If those people have ever tried actually using image generation software they will know that there is significant human authorship required to make something that isn’t remotely dogshit. The most important skill in visual art is not how to draw something but knowing what to draw.
Then why does all AI need to harvest the work of millions of artists in order to create one mediocre painting? Millions upon millions of hours of blood sweat and tears is hidden behind that algorithm. Thousands of people starting to draw when they are 5 and never stopping in order to get as good as they are.
All big AI services refuse to disclose the training set they use and those that we know anything about absolutely uses copyrighted material from artist that didn’t consent to be part of the training set.
This is what fuels my contempt for AI. People that uses literal billions of dollars of stolen time and talent and then pretend that actually having ideas is the important bit.
I mean, I agree that the developers of these AI tools need to be made to be more ethical in how they use stuff for training, but it is worth noting that that’s kind of also how humans learn. Every human artist learns, in part, by absorbing the wealth of prior art that they experience. Copying existing pieces is even a common way to practice.
Yeah, that shrug you did about how it would be nice if AI didn’t steal art is part of the problem. Shrugging and saying joink doesn’t work when you want to copyright stuff.
Human learns by assimilating other people work and working it into their own style, yes. That means that the AI is the human in this and the AI owns the artistic works. Since AI does not yet have the right to own copyrights, any works produced by that AI is not copyrightable.
That is if you accept that AI and humans learn art in the same way. I don’t personally think that is analogous but it doesn’t matter for this discussion.
There’s a reason I said “they should be made to be more ethical” and not just “they should be more ethical”. I know that they aren’t going to do it themselves and I’ll support well-written regulations on them.
but it doesn’t matter for this discussion.
Isn’t it what almost your entire comment was about?
The argument was basically “that is how humans learn too”. I accepted that analogy because it doesn’t change my conclusion that AI can’t be copyrighted. Had the discussion been about something else I wouldn’t have accepted that argument.
All those artists did the same thing, they’re also only able to pursue art because the work of so many people before has made a world in which we’re so surrounded by luxury that they don’t need to work the fields just to survive.
As the famous meme so rightly states, we live in a society. I get that a lot of modern artists don’t want to help build a better society for all because they want to protect their privileged position in capitalism but that’s not really an option, you live by the sword of capitalism you die by the sword of capitalism.
You can have a privileged position in capitalism without being the ruling class, beside we’re not talking about all the artists because a huge amount do art because they love creativity, expression and visual beauty - the ones who wage this absurd battle against emerging technology are either in a privileged position or who envision themselves in that privileged position in the future.
And you haters have nothing substantial to say beside screaming that the whole world should stop just so you don’t have to adapt to a changing world
The funniest thing is the current system isn’t even very good for artists, you’re fighting to protect capitalism when capitalism is shitting all over you but because you can imagine a situation where you’re slightly higher up the stack than other people you’re fighting desperately for your chance to shit on people below you. It really is shameful tbh.
I don’t hate ai assisted technologies. I just think it’s hilarious that you’ve been ranting and raving about how artists are the true ruling class and ai is our how we break the chains of their oppression.
You see these technologies as somehow a means of democratizing all creative endeavors. I see these technologies, as they stand, as just the latest in the attempts of those who own the tech and data to siphon even more control, autonomy, and wealth from the rest of us
But yeah dude, have fun typing in prompts and feeling like you did something cool.
No one said they’re the true ruling class, the fact you have to purposely missrepresent what I’m saying to attack it makes it pretty clear your arguments hold no worth.
You say that AI is an attack on your wealth and autonomy because you see Art as nothing but a way of making money, from your comment about doing something cool you maybe have a vague notion that being an Artist confers higher higher status. You want to protect your status and earnings and that’s all you think about, I totally understand that but I think it makes for a very poor position to argue morality.
I personally think art is more than just a way to make money, there is great utility in the visual image practically, emotionally and socially. It didn’t kill art when people could cheat with Photoshop, it didn’t kill art when people could cheat with cameras, it didn’t kill art when people could cheat with quick drying paints… Giving people free access to diffusion based image generation isn’t going to kill art either and it’s certainly not going to limit anyone’s creativity or put restrictions on their freedom.
