The problems with AI art

[rayguncourtesan]

This image is 100% legal.



This image is not.

What's the difference? French law says that architecture is protected under copyright. The original design for the Eiffel tower is no longer under copyright, yet the lights were installed later and are still protected by copyright.

Copyright law is a giant mess and full of complications, contradictions, and idiocy.

That...is not how copyright works. The image is perfectly legal (subject to the license granted by the photographer, who has a copyright over the image). The architecture copyright protects the architecture; you cannot arrange those particular lights in those exact positions. The image is its own thing; created by the photographer who took it and potentially disposed of to a purchaser for valuer.

To properly frame your example we would have to imagine that I have, compliant with copyright law, constructed my very own Not!Eiffle Tower. It is exactly the same as yours in every respect. This is legal because the Eiffle Tower is not under copyright.

You have put lights on your Eiffle Tower (pictured). These are protected under copyright in French law; I cannot put the same lights on my otherwise identical tower. You created something new, a work of architectural art and I cannot steal it from you.

That is copyright. I do not have the right to copy it. I can put my own lights on my tower and I can even be directly inspired by yours, but they must be sufficiently different to not contravene your copyright.

I can of course enter into negotiations with you over the copyright you have over your lights. I could offer to pay you to duplicate them and you have the right to accept or reject my offer, or to offer terms under which you would be prepared to allow them to be copied.

That is the purpose of copyright; at its most basic, it is to incentivize the production of art on the basis that if I spend all my time protecting my stuff from you, I do not have the time to produce new stuff. It is an extension from physical property because an idea is not diminished by its reproduction; if you have an apple and I take your apple, you no longer have an apple. If you have an idea and I take your idea...you still have it. But if you cannot profit from your idea, why bother having them?

That's where AI art and the basis of copyright law come into conflict. Why should artists continue to produce art if it will be immediately stolen by AI's? AI's cannot produce from nothing; their work is composite and iterative but it is not inspired. A world in which AI is the only producer of art will mean radically different art to a world in which people produce art and if something is not done to protect the work of artists, that is what will happen. Artists will stop producing, the datasets will become recursive and since AI operates on trillions of iterative generations, we will end up in a place of mono-art.

Capitaism after all produces not what is best, but what is most profitable to corporations.

Copyright law offers the best defense against a rather bleak cultural future and I wish more artists had a firmer grasp of what it was and how to use it.

[Vekseid]

That...is not how copyright works.

In Italy, France, and other countries that have opted out of freedom of panorama, that is exactly how it works. Even in the US, you can get in trouble if you make a statue or other non-inhabitable artistic structure the focal point of your photograph.

In the US, however, second picture would be completely legal as it qualifies as architecture since it has facilities for humans.

[RedRose]

I learned recently that some think taking pics of a human is forbidden! Around here, schools post pics without asking.

[rayguncourtesan]

There is a world of difference between commercial and non-,commercial use of an image and pretending that holding a copyright and enforcing it are the same thing is disingenuous at best.

And yes, law is such that a lot of things are legal in some countries and illegal in others but if we're discussing enforcement of copyright (mere holding is meaningless) then the issue is where the enforcement shall take place.

[GloomCookie]

The key is if this will be enforced. Even if an artist goes out of their way to sue Stable Diffusion or whoever is making the AI program, they could very well use the argument that because the images are being manipulated and thus are no longer the copyright images that were originally protected. And if they happen to come out identical, they can try to point out the AI is using user input to craft an image, and therefor they are not liable.

Basically, they can (and probably have) gone at this from a legal angle to make sure they don't pour a ton of work into this AI program only to have it blow up in their face because someone sued them about their image database.

[Kuroneko]

If an image comes out identical, that would be proof an artist's image was stolen, not that the program randomly produced an identical image with user input.

The effectiveness of prosecution remains to be seen. I wouldn't be surprised if these image scrapping companies never even thought about copyright, in this day and age when everyone thinks that if it's on the web, it's free.  Personally, I hope Disney goes after them. The company is notoriously litigious.

The Concept Art Association is gathering funds to protect artists from AI technologies on GoFundMe as we speak. MeFu - Mestieri del Fumetto - is as well. Both are working to create new legislation and regulation of the practices these companies use to collect images in the U.S. and the EU.

