Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem::Experiments with Midjourney and DALL-E 3 show a copyright minefield
Ha, Ho. Steamboat Mickey says fuck your copyright.
(also no shit, AI images are just made from all the training data given to them)
Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem
Submitted 4 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://spectrum.ieee.org/midjourney-copyright
Comments
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 4 months ago
brsrklf@jlai.lu 4 months ago
Word of warning, Steamboat Willie may be public domain, but I don’t know if Steamboat MscMaihon Ysarai is.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz 4 months ago
They can’t catch you if you can’t spell (I assume AI would tell me this).
yuki2501@lemmy.world 4 months ago
“But we made the AI explicitly to obfuscate the fact that we used copyrighted images! Er ahem. I mean… YOU CAN’T PROVE ANYTHING!”
BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This has been known for a long time. The main point of contention now will be who is liable for infringing outputs. The convenient answer would be to put the responsibility on the users, who would then have to avoid sharing/profiting from infringing images. In my opinion this solution can only apply in cases where the model is being run by the end user.
When a model is served online, locked behind a subscription or api fee, the service provider is potentially selling infringing works straight to the user. Section 230 will likely play a role, but I think there will be issues in the cases where a model outputs protected characters without an explicit request.
Gutless2615@ttrpg.network 4 months ago
This is literally it it’s really not that complicated. Training Data set is not an infringement of any of the copyright rights. Generating copyright infringing content is still possible, but only when the work would otherwise be infringing. The involvement of not of AI in the workflow not some black pill that automatically makes infringement, but it is still possible to make a work substantially similar to a copyrighted work.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Meanwhile as we speak websites like Civitai and others started to paywall these models and outputs. It’s going to get ugly for some of them.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
That isn’t happening. They’ve backtracked on that plan and are working with users on a better plan.
grue@lemmy.world 4 months ago
No shit, Sