Comment on Visual artists fight back against AI companies for repurposing their work

• Lmaydev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s like sueing an artist because they learnt to paint based on your paintings. But also not because the company has acquired your art and fed it into an application.

  It’s a very tricky area.

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• dhork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m not so sure that’s true, there have been several recent rulings that all reinforce that copyright can only be asserted on the output of actual humans. This even goes back to before the AI stuff, when PETA sued over those monkey selfies. It is quite clear that the output of an AI does not, itself, qualify for copyright protection.

  Maybe if someone edits or works with the AI output, the end result might qualify. But the you also have to ask about what went into the AI composition. Here is where it gets less certain. The case of the Monkey Selfie is much clearer: the monkey stole the camera and took its own picture, and that creation was not derived from any other copyrighted work. But these AI are trained on a wide range of copyrighted works, and very few of those works were licensed for that purpose. I doubt that sucking everything into AI will be seen as a fair use of those works. This is different than a search engine, which ultimately steers the user toward the original work. This uses the original work to create something new, and because of the way AI works it is impossible to credit the original sources.

  Congress may have to step in and clarify this, but is probably not interested unless they can use it to harass Hunter Biden.

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  • joe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I was under the impression we were talking about using copyright to prevent a work from being used to train a generative model. There’s nothing in copyright that says anything about training anything. I’m not even convinced there should be.

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    • dhork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, of course there’s nothing that can be used to prevent training an AI, just like there’s nothing preventing monkeys from stealing cameras and taking pictures. It’s what happens next that matters.

      The Internet Archive didn’t get sued over copyright, even though it had electronic copies of lots and lots of copyrighted works (and even let people “check out” copies), until they changed their distribution model to allow unlimited lending. Nothing about how they gathered their works changed, it was the change in distribution that got them sued.

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      • joe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The article is literally about someone suing to prevent their art from being used for training. That’s the topic at hand.

        Are you confused, or are you trying to shoehorn a different but related discussion into this one?

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  • Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I recommend reading this article by Kit Walsh, who’s a senior staff attorney at the EFF, a digital rights group, who recently won a historic case: border guards now need a warrant to search your phone.

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    • dhork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think the article is very good and well-written, and the author is probably more knowledgeable on this topic than I am, but I think it’s a glaring omission that they never mention the idea that copyright can only be asserted on the output of humans. Even the latest guidance from the Copyright Office suggests that the raw output of an AI doesn’t qualify under current law, and in order for AI to be copyrightable it needs to have a human apply some creative endeavor to it.

      arstechnica.com/…/us-issues-guidance-on-copyright…

      The author suggests that a ruling that an AI can’t synthesize images from multiple sources might affect human artists who use multiple sources as inspiration. But those humans can look at 5 different paintings, create a 6th which is inspired by (but not identical to) the other 5, and get copyright protection for that, to protect their creative efforts. AI cannot, under current law. So when an AI combines five different paintings, who owns the copyright on it? The Monkey Selfie was ruled to be in the Public Domain. But AI are can’t be treated similarly; It seems absurd that you can put art through an AI “copyright wash” and end up with something free of copyright.

      (And it looks like in the latest guidance from the Copyright Office linked above, they say that future applications will require the author to disclose whether they used AI to generate the content, and "Any failure to accurately reflect the role of AI in copyrighted works could result in “losing the benefits of the registration,”)

      Even after reading that well-written article, I stand by my assertion that current copyright law simply doesn’t protect the output of non-humans, and Congress will ultimately have to step in and define parameters for it. Until that happens, artists who can prove their work was used to train an AI have a legitimate case.

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      • Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s important to remember the Copyright Office guidance isn’t law. Their guidance reflects only the office’s interpretation based on its experience, it isn’t binding in the courts or other parties. Guidance from the office is not a substitute for legal advice, and it does not create any rights or obligations for anyone. They are the lowest rung on the ladder for deciding what law means.

        The author suggests that a ruling that an AI can’t synthesize images from multiple sources might affect human artists who use multiple sources as inspiration. But those humans can look at 5 different paintings, create a 6th which is inspired by (but not identical to) the other 5, and get copyright protection for that, to protect their creative efforts. AI cannot, under current law. So when an AI combines five different paintings, who owns the copyright on it? The Monkey Selfie was ruled to be in the Public Domain. But AI can’t be treated similarly; It seems absurd that you can put art through an AI “copyright wash” and end up with something free of copyright.

        You said it yourself in the first paragraph, humans using machines have always been the copyright holders of any qualifying work they create. AI works are human works. AI can’t be authors or hold copyright.

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