    I have interacted with the parent account before and have actually looked at the the amount of times they used words like awful, horrific, etc, and I definitely agree, as one should not have such a strong attachment to such words that they feel the need to continue to use (or rather, abuse) them endlessly.

    [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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  • dvsfish 6 days ago

    The engagement ring is a good example object, but I feel it serves the opposite argument better.

    If engagement rings were as ubiquitous and easy to generate as Ghibli images have become, they would lose their value very quickly -- not even just in the monetary sense, but the sentimental value across the market would crash for this particular trinket. It wouldn't be about picking the right one anymore, it would be finding some other thing that better conveys status or love through scarcity.

    If you have a 3d printer you'd know this feeling where abundance diminishes the value of something directly. Any pure plastic items you have are reduced to junk very quickly once you know you can basically have anything on a whim (exceptions for things with utility, however these are still printable). If I could print 30 rings a day, my partner wouldn't want any of them as a show of my undying love. Something more special and rare and thoughtful would have to take its place.

    This isn't meant to come across as shallow in any way, its just classic supply and demand relating to non monetary value.

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    • planb 5 days ago

      >If I could print 30 rings a day, my partner wouldn't want any of them as a show of my undying love. Something more special and rare and thoughtful would have to take its place.

      And now I think this serves the opposite argument better. Downloading some random ring from the internet would not show your undying love. Designing a custom ring just for your partner, even if it is made from plastic, and even if you use AI as a tool in the process, is where the value is generated.

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      • dvsfish 5 days ago

        This is only true where it is distinguishable that the end result is made with care and love rather than indiscriminate copying. Which is why attribution is essential. No one realistically could tell a ring was hand crafted or mass produced if there wasn't some tell. Some people may say the "tell" is a kind of intuitive nebulous concept of the "soul" of the animation.. but I feel we are quickly approaching the point where this is no longer obvious.

        As an aside, my partner detests the things I 3d print unless they have a very specific purpose, even when they are random semi artistic pieces I'm tinkering with (and I typically agree, they are junk). She loves the first thing i ever printed her though, a triceratops model, despite being randomly downloaded.

        Anything made with intent from one individual to another will have some level of sentimental value, but I don't feel like making a ghibli image with AI specifically tailored to a friends tastes would have quite as much value as leveraging your own talent to do it yourself.

        On the flip side, I do believe that "doing it yourself" has less value than it used to. It's a very sad reality and in my opinion a strong argument against blind "progress". We gain the ability to mass produce art but lose the ability to perceive it as art?

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        • Pet_Ant 5 days ago

          > This is only true where it is distinguishable that the end result is made with care and love rather than indiscriminate copying. Which is why attribution is essential. No one realistically could tell a ring was hand crafted or mass produced if there wasn't some tell.

          It doesn't matter if the ring was hand crafted or not. It's whether it has hand selected. If you find the perfect ring, even if it was generated by an AI, it's your selection that matters. It's the correspondence that matters. The way it reflects elements of your relationship. It's you recognising those elements in the ring. Your partner recoginising them in the ring. And your partner recognising you recognising them. That is what makes itself.

          Not to dox myself, but I am not Grace Abrams. I met my partner long before her song "Risk" was written, but when I heard it I immediately played it for my partner and said "This describes the feelings I had when I met you". I played it for her, she cried. I didn't have to write the song or own or pay a cent for it. It's the curation that made an emotional connection and had value. The song itself has no value, and she might have even heard it and never made the connection, it was me embuing that had value.

          To go back to Miyazaki, it's the connections between elements in his films. The attention to detail and tone between relationships that make his films amazing. It's all about the handyman's invoice [0]. By the time there are enough examples for AI to learn something, it ceases to be a novel insight and have value. It's the curation and application that have value and are human and cannot be stolen.

          [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/

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  • asadotzler 6 days ago

    >it's the heart and the detail that make them what they are. You cannot clone that

    You absolutely can and these theft machines are proving that, literally cloning those details with very high precision and fidelity.

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    • Pet_Ant 5 days ago

      I didn't mean visual fidelity, I meant the way that plot and theme and art interleave. I first watched My Neighbour Totoro on VHS with no visual fidelity and it was still magic.

      You can easily steal the style of a political cartoon or especially XKCD but you cannot steal or generate genuine fresh insight or poignant relevant metaphor for the current moment.

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zulban 5 days ago

Interesting proposal. Maybe if race or sex or height or eye color etc isn't given, and the LLM determines there's no reason not to randomize in this case (avoid black founding fathers), the backend could tweak its own prompt by programatically inserting a few random traits to the prompt.

If you describe an Indiana Jones character, but no sex, 50/50 via internal call to rand() that it outputs a woman.

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satvikpendem 5 days ago

> Obviously a horrible hideous theft machine [...] awful [...] horriffic

Ah, I thought I knew this account from somewhere. It seems surprisingly easy to figure out what account is commenting just based on the words used, as I've commented that only a few active people on this site seem to use such strong words as shown here.

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mcmcmc 6 days ago

So if it’s a theft machine, how is the answer to try teaching it to hide the fact that it’s stealing by changing its outputs? That’s like a student plagiarizing an essay and then swapping some words with a thesaurus pretending that changes anything.

Wouldn’t the more appropriate solution in the case of theft be to remunerate the victims and prevent recidivism?

Instead of making it “not so obviously bad” why not just… make it good? Require AI services to either prove that 100% of their training corpus is either copyright free or properly licensed, or require them to compensate copyright holders for any infringing outputs.

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  • chrisweekly 6 days ago

    (below is my shallow res, maybe naive?) That might inject a ton of $ into "IP", doing further damage to the creative commons. How can we support remix culture for humans, while staving off ultimately-destructive AI slop? Maybe copyleft / creative-commons licenses w/ explicit anti-AI prohibitions? Tho that could have bad ramifications too. ALL of this makes me kind of uncomfortable and sad, I want more creativity and fewer lawyers.

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    • mcmcmc 6 days ago

      > doing further damage to the creative commons

      Not sure I understand this part. Because creators would be getting paid for their works being used for someone else’s commercial gain?

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      • chrisweekly 6 days ago

        Because it reinforces the idea that creative works should usually involve lawyers.

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        • mcmcmc 5 days ago

          No it doesn’t. It reinforces that copyright is the law. If you don’t violate someone’s copyright, you don’t need a lawyer.

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RataNova 5 days ago

I don't think AI is doomed to be uncreative but it definitely needs human weirdness and unpredictability to steer it

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fennecfoxy 5 days ago

Yup it's called overfitting. But I don't suppose you'd appreciate a neutral model either.

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