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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:

Break down the steps of training a model and it quickly becomes apparent why it’s technically wrong to call this a copyright infringement. First, the act of making transient copies of works – even billions of works – is unequivocally fair use. Unless you think search engines and the Internet Archive shouldn’t exist, then you should support scraping at scale:

pluralistic.net/…/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And unless you think that Facebook should be allowed to use the law to block projects like Ad Observer, which gathers samples of paid political disinformation, then you should support scraping at scale, even when the site being scraped objects (at least sometimes):

pluralistic.net/2021/…/get-you-coming-and-going/#…

After making transient copies of lots of works, the next step in AI training is to subject them to mathematical analysis. Again, this isn’t a copyright violation.

Making quantitative observations about works is a longstanding, respected and important tool for criticism, analysis, archiving and new acts of creation. Measuring the steady contraction of the vocabulary in successive Agatha Christie novels turns out to offer a fascinating window into her dementia:

theguardian.com/…/agatha-christie-alzheimers-rese…

Programmatic analysis of scraped online speech is also critical to the burgeoning formal analyses of the language spoken by minorities, producing a vibrant account of the rigorous grammar of dialects that have long been dismissed as “slang”:

researchgate.net/…/373950278_Lexicogrammatical_An…

Since 1988, UCL Survey of English Language has maintained its “International Corpus of English,” and scholars have plumbed its depth to draw important conclusions about the wide variety of Englishes spoken around the world, especially in postcolonial English-speaking countries:

www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice.htm

The final step in training a model is publishing the conclusions of the quantitative analysis of the temporarily copied documents as software code. Code itself is a form of expressive speech – and that expressivity is key to the fight for privacy, because the fact that code is speech limits how governments can censor software:

eff.org/…/remembering-case-established-code-speec…

If you’re not willing to do that, there isn’t much I can do, since all of your questions are answered there.

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hypertown@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

I’m not telling you to ponder this from a legal perspective

Except you kinda do. Why do you put this part here?

Break down the steps of training a model and it quickly becomes apparent why it’s technically wrong to call this a copyright infringement. …

I NEVER said that it’s copyright infringement.

The rest of the quotes also don’t really matter in this context. Sure you can analyse data. But how do you use the results of that analysis… Artists are against AI training only because of how those results are being used.
Nobody would give a shit if you’d train a model to convert drawings into text that can convey artstyle in a way even blind people can enjoy it. If anything people would probably just support it.

You also completely ignored the part where I compare different situations.
Just like that quote before says that it’s fine because scrapers do the same. Except we’re ignoring in this port how is this information used. Scrapers don’t hurt artists as an end result.

Quick-read doesn’t mean “didn’t read” and yeah, I didn’t really find an endorsement from a moral standpoint.

As an artist, I’m foursquare against anything that stands in the way of making art. As an artistic worker, I’m entirely committed to things that help workers get a fair share of the money their work creates, feed their families and pay their rent.

I think today’s AI art is bad, and I think tomorrow’s AI art will probably be bad, but even if you disagree (with either proposition), I hope you’ll agree that we should be focused on making sure art is legal to make and that artists get paid for it.

This doesn’t look like an endorsement to me. And yes the author does say it’s not copyright infringement at the beginning but still, the article ends on a rather negative note:

They don’t care if it’s slop – they just care about their bottom line. A studio executive who cancels a widely anticipated film prior to its release to get a tax-credit isn’t thinking about artistic integrity. They care about one thing: money. The fact that AI works can be freely copied, sold or given away may not mean much to a creative worker who actually makes their own art, but I assure you, it’s the only thing that matters to our bosses.

And those are just your own sources. \ Look up for artists profiles, their standpoint on this. Many are devastated that people are generating and uploading 10x of the art in their style.

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- Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I asked you to think about what copy write protects. It gives artists protection over specific expressions, not broad concepts like styles, and this fosters ethical self-expression and discourse. If we allow that type of overreach, we would be giving anyone a blank check to threaten the general populace with legal trouble off of just from the way you draw the eyes on a character. This is bad, and I shouldn’t have to explain or spell it out to you.
  
  What these people want unfairly restricts self-expression and speech. Art isn’t a product, it is speech, and people are allowed to participate in conversations even when there are parties that rather they didn’t. Wanting to bar others from iterating on your ideas or expressing the same ideas differently is both is selfish and harmful. That’s why the restrictions on art are so flexible and allow for so much to pulled from to make art.
  
  It is spelled out in the links I’ve replied with how these short sided power grabs will consolidate power at the top and damage life for us all. While Cory Doctorow doesn’t endorse AI art, he agrees that it should exist. He goes on to say that you can’t fix a labor problem with copyright, the way some artists are trying to do. That just changes how and how much you end up paying the people at the top.
  
  And I want to reiterate, I’m not talking about the law here, I’m talking about the effects the laws have. I feel for the artists here, but honoring a special monopoly on abstract ideas and general forms of expression is a recipe for disaster that will only make our situation ×10 worse.
  
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  - hypertown@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    honoring a special monopoly on abstract ideas and general forms of expression is a recipe for disaster that will only make our situation ×10 worse.
    
    Please explain how honoring artist’s will can make the situation 10x worse?
    
    I feel for the artists here
    
    I’m sorry but I don’t believe you.
    
    And I want to reiterate, I’m not talking about the law here, I’m talking about the effects the laws have.
    
    Let me be clear, we’re not talking about whether AI “art” should be prohibited by law. We’re talking about this specific community on lemmy. I’m not a lawyer and I’m most definitely not the right person to decide what should be banned and what should be allowed in the country. I know that copyright is broken and it was like that long before AI was a thing. I don’t have a solution for that. Believe me I don’t. I also know law is different depending on where you are. So if the matter is international the discourse is certain. However this lemmy community is not a country so it has no law. It has rules to keep this community healthy. Banning AI wouldn’t really change your freedom to generate whatever you want, you only wouldn’t be able to share it here. I think it’s only fair to honor artists’ will and it would keep this community healthy. But again I’m just starting my stance on this topic. If the community wants AI I’m just unsubscribing.
    
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    Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    Please explain how honoring artist’s will can make the situation 10x worse?
    
    That’s what I was talking about when I said:
    
    Using 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.
    
    And when I said:
    
    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 when I said:
    
    …If we allow that type of overreach, we would be giving anyone a blank check to threaten the general populace with legal trouble off of just from the way you draw the eyes on a character. This is bad, and I shouldn’t have to explain or spell it out to you.
    
    What these people want unfairly restricts self-expression and speech. Art isn’t a product, it is speech, and people are allowed to participate in conversations even when there are parties that rather they didn’t. Wanting to bar others from iterating on your ideas or expressing the same ideas differently is both is selfish and harmful. That’s why the restrictions on art are so flexible and allow for so much to pulled from to make art.
    
    And we’re discussing your assertion that AI art is unethical because of how it’s trained. I’ve given examples and explanations on how your views on honoring artists’ will is not only wrong, but shortsighted, and harmful to all of us. I do this not only in hopes of changing your mind, but also the minds of anyone who might be reading this thread. You have spent hours dishonestly dodging the actual points I’ve made, it’s not surprising you’re lost this far in.
    
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