Artificial Intelligence: Text-to-Image

[cubby]

It harvests pieces of existing images and mashes them together, refining and conforming them based on its algorithm for what it recognizes the pieces of the criteria you gave it until it spits something at you that it thinks matches the prompt it was given. The AI isn't "inventing" anything. It appears "original" because it's taking so many images and splicing them that separating out any individual piece that was used in the generation would probably be pretty difficult.

But it's why you'll see things that look like garbled artist's signatures or weird, stray floating pieces of nonsense text in AI images; it pulled pictures with actual signatures/text and then, because the AI just sees it as another part of the "picture" and is unable to distinguish it as words it just mushes it in there like everything else.

And also @Elegiac

This is why ownership will never be resolved, because the AI is "making" it from several other existing pieces. So the creation is original as soon as it's "mashed" together. And this is just the beginning of ownership dissolving.

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As far as copyright laws work, that means the contribution of any given image is so small to the resulting image that there's not really any arguable infringement to consider. It would be like trying to sue because you used the word "gumbo" in your novel and an AI written novel also used the word "gumbo" and used your novel as one of a million sources. That'd never fly in any court as an argument.

Exactly. This and more will take ownership away from whatever AI is creating from.

[Endus]

Exactly. This and more will take ownership away from whatever AI is creating from.

I think a lot of people just don't realize exactly how limited copyright actually is. If an artist traces someone else's work but uses that tracing to represent a completely different character, it's not gonna qualify as an infringement on the prior work. It might be a shitty thing to do if you're a comic artist being paid scale for original work, but that's between you and your employer, not you and court proceedings on IP law. AI algorithm generated art is pulling even less in source material, from even more sources, which waters any potential copyright claims down even further than that.

The original artists still have ownership rights to their own work. That's literally not changing. Those rights have never extended to disallowing others to use your art as a source of inspiration or as a tool in developing your own. That only comes up if a "significant portion" derives directly from the original.

To look at fiction for another non-AI set of example, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies isn't infringement because P&P is public domain now. The added content (the zombie bits are basically inserted in and around scenes in the original work) would probably not be different enough to escape a lawsuit if it weren't public domain. But I could write a book about Barry Plopper the boy wizard, who goes to the Bullfarts School for Wizarding Kids, and is hunted by Deathy McDeathface, the villain who murdered Barry's parents, and J. K. Rowling can fuck off and piss herself because she wouldn't have any kind of a case of copyright infringement.

And I can be really darned confident of that because, well, take a gander; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parodies_of_Harry_Potter

See also a really famous example in the whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing. Which started as Twilight fanfic, and was published basically by shaving off the serial numbers and changing some names. Or just fanfic in general, which authors have little capacity to sue over.

Copyright law is intended to keep someone from selling your work as their own. That does not apply when they use your work as inspiration/guidance/whatever for something new. Which is, fundamentally, what AI art systems are creating.

[Shadowferal]

These days, anytime I see the words "artificial intelligence" I think "libertarian."

...what? No rimshot?

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

These days, anytime I see the words "artificial intelligence" I think "libertarian."

...what? No rimshot?

Weird...because when I hear "Libertarian" I think "Natural Ignorance"

[Elegiac]

And also @Elegiac

This is why ownership will never be resolved, because the AI is "making" it from several other existing pieces. So the creation is original as soon as it's "mashed" together. And this is just the beginning of ownership dissolving.

The distinction is simple: the fact that it is an algorithm generating the image through mass-scale data harvesting rather than a person putting creative effort into something using preexisting works as references or appropriative material for new art is what excludes it from fair use.

[PC2]

First we need to have a chat about how many of these AI algorithms are harvesting content made by other people without their consent, however.

Yeah that's an interesting issue. If there is provable damage or profit involved then I side with the original artist in the court of law, however in general I don't think we should go down the road of putting special regulations on AI learning/training that exceeds the regulations we put on people. For example, if you can't prevent a person from being influenced by an observation that is publicly available then I would expect that that same logic will have to apply to AI programs as well.

Also I think that if generative AI can easily put human artists out of work then that means the work they were doing was not really that valuable or novel in the first place. Instead of trying to suppress artificial intelligence I think human artists should level up their work by creating something new that a computer program can't easily copy or create.

[Twdft]

This is why ownership will never be resolved, because the AI is "making" it from several other existing pieces. So the creation is original as soon as it's "mashed" together. And this is just the beginning of ownership dissolving.

Why are there stories about musician sueing other musicians for using a single chord claiming they stole it? Should be the same with pictures. Also I thought fair use is for people, not machines.

[Endus]

Why are there stories about musician sueing other musicians for using a single chord claiming they stole it? Should be the same with pictures.

Nobody owns a chord. You can own a particular hook, but only if it's delivered in pretty much the same way as the original; you can't copyright the sequence of notes itself, but the instrument, speed, timbre, everything has to lead to it sounding like a sample of the original rather than a new creation.