Sorry bout you were never the keeper of a forbidden jitsu, me being able to generate some images for my open source project isn’t taking away your special role in society or robbing you of your glory - you never had it to start with, it never existed anywhere but your delusions. The visual image is a utility which can be used for many useful purposes, why shouldn’t anyone with a story be able to tell it? Why shouldn’t anyone with a vision be able to depict it?
So yes when I make cool things using modern technology I will enjoy that feeling, it’s sad you’d try to take that away from me rather than celebrate others joy with them but it’s the capitalist mindset, you want to create artificial scarcity for your own personal profit, you feel that even something as pure as joy must be hoarded and that if others feel it then it devalues yours.
And I know it must seem I have something against you but honestly I just feel sorry for how deeply the brainworm of greed has poisoned your vision of the world, you fight for a system that only hurts you because you’re so focused on being a rung up from the bottom that you can’t even imagine anything but that fight for dominance which consumes you. All I hope is that you don’t get in the way of the better world that’s coming, because it won’t stop for you.
If I took a few hours to make an impressive AI generated price of art, that’s still %0.0001 the amount of time an actual a real artist would’ve spent developing the skill and then taking the time to make the peice. I get to skip all that because AI stole the real artists’ works.
I don’t think “amount of work” is a good measurement for copyright, if you scribble something in 2 seconds on a piece of paper you still own the copyright, even if it’s not a great piece of art.
I’m pretty specifically trying to bring to mind the time it takes to hone the skill. Photography is similar in that it takes many many hours to get to the point where you can produce a good work of art.
If an artist (or photographer) spends a couple hours on a peice, that’s not the actual amount of time needed. It takes years to reach the point where they can make art in a few hours. That’s what people are upset about, that’s why nobody cares about “it took me hours to generate a good peice!”, because it takes an artist 10,000 hours.
What AI art is doing is distilling that 10,000 hours (per artist) into a training set of 99% stolen works to allow someone with zero skill to produce a work of art in a few hours.
What’s most problematic isn’t who the copyright of the AI generated age belongs to, it’s that artists who own their own works are having it stolen to be used in a commercial product. Go to any AI image generator, and you’ll see “premium” options you can pay for. That product, that option to pay, only exists on the backs of artists who did not give licensing for their works, and did not get paid to provide the training data.
People have made millions off of photographs despite having zero training and only casually snapping the photo. You can get lucky, or the subject of your photo might be especially interesting or rare (such as from a newsworthy event).
I think we need something more nuanced than ‘effort input’
I would argue that the artist produces the copyright and transfers it to you. If the artist isn’t human and cant produce copyrights then it cant sell it to you. A lot of argumentation here is that we should treat AI like we treat a human artist. That is an insane line to go down because that would make any AI work effectively slavery.
Hahaha, hahaha, no. That is absolutely NOT the default arrangement. Unless otherwise negotiated in the contract, the artist retains the copyright for the produced work and is free to use it as they please, including putting it in their portfolio, making further edits to the work, reusing it for other purposes, etc. The commissioner gets a copy of the finished product, but by default has few rights to use it themselves. Technically, I’ve personally infringed an artist’s copyright by cropping a work I commissioned from them to use as an icon. However, the vast majority of artists don’t typw enforce this aspect of their IP rights, due to a lack of resources and also because it would shred their reputation and kill their business.
Explicit transfer/licensure of copyright can be negotiated, but the most artists charge an extremely hefty fee for transferring the full copyright, often double or triple the price of the work itself. Most individual commissioners don’t bother as a result, but commercial organizations looking to reuse the commissioned work must negotiate a license for the work in order to avoid a nasty infringement lawsuit.
The way your response was worded came across as saying that the default arrangement is the commissioner receiving the copyright for the art unless otherwise specified, not the artist. My apologies if I misinterpreted your post.
Look, if I train a monkey to draw art, no matter how good my instructions or the resulting art is, I don’t own that art, the monkey does.
As non-human animals cannot copyright their works, it then thusly defaults to the public domain.
The same applies to AI. You train it to make the art you want, but you’re not the one making the art, the AI is. There’s no human element in the creation itself, just like with the monkey.
You can edit or make changes as you like to the art, and you own those, but you don’t own the art because the monkey/AI drew it.
No, because there’s a fundemental difference between a tool that functions directly as a consequence of what you do, and an independent thing that acts based on your instruction.