[TheGlyphstone]

Over at SMBC, Weinersmith points out that when automation takes over production, the handmade stuff becomes 'artisinal' and gets sold to rich idiots at 20× the price.

[Keelan]

Over at SMBC, Weinersmith points out that when automation takes over production, the handmade stuff becomes 'artisinal' and gets sold to rich idiots at 20× the price.

Sure... when people are assuming that you ACTUALLY made the work yourself. Which is going to be a significant problem because... well, I've paid for about two dozen art pieces in the last five years, and ALL of them have been digital artwork which is the medium AI works in.

I mention this because I stumbled upon this today: https://nichegamer.com/art-subreddit-bans-artist-style-ai/

The work in question was this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/drawing/comments/ztbtw9/a_muse_in_the_warzone/

Artist is Ben Moran, and while I won't link his artstation or deviantart here, his art style is like this and he has years of work in the style.

[TheGlyphstone]

Oh, it won't be as easy. But if the idea that all AI-made art will homogenize into a single style is true, then it's possible for an artist - granted, not that specific dude - to have a style very distinct from the 'vanilla' flavor of AI. And unless they're Andy Warhol 2.0, it's unlikely their output being scraped will shift the vanilla-AI art algorithm enough to be meaningful.

This still sucks for artists in the now, 120%. I'm just throwing a marker of skepticism on the idea that this will kill the idea of original art for all time.

Plus - could any human mind conceive of this wondrous horror?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlkKaO3aUAAtxx_.jpg (Linked for kidlets)

[Kuroneko]

Plus - could any human mind conceive of this wondrous horror?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlkKaO3aUAAtxx_.jpg (Linked for kidlets)

Human minds have already conceived of far worse, while being far more original. Horror versions of children's characters are nothing new, as a simple Google search for 'scary Disney princesses' shows.   

[TheGlyphstone]

Not my point, by a million miles. I've seen plenty of scary children's characters and evil Disney princesses...there aren't even any princesses in that photo. What those pictures have that I've never seen in any human-made art is the simple inhuman grotesqueness. AI does not understand human anatomy or what a person is supposed to look like, and that simple incomprehensibility of something any human brain instinctively grasps (even if they then choose to subvert it) resulted in what I will say is a unique creation.

[Kuroneko]

Not my point either. The google image search was simply an example, not a  reflection of what you posted. I work in film and theatre, specifically special effects makeup, and I have seen grotesque images like that created by humans a million times. It's not unique to AI by a long shot.

[Kuroneko]

Not my point either. The google image search was simply an example, not a reflection of what you posted. Obviously there aren't any Disney princesses in that photo. I work in film and theatre, specifically special effects makeup, and I have seen grotesque images like that created by humans a million times. It's not unique to AI by a long shot, and human minds are quite able to grasp it.

[Kuroneko]

Sorry, my cat ran over my keyboard and accidentally quoted me mid posting. *sigh*

[Oniya]

Oh, it won't be as easy. But if the idea that all AI-made art will homogenize into a single style is true, then it's possible for an artist - granted, not that specific dude - to have a style very distinct from the 'vanilla' flavor of AI. And unless they're Andy Warhol 2.0, it's unlikely their output being scraped will shift the vanilla-AI art algorithm enough to be meaningful.

This still sucks for artists in the now, 120%. I'm just throwing a marker of skepticism on the idea that this will kill the idea of original art for all time.

Plus - could any human mind conceive of this wondrous horror?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlkKaO3aUAAtxx_.jpg (Linked for kidlets)

*glances at upper right image*  I'd like to introduce you to this unknown indie game called 'Five Nights at Freddy's'.

[Kuroneko]

*glances at upper right image*  I'd like to introduce you to this unknown indie game called 'Five Nights at Freddy's'.

Or Jorge Dos Diablos...
...or Guillermo De Toro ... or Heironymous Bosch ... or Carpenter's The Thing ... or American McGee's Alice ... or Christien Van Minnen ... or Gary Tunnicliffe ... or Georgia Straight ... or H.R. Giger ... or ...

[Rinzler]

Getty Images is suing Stability AI - the folks behind Stable Diffusion - alledging unlicensed use of its image libraries.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/17/tech/getty-images-stability-ai-lawsuit/index.html

Colour me very curious to see how this goes. If Getty wins, the the AI art tool creators will probably have to be a lot more circumspect in their image scraping practices. Which'll no doubt reassure a lot of artists out there.