Also I thought fair use is for people, not machines.

People own and operate those machines. They're just tools.

[Gabriel]

It harvests pieces of existing images and mashes them together, refining and conforming them based on its algorithm for what it recognizes the pieces of the criteria you gave it until it spits something at you that it thinks matches the prompt it was given.

Literally all art ever made.

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Why are there stories about musician sueing other musicians for using a single chord claiming they stole it? Should be the same with pictures. Also I thought fair use is for people, not machines.

The entity holding the rights to AI generated art is the person who input the prompt for each particular piece.

[Kaleredar]

Literally all art ever made.

It's not taking art as "inspiration" and then making judicious decisions. It's literally taking pieces of existing art and warping it together. It's akin to little more than high-volume photobashing, but without an actual artist's insight into it.

The real fun comes when such a high volume of AI art is generated and starts to overflood the sources that AI art generation is drawing from such that it basically becomes a snake eating its own tail; AI generated art looking at other AI generated art to generate more AI generated art.

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The entity holding the rights to AI generated art is the person who input the prompt for each particular piece.

Untrue. Currently, at least in the US, nobody owns AI generated art. It's created and basically becomes free for anyone to use, because no human actually "made" it and AI can't "own" anything.

Source: Ryan Meyer, intellectual property litigator, as per the article Who Owns AI-Generated Art?

“The US Copyright Office has already refused to grant a copyright registration for AI-generated art because the current copyright law requires human authorship for copyright protection. That means that, under the current rules, AI-generated art has no owner.”



It would seem that typing cool-sounding words and then deciding which image the computer spat out at you looks the best isn't worthy of claiming intellectual ownership of something.

[Twdft]

The entity holding the rights to AI generated art is the person who input the prompt for each particular piece.

BRB creating an AI which takes "the movie Star Wars Episode IX but with a tiny blue dot in the upper left corner" as input to generate me the movie Star Wars Episode IX but with a tiny blue dot in the upper left corner and suddenly I hold the rights to the movie? I don't think this is how it works.

If said AI would create the art from scratch you might have a point, but the base images have to come from somewhere and I doubt AI makers made sure to use only base images of art they created themselves or is free in the first place.

[Elegiac]

Yeah that's an interesting issue. If there is provable damage or profit involved then I side with the original artist in the court of law, however in general I don't think we should go down the road of putting special regulations on AI learning/training that exceeds the regulations we put on people. For example, if you can't prevent a person from being influenced by an observation that is publicly available then I would expect that that same logic will have to apply to AI programs as well.

AI as they currently exist are not people and do not merit the same considerations when it comes to 'creative' inspiration as actual people, full stop. When AI get to the point that they can be considered people, then we can have a discussion about AI generated images as art - as well as a discussion of why the AI isn't entitled to financial compensation for the product of its labor.

Also I think that if generative AI can easily put human artists out of work then that means the work they were doing was not really that valuable or novel in the first place.

That's entirely a function of you having a psychological inability to perceive value in anything that can't be quantized in monetary terms, not because art isn't such a critical and integral pillar of what makes us human.

[Gabriel]

It's not taking art as "inspiration" and then making judicious decisions. It's literally taking pieces of existing art and warping it together. It's akin to little more than high-volume photobashing, but without an actual artist's insight into it.

The real fun comes when such a high volume of AI art is generated and starts to overflood the sources that AI art generation is drawing from such that it basically becomes a snake eating its own tail; AI generated art looking at other AI generated art to generate more AI generated art.

Ohh well, I don't really give a shit. Using Midjourney for cover art for my books has saved me approximately 500€ in Fiver commission fees.

Untrue. Currently, at least in the US, nobody owns AI generated art. It's created and basically becomes free for anyone to use, because no human actually "made" it and AI can't "own" anything.

Source: Ryan Meyer, intellectual property litigator, as per the article Who Owns AI-Generated Art?

“The US Copyright Office has already refused to grant a copyright registration for AI-generated art because the current copyright law requires human authorship for copyright protection. That means that, under the current rules, AI-generated art has no owner.”



It would seem that typing cool-sounding words and then deciding which image the computer spat out at you looks the best isn't worthy of claiming intellectual ownership of something.

If it is free to use, then it becomes mine once I take couple of the best Midjourney outputs and photoshop the non-fucked up parts (please Santa, give me and AI that can draw limbs or fantasy melee weapons. It is all I ask.) of them into one piece.

[Elegiac]

Ohh well, I don't really give a shit. Using Midjourney for cover art for my books has saved me approximately 500€ in Fiver commission fees.

You know what's also free? Learning to draw yourself.

If your counterargument is that you're too lazy, you're implicitly admitting the value in hiring a practicing artist and that AI algorithms are simply a method by which you can derive value from their work without compensating them for it.