When you take a photo, you have a direct hand in making it - when you direct an AI to make art, it is the one making the art, you just choose what it makes.
It’s as silly as asking if your paintbrush owns your art as a response to being told that you can’t claim copyright over art you don’t own.
That’s like saying you can control the sun for a photo because you can predict where it will be at a given time.
The fact that an AI can be deterministic, in that the same “seeds” will generate the same images, doesn’t at all invalidate my point that it is still the one interpreting the “seeds” and doing the actual image generation.
I’m not arguing the output of an AI cannot ever be art, there are beautiful AI works out there, just as there are beautiful photos out there.
What Iam arguing is you can’t claim it to be your art.
Prompting isn’t enough of a creative element to take ownership over the art an AI outputs, especially if you don’t own the training data used for the AI. As such, you cannot (nor should you be able to) claim copyright over it.
If an artist takes requests and happens to pick your’s, you don’t automatically own the final piece just because they happened to use your prompt. The artist owns it, unless you pay them for that right.
In the case of AI art, the work would become public domain, since AI cannot copyright their works (much like non-human animals).
You’re the one gatekeeping work. Don’t make a dumb argument against your own dumb argument.
What I said was hyperbole, but it isn’t invalid. You’re claiming direct control over an independent process simply because it happens to be deterministic for any unique set of prompts.
But honestly, my arguement isn’t that complicated…
If the argument against AI is that it’s too little work, then Photography neesds to step it’s fucking game up.
When you take a photo, you’re the one taking the photo. You physically go to the location, you frame the shot, you’re the one who has to make sure the lighting is right, even that the camera is set properly.
When you draw a art, whether paint or digital, you’re the one doing each and every brushstroke, deciding each and every detail as you draw.
There’s a clear human creative element not just deciding what to photograph/draw, but in how every part of it is done.
There’s a reason most people hire a photographer for special occasions like weddings, and not just Bob down the road with his IPhone - good photography takes skill.
Whereas for AI art, all you’re doing is providing instruction to the AI, that then goes on to make all these decisions. It connects the dots between your prompts, it decides where everything goes, what brushstrokes to make. It draws the art, it generates the image.
If the argument against AI is that irrelevant companies get to profit off of others’ work, then say that. Don’t make stupid arguments.
That is a valid argument, and one I actually have made before. If you don’t own your training data, then how can you possibly claim ownership of anything that comes out of the AI, since it’s not just inspired by that data, it is working/pulling directly from that data. But, that is not the argument I’m making.
Edit: Do I have direct control of the LLMs that Samsung uses to sharpen the photos on my phone? Do I not still own them? You’re yelling at clouds.
Now that is a stupid arguement. Having an AI sharpen an image you already took and own is not the same as having it generate the entire image for you by instruction and then claiming that as your own.
You could transform that AI work into something you own and claim copyright over that transformative work, but the original work the AI made isn’t your’s to claim.
By your definition, you could copyright a screenshot from Google streetview without doing anything transformative to it because you prompted Google where to take you, and decided where to screenshot.
you’re the one doing each and every brushstroke, deciding each and every detail as you draw.
Does Photoshop or any digital art not count? I don’t have to have the skill to draw a perfect circle?
good photography takes skill.
So we should artificially handicap the art at the expense of the lesser abled?
Whereas for AI art, all you’re doing is providing instruction to the AI, that then goes on to make all these decisions
Same as clicking a button on a camera at something that just happens to be beautiful. Does it matter if someone next to me is using the same ISO or exposure?
I don’t have to realize the complexity of lighting, shaders, or materials to render a scene in Unreal. I get to utilize the processes that pioneers before me discovered.
I understand the frustrations, but this seems stifling in the same way that cotton-gin-phobes, typewriter-phobes, and computer-phobes wpuld have stifled the ability of the average joe to accomplish something.
Thats honestly a fair point. I think I often feel lot of hostility towards ai, because a lot of aspects of how its being used or the arguments made by its proponents don’t sit right with me, but its clear our systems need to evolve to handle ai and ai created content more appropriately
It’s actually gotten significantly easier, which makes this artist’s work even more impressive. There is a very real chance they spent more time on this piece than other artists they were up against spent on theirs. I generate thousands of images a month, and sure, I can just take the first thing midjouney throws at me and be satisfied with 80% accuracy, or I can work and rework, each generation with diminishing returns, until I get to 98% accuracy and just accept that it’s not capable of 100% yet.