[Dice]

This is likely to end up being a major issue for groups that have AI art programs. If your TOS claim they own the copyright to the "Art" they make they are in for hell over this.

https://petapixel.com/2023/02/02/ai-image-generators-can-exactly-replicate-copyrighted-photos/

TLDR:
You can get AI programs to spit out a near 1 to 1 of the images they were trained on. So close they would be in legal shit if someone tried to use them.

[Kailandra]

One of the key issues with machine learning that I don't see being discussed enough are the ulterior purposes.

Let's just start with the relatively benign. AI art wasn't a bid thing until Elon purchased Twitter. He was quickly caught up in demands from artists to remove unauthorized used of their artwork, or get royalty payments for their art being displayed. All of a sudden, we've got AI art, which anyone can use and has no copyright attached. No more hassles over royalties and DMCA.

The scary part: advances in machine learning have come in support of government survielence. China was having problems with their facial recognition software identifying masked protestors. Next thing you know, Ten cent has a free app to 'see what you look like as an anime character. Fun, but also providing fodder to refine the facial recognition system. Similarly, the FBI was having difficulty with facial recognition in cases where there was heavy, contrasting make-up being worn. Oh, hey! A fun new camera filter to see what you look like as a Juggalo...

On a tangent, AI chat bot have undergone a maked improvement and are becoming more popular. It's entirely possible that there could be new apps on E being written by these programs in the near future.

[Oniya]

The scary part: advances in machine learning have come in support of government survielence. China was having problems with their facial recognition software identifying masked protestors. Next thing you know, Ten cent has a free app to 'see what you look like as an anime character. Fun, but also providing fodder to refine the facial recognition system. Similarly, the FBI was having difficulty with facial recognition in cases where there was heavy, contrasting make-up being worn. Oh, hey! A fun new camera filter to see what you look like as a Juggalo...

Of course, machine learning is quite dependent on the 'teachers'.  CAPTCHA programs are used to train self-driving cars, for example, which is why so many have urban/roadway related themes.  Then you end up with something like this:



Guess what it thought was the other 'parking meter'?

[Humble Scribe]

Like XKCD's comment about Self-Driving Cars being more like 'Crowdsourced Steering'.

[Oniya]

Mind you, if someone wants to put money in my mailbox, I'm all for it.  ;D  (I'd have to get one to put at the curb, though.  Unless a bunch of y'all can select a door-flap as a parking meter?) 

[Keelan]

Thought y'all might find this interesting: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/22/23611278/midjourney-ai-copyright-office-kristina-kashtanova

The original letter/primary source is here: https://www.copyright.gov/docs/zarya-of-the-dawn.pdf

[Oniya]

I have to admit I found this bit of the brief amusing:

The Urantia court held that “some element of human creativity must have occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable” because “it is
not creations of divine beings that the copyright laws were intended to protect.”

[Keelan]

https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si91

Over the last few months, the world has seen a huge upsurge in interest, use, and quality of algorithm-generated imagery and text. Since we launched the company in 2002, Paizo has made its reputation with the assistance of countless traditional artists and writers, who are just as integral to the success of our games as our in-house editors, art directors, designers, and developers. The ethical and legal issues surrounding “AI art” and writing prompt programs—and the serious threat they pose to the livelihoods of partners who have helped us get to where we are today as a company—demand that we take a firm position against the use of this technology in Paizo products.

In the coming days, Paizo will add new language to its creative contracts that stipulate that all work submitted to us for publication be created by a human. We will further add guidance to our Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite program FAQs clarifying that AI-generated content is not permitted on either community content marketplace.

Our customers expect a human touch to our releases, and so long as the ethical and legal circumstances surrounding these programs remains murky and undefined, we are unwilling to associate our brands with the technology in any way.

Stated plainly—when you buy a Paizo product, you can be sure that it is the work of human professionals who have spent years honing their craft to produce the best work we can. Paizo will not use AI-generated “creative” work of any kind for the foreseeable future.

We thank the human artists and writers who have been so integral to our success in the past, and we look forward to working with them for many years to come.