Comment on [AI] Niwatari Kutaka
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoUsing things “without permission” forms the bedrock on which artistic expression and free speech are built upon. They want you to believe that analyzing things without permission somehow goes against copyright, when in reality, fair use is a part of copyright law, and the reason our discourse isn’t wholly controlled by mega-corporations and the rich.
What some people want will cripple essential resources like reviews, research, reverse engineering, and indexing information, and give mega-corps a monopoly of AI by making it prohibitively difficult for anyone else.
I recommend reading this article by Kit Walsh, and this one by Tory Noble staff attorneys at the EFF, this one by Katherine Klosek, the director of information policy and federal relations at the Association of Research Libraries, and these two by Cory Doctorow.
hypertown@ani.social 1 week ago
Copyright, it’s broken anyway. Some people abuse it, some are getting ripped off despite it. Fair use also is a concept that differs around the world. So I don’t know how legal AI training is and frankly I don’t care. All I care about is respecting authors. If they’re saying “No AI training” then you should respect it. This is also nothing like the Nintendo saying “Don’t reverse-engineer our products”.
Let me explain. Aside from the fact that you shouldn’t compare a soulless corporation to a living, breathing individual the most important difference is that for example Nintendo sells you a product in a way that even though you bought it you don’t own it. It’s your console so you should be able to reverse engineer, modify however you want it. But that doesn’t mean you can distribute their assets around the internet. You can’t just take Mario’s character model and put it into your game. For example every emulation project works like that.
Using things without permission is fine as long as you won’t blatantly copy it and AI basically does exactly that. No respectable artists would do that, there’s no artistic expression in that. You’re just copying things. AI can’t get inspired by some work, can’t come up with a new personal artstyle. Maybe AGI can but AGI doesn’t exists yet.
I said this before but I’m going to say it again: This machine is nothing without artists and it tries to put them out of their work.
Besides there’s so much amazing art posted every day you won’t be able to keep up with it anyway. AI is not needed.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Please actually read the things I linked, they’ll explain this better than I can. Here are a few quotes:
Pluralistic: AI “art” and uncanniness
How We Think About Copyright and AI Art
The people who train these systems still have rights like you and I, and the public interest transcends individual consent. Rights holders, even when they are living, breathing individuals, would always prefer to restrict our access to materials, but from an ethical standpoint, the benefits we see from of fair use and library lending, outweigh author permissions. We need to uphold a higher ethical standard here for the benefit of society so that we don’t end up building a utopia for corporations, bullies, and every wannabe autocrat, destroying open dialogue in the process.
What do you think someone who thinks you’re going to write an unfavorable review would say when you ask them permission to analyze their work? They’ll say no. One point for the scammers. When you ask someone to scrutinize their interactions online, what will they say? They’ll say no, one point for the misinformation spreaders. When you ask someone to analyze their thing for reverse engineering, what will they say? They’ll say no, one point for the monopolists. When you ask someone to analyze their data for indexing, what will they say? They’ll say no, one point for the obstructors.
And again, I urge you to read this article by Kit Walsh, and this one by Tory Noble, both of them staff attorneys at the EFF, this open letter by Katherine Klosek, the director of information policy and federal relations at the Association of Research Libraries, and these two blog posts by Cory Doctorow.
hypertown@ani.social 1 week ago
Well I did quick-read those articles and let me tell you again: I don’t care about the legal aspect of this. As I said, copyright is broken and either adding clauses that either favor or disfavor AI models won’t change that. I don’t doubt that just as those articles say, it’s either legal or yet to be determined. Obviously I could argue with even the quotes you provided that nobody stops you from analyzing every pixel on the art but important is this analysis itself and how you use it; or that the fact that human artists imitating others still add their own personal touch to it while AI is not. I’d rather focus on the fact that those articles don’t endorse AI from a moral standpoint. The best I could find was a neutral position but no endorsement. Just because you have a right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Those living individuals that made these machines are not the ones that are generating 80 images per day burying the true creator of the source material. And the ones operating the machine should at least think about consequences.
You also say: “public interest transcends individual consent”, what is the public interest here? How big is that interest? Is it bigger than backlash against AI? Is it worth degrading the life of mentioned individuals?
You also mention “creating utopia for corporations”. We’re talking about individuals! It is actually the corporations that want to push this AI down our throats. Because it’s way cheaper to generate something than pay artist to do the work and most corporations care only about money.
Let me also remind you that most comments online are very sceptical or outright against use of AI, especially in the creative field but corporations absolutely love AI.
Reviewing someone’s work is nothing like generating stuff based on that work.
Decompiling the game for a purpose of running the game on different hardware that was intended to is nothing like decompiling for the purpose of disturbing the game code without permission.
Reverse-engineering for a purpose of enhancing functionality, making things repairable is nothing like reverse-engineering for a purpose of making a highly advertised clone to outsell original on Amazon.
It’s all about the outcome.
Just because you’re free to do something doesn’t mean you should besides absolute freedom to do whatever you want is just anarchy.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I’m not telling you to ponder this from a legal perspective, look at it what those laws protect from an ethical perspective. And I urge you again to actually read the material. It goes in depth and explains how all this works and the ways in it’s all related. A quick excerpt:
If you’re not willing to do that, there isn’t much I can do, since all of your questions are answered there.