There is a very real chance they spent more time on this piece than other artists they were up against spent on theirs. I generate thousands of images a month
… you’ve never actually made art, have you? The sort of stuff that you enter into contests takes months to make, from the actual painting to rough sketches to reference gathering, and that’s just the basics
Clicking a button a thousand times isn’t really comparable
I’m not at all disagreeing with the overall sentiment here, but having given it a go, I will say AI image generation is a very tedious endeavor many times.
It’s not just clicking a button. It’s closer to trying to Google some very specific, but hard to find medical problem. You constantly tweak and retweak your search terms, both learning from what has been output so far and as you think of new ways to stop it from giving you crap you don’t want. And each time you hit search the process takes forever, anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours.
I don’t really feel like this constitutes skill, but it does represent a certain amount of brute force stubbornness to try to get AI image generation to do what you want.
Ok using your Google analogy - there’s a reason why “librarian” is a job and “Googler” isn’t. One requires years of skill and practice to interpret a request and find the right information and do all sorts of things, and the other is someone kinda bashing keys to make Google give them what they want. You wouldn’t put them in remotely the same class
Maybe if you spent some of that time you spend tweaking settings on midjourney practicing art, you’d make something worthwhile and not just generated content slop. :)
If those people have ever tried actually using image generation software they will know that there is significant human authorship required to make something that isn’t remotely dogshit. The most important skill in visual art is not how to draw something but knowing what to draw.
Then why does all AI need to harvest the work of millions of artists in order to create one mediocre painting? Millions upon millions of hours of blood sweat and tears is hidden behind that algorithm. Thousands of people starting to draw when they are 5 and never stopping in order to get as good as they are.
All big AI services refuse to disclose the training set they use and those that we know anything about absolutely uses copyrighted material from artist that didn’t consent to be part of the training set.
This is what fuels my contempt for AI. People that uses literal billions of dollars of stolen time and talent and then pretend that actually having ideas is the important bit.
I mean, I agree that the developers of these AI tools need to be made to be more ethical in how they use stuff for training, but it is worth noting that that’s kind of also how humans learn. Every human artist learns, in part, by absorbing the wealth of prior art that they experience. Copying existing pieces is even a common way to practice.
Yeah, that shrug you did about how it would be nice if AI didn’t steal art is part of the problem. Shrugging and saying joink doesn’t work when you want to copyright stuff.
Human learns by assimilating other people work and working it into their own style, yes. That means that the AI is the human in this and the AI owns the artistic works. Since AI does not yet have the right to own copyrights, any works produced by that AI is not copyrightable.
That is if you accept that AI and humans learn art in the same way. I don’t personally think that is analogous but it doesn’t matter for this discussion.
There’s a reason I said “they should be made to be more ethical” and not just “they should be more ethical”. I know that they aren’t going to do it themselves and I’ll support well-written regulations on them.
Isn’t it what almost your entire comment was about?
The argument was basically “that is how humans learn too”. I accepted that analogy because it doesn’t change my conclusion that AI can’t be copyrighted. Had the discussion been about something else I wouldn’t have accepted that argument.
To play devil’s advocate: What about artists that use assistants, is using AI not the same as using an assistant?
It is funny how that “one mediocre painting” won the award while the human art did not.
All those artists did the same thing, they’re also only able to pursue art because the work of so many people before has made a world in which we’re so surrounded by luxury that they don’t need to work the fields just to survive.
As the famous meme so rightly states, we live in a society. I get that a lot of modern artists don’t want to help build a better society for all because they want to protect their privileged position in capitalism but that’s not really an option, you live by the sword of capitalism you die by the sword of capitalism.
Artists. Famously part of the ruling class.
You can have a privileged position in capitalism without being the ruling class, beside we’re not talking about all the artists because a huge amount do art because they love creativity, expression and visual beauty - the ones who wage this absurd battle against emerging technology are either in a privileged position or who envision themselves in that privileged position in the future.
Jesus, you AI people are idiots.
See ya in 10 years, friend. We’ll revisit this conversation.
And you haters have nothing substantial to say beside screaming that the whole world should stop just so you don’t have to adapt to a changing world
The funniest thing is the current system isn’t even very good for artists, you’re fighting to protect capitalism when capitalism is shitting all over you but because you can imagine a situation where you’re slightly higher up the stack than other people you’re fighting desperately for your chance to shit on people below you. It really is shameful tbh.
I don’t hate ai assisted technologies. I just think it’s hilarious that you’ve been ranting and raving about how artists are the true ruling class and ai is our how we break the chains of their oppression.
You see these technologies as somehow a means of democratizing all creative endeavors. I see these technologies, as they stand, as just the latest in the attempts of those who own the tech and data to siphon even more control, autonomy, and wealth from the rest of us
But yeah dude, have fun typing in prompts and feeling like you did something cool.
No one said they’re the true ruling class, the fact you have to purposely missrepresent what I’m saying to attack it makes it pretty clear your arguments hold no worth.
You say that AI is an attack on your wealth and autonomy because you see Art as nothing but a way of making money, from your comment about doing something cool you maybe have a vague notion that being an Artist confers higher higher status. You want to protect your status and earnings and that’s all you think about, I totally understand that but I think it makes for a very poor position to argue morality.
I personally think art is more than just a way to make money, there is great utility in the visual image practically, emotionally and socially. It didn’t kill art when people could cheat with Photoshop, it didn’t kill art when people could cheat with cameras, it didn’t kill art when people could cheat with quick drying paints… Giving people free access to diffusion based image generation isn’t going to kill art either and it’s certainly not going to limit anyone’s creativity or put restrictions on their freedom.
Sorry bout you were never the keeper of a forbidden jitsu, me being able to generate some images for my open source project isn’t taking away your special role in society or robbing you of your glory - you never had it to start with, it never existed anywhere but your delusions. The visual image is a utility which can be used for many useful purposes, why shouldn’t anyone with a story be able to tell it? Why shouldn’t anyone with a vision be able to depict it?
So yes when I make cool things using modern technology I will enjoy that feeling, it’s sad you’d try to take that away from me rather than celebrate others joy with them but it’s the capitalist mindset, you want to create artificial scarcity for your own personal profit, you feel that even something as pure as joy must be hoarded and that if others feel it then it devalues yours.
And I know it must seem I have something against you but honestly I just feel sorry for how deeply the brainworm of greed has poisoned your vision of the world, you fight for a system that only hurts you because you’re so focused on being a rung up from the bottom that you can’t even imagine anything but that fight for dominance which consumes you. All I hope is that you don’t get in the way of the better world that’s coming, because it won’t stop for you.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
You’re making a lot of declarative statements about what I think and why I might think those things without me ever having stated any of those things.
You’re fabricating these hallucinatory talking points, which you’re ineffectually arguing against, in your own head.
If I took a few hours to make an impressive AI generated price of art, that’s still %0.0001 the amount of time an actual a real artist would’ve spent developing the skill and then taking the time to make the peice. I get to skip all that because AI stole the real artists’ works.
What about photographers?
I don’t think “amount of work” is a good measurement for copyright, if you scribble something in 2 seconds on a piece of paper you still own the copyright, even if it’s not a great piece of art.
I’m pretty specifically trying to bring to mind the time it takes to hone the skill. Photography is similar in that it takes many many hours to get to the point where you can produce a good work of art.
If an artist (or photographer) spends a couple hours on a peice, that’s not the actual amount of time needed. It takes years to reach the point where they can make art in a few hours. That’s what people are upset about, that’s why nobody cares about “it took me hours to generate a good peice!”, because it takes an artist 10,000 hours.
What AI art is doing is distilling that 10,000 hours (per artist) into a training set of 99% stolen works to allow someone with zero skill to produce a work of art in a few hours.
What’s most problematic isn’t who the copyright of the AI generated age belongs to, it’s that artists who own their own works are having it stolen to be used in a commercial product. Go to any AI image generator, and you’ll see “premium” options you can pay for. That product, that option to pay, only exists on the backs of artists who did not give licensing for their works, and did not get paid to provide the training data.
People have made millions off of photographs despite having zero training and only casually snapping the photo. You can get lucky, or the subject of your photo might be especially interesting or rare (such as from a newsworthy event).
I think we need something more nuanced than ‘effort input’
Photographers must have downvoted you. You don’t have to be skilled to take a really good photo. You do have to be skilled to it regularly, though.
The law is about human expression, not human work. That which a human expressed (with creative height) is protected, all else is not
So if I tell someone else to draw something, who gets the copyright?
Depends on your agreement.
I think by default if there’s no contract saying otherwise, the copyright stays with the original artist.
I would argue that the artist produces the copyright and transfers it to you. If the artist isn’t human and cant produce copyrights then it cant sell it to you. A lot of argumentation here is that we should treat AI like we treat a human artist. That is an insane line to go down because that would make any AI work effectively slavery.
Hahaha, hahaha, no. That is absolutely NOT the default arrangement. Unless otherwise negotiated in the contract, the artist retains the copyright for the produced work and is free to use it as they please, including putting it in their portfolio, making further edits to the work, reusing it for other purposes, etc. The commissioner gets a copy of the finished product, but by default has few rights to use it themselves. Technically, I’ve personally infringed an artist’s copyright by cropping a work I commissioned from them to use as an icon. However, the vast majority of artists don’t typw enforce this aspect of their IP rights, due to a lack of resources and also because it would shred their reputation and kill their business.
Explicit transfer/licensure of copyright can be negotiated, but the most artists charge an extremely hefty fee for transferring the full copyright, often double or triple the price of the work itself. Most individual commissioners don’t bother as a result, but commercial organizations looking to reuse the commissioned work must negotiate a license for the work in order to avoid a nasty infringement lawsuit.
I don’t know where the “Hahaha, hahaha, no” comes in. Everything I said is supported by what you said. What part of my comment isn’t true?
The way your response was worded came across as saying that the default arrangement is the commissioner receiving the copyright for the art unless otherwise specified, not the artist. My apologies if I misinterpreted your post.
Look, if I train a monkey to draw art, no matter how good my instructions or the resulting art is, I don’t own that art, the monkey does.
As non-human animals cannot copyright their works, it then thusly defaults to the public domain.
The same applies to AI. You train it to make the art you want, but you’re not the one making the art, the AI is. There’s no human element in the creation itself, just like with the monkey.
You can edit or make changes as you like to the art, and you own those, but you don’t own the art because the monkey/AI drew it.
Does my camera own my art, and not me?
No, because there’s a fundemental difference between a tool that functions directly as a consequence of what you do, and an independent thing that acts based on your instruction.
When you take a photo, you have a direct hand in making it - when you direct an AI to make art, it is the one making the art, you just choose what it makes.
It’s as silly as asking if your paintbrush owns your art as a response to being told that you can’t claim copyright over art you don’t own.
you control the seed, control the prompt — you can get the “AI” to produce the very same image if you want. so yes, you do have
That’s like saying you can control the sun for a photo because you can predict where it will be at a given time.
The fact that an AI can be deterministic, in that the same “seeds” will generate the same images, doesn’t at all invalidate my point that it is still the one interpreting the “seeds” and doing the actual image generation.
You’re the one gatekeeping work. Don’t make a dumb argument against your own dumb argument.
If the argument against AI is that it’s too little work, then Photography neesds to step it’s fucking game up.
If the argument against AI is that irrelevant companies get to profit off of others’ work, then say that. Don’t make stupid arguments.
Edit: Do I have direct control of the LLMs that Samsung uses to sharpen the photos on my phone? Do I not still own them? You’re yelling at clouds.
I think it’s very hard to make the argument that photography is “real art” AND that the output of a diffusion model is never.
I think you’re getting things mixed up here…
I’m not arguing the output of an AI cannot ever be art, there are beautiful AI works out there, just as there are beautiful photos out there.
What I am arguing is you can’t claim it to be your art.
Prompting isn’t enough of a creative element to take ownership over the art an AI outputs, especially if you don’t own the training data used for the AI. As such, you cannot (nor should you be able to) claim copyright over it.
If an artist takes requests and happens to pick your’s, you don’t automatically own the final piece just because they happened to use your prompt. The artist owns it, unless you pay them for that right.
In the case of AI art, the work would become public domain, since AI cannot copyright their works (much like non-human animals).