[Gabriel]

You know what's also free? Learning to draw yourself.

If your counterargument is that you're too lazy, you're implicitly admitting the value in hiring a practicing artist and that AI algorithms are simply a method by which you can derive value from their work without compensating them for it.

I'm not going to spend 10000 hours learning how to draw myself.

Saying that using AI for art is bad because I should be using it to pay an artist is like saying that I should be paying for cable TV rather than watching YouTube all day. Times change, and creative folks are having the exact same identity crisis that everyone else facing unemployment due to automation is going through. Adapt or die out.

[jonnysensible]

is there a way to feed one AI's pictures into another AI who makes pictures and because they are all quite bad they eventually become worthless garbage?

they cant make anything new right? so if they kept copying eachother wouldnt it get really bad?

[Elegiac]

I'm not going to spend 10000 hours learning how to draw myself.

So you'd rather other people put in the work and then not pay them for it. Classy.

Saying that using AI for art is bad because I should be using it to pay an artist is like saying that I should be paying for cable TV rather than watching YouTube all day.

No, actually, this isn't remotely the same argument.

Times change, and creative folks are having the exact same identity crisis that everyone else facing unemployment due to automation is going through. Adapt or die out.

"Capitalism fucked over other people therefore we shouldn't take issue with it when it fucks over a new group" is a hilariously braindead take. We should not accept the wholesale destruction of important cultural practices because there's money to be made.

[Kaleredar]

is there a way to feed one AI's pictures into another AI who makes pictures and because they are all quite bad they eventually become worthless garbage?

they cant make anything new right? so if they kept copying eachother wouldnt it get really bad?

That's what I noted earlier. Seeing as these AIs basically just scour the internet and run a fancy google image search and them mash the results together, eventually we'll reach a critical mass of AI generated art wherein it just starts looking at other AI generated art and making things off of that.

[Endus]

It's not taking art as "inspiration" and then making judicious decisions. It's literally taking pieces of existing art and warping it together. It's akin to little more than high-volume photobashing, but without an actual artist's insight into it.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/collage
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/assemblage

Just for starters, because the comparisons won't stop with those two forms of media/art.

Also, "without an actual artist's insight" is elitist nonsense which additionally ignores that all AI work is in response to an artist's guidance and direction; the user submitting the information to generate that image.

It's art. It isn't meaningfully different in this from mediums of art that have been well-recognized in the art world for better than a century. It's literally the same non-argument as when some painters and sculptors claimed that photography couldn't be "art" because the camera did all the work, back in the 19th Century.

Untrue. Currently, at least in the US, nobody owns AI generated art. It's created and basically becomes free for anyone to use, because no human actually "made" it and AI can't "own" anything.

This depends entirely on the system. Take Midjourney; https://midjourney.gitbook.io/docs/terms-of-service

The user owners the copyright for all images produced, although Midjourney retains rights to make use of pretty much everything, but that's phrased as licensing of said rights to Midjourney from the copyright owner (you).

Source: Ryan Meyer, intellectual property litigator, as per the article Who Owns AI-Generated Art?

“The US Copyright Office has already refused to grant a copyright registration for AI-generated art because the current copyright law requires human authorship for copyright protection. That means that, under the current rules, AI-generated art has no owner.”

This is both literally just one lawyer's opinion, and the one case before the USCO is actively being challenged; https://ipwatchdog.com/2022/06/06/th...ion/id=149463/

In the end, AI is simply a tool, like any other. Is a photograph not copyrightable because the camera does most of the work of producing the image? Or digital art, because a computer does? It's not going to be an argument that survives serious legal scrutiny; AI is a more advanced tool than we've had access to before, but it's still just a tool, like a camera.

It would seem that typing cool-sounding words and then deciding which image the computer spat out at you looks the best isn't worthy of claiming intellectual ownership of something.

And taking a photo is just pointing a camera at a thing and pushing a button, if we're equally reductive. Is photography not "art"? Does the photographer not hold copyright over images they produce with the use of that tool?

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AI as they currently exist are not people and do not merit the same considerations when it comes to 'creative' inspiration as actual people, full stop. When AI get to the point that they can be considered people, then we can have a discussion about AI generated images as art - as well as a discussion of why the AI isn't entitled to financial compensation for the product of its labor.

It's a tool. The artist is the human directing the tool. Like with any other tool used to produce art.

Is a camera a "cheat" that doesn't produce "art" because the camera does all the work and the photographer doesn't have to learn to draw/paint to capture the image any more?

[Elegiac]

It's a tool. The artist is the human directing the tool. Like with any other tool used to produce art.

Is a camera a "cheat" that doesn't produce "art" because the camera does all the work and the photographer doesn't have to learn to draw/paint to capture the image any more?

There is still significant creative judiciousness on the part of a photographer in choosing what and how to capture.

Feeding a string of prompts into an algorithm is not creative judiciousness, it's selecting from a menu.