What I said was hyperbole, but it isn’t invalid. You’re claiming direct control over an independent process simply because it happens to be deterministic for any unique set of prompts.
But honestly, my arguement isn’t that complicated…
When you take a photo, you’re the one taking the photo. You physically go to the location, you frame the shot, you’re the one who has to make sure the lighting is right, even that the camera is set properly.
When you draw a art, whether paint or digital, you’re the one doing each and every brushstroke, deciding each and every detail as you draw.
There’s a clear human creative element not just deciding what to photograph/draw, but in how every part of it is done.
There’s a reason most people hire a photographer for special occasions like weddings, and not just Bob down the road with his IPhone - good photography takes skill.
Whereas for AI art, all you’re doing is providing instruction to the AI, that then goes on to make all these decisions. It connects the dots between your prompts, it decides where everything goes, what brushstrokes to make. It draws the art, it generates the image.
That is a valid argument, and one I actually have made before. If you don’t own your training data, then how can you possibly claim ownership of anything that comes out of the AI, since it’s not just inspired by that data, it is working/pulling directly from that data. But, that is not the argument I’m making.
Now that is a stupid arguement. Having an AI sharpen an image you already took and own is not the same as having it generate the entire image for you by instruction and then claiming that as your own.
You could transform that AI work into something you own and claim copyright over that transformative work, but the original work the AI made isn’t your’s to claim.
By your definition, you could copyright a screenshot from Google streetview without doing anything transformative to it because you prompted Google where to take you, and decided where to screenshot.
Does Photoshop or any digital art not count? I don’t have to have the skill to draw a perfect circle?
So we should artificially handicap the art at the expense of the lesser abled?
Same as clicking a button on a camera at something that just happens to be beautiful. Does it matter if someone next to me is using the same ISO or exposure?
I don’t have to realize the complexity of lighting, shaders, or materials to render a scene in Unreal. I get to utilize the processes that pioneers before me discovered.
I understand the frustrations, but this seems stifling in the same way that cotton-gin-phobes, typewriter-phobes, and computer-phobes wpuld have stifled the ability of the average joe to accomplish something.
Thats honestly a fair point. I think I often feel lot of hostility towards ai, because a lot of aspects of how its being used or the arguments made by its proponents don’t sit right with me, but its clear our systems need to evolve to handle ai and ai created content more appropriately
It’s actually gotten significantly easier, which makes this artist’s work even more impressive. There is a very real chance they spent more time on this piece than other artists they were up against spent on theirs. I generate thousands of images a month, and sure, I can just take the first thing midjouney throws at me and be satisfied with 80% accuracy, or I can work and rework, each generation with diminishing returns, until I get to 98% accuracy and just accept that it’s not capable of 100% yet.
… you’ve never actually made art, have you? The sort of stuff that you enter into contests takes months to make, from the actual painting to rough sketches to reference gathering, and that’s just the basics
Clicking a button a thousand times isn’t really comparable
I’m not at all disagreeing with the overall sentiment here, but having given it a go, I will say AI image generation is a very tedious endeavor many times.
It’s not just clicking a button. It’s closer to trying to Google some very specific, but hard to find medical problem. You constantly tweak and retweak your search terms, both learning from what has been output so far and as you think of new ways to stop it from giving you crap you don’t want. And each time you hit search the process takes forever, anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours.
I don’t really feel like this constitutes skill, but it does represent a certain amount of brute force stubbornness to try to get AI image generation to do what you want.
Ok using your Google analogy - there’s a reason why “librarian” is a job and “Googler” isn’t. One requires years of skill and practice to interpret a request and find the right information and do all sorts of things, and the other is someone kinda bashing keys to make Google give them what they want. You wouldn’t put them in remotely the same class
Software Engineers have entered the chat
I assume you’re joking, but I’m software and I would not classify these the same.
I drew a pony when I was 6? Does that count? Or does gatekeeping art go that far?
Maybe if you spent some of that time you spend tweaking settings on midjourney practicing art, you’d make something worthwhile and not just generated content slop. :)
Yeah, or I could continue doing what I enjoy in the way that I enjoy it, and you can fuck off with your judgemental comments.
Enjoy adding negative value to the world
You making up a To-Do list of things you’ll try to accomplish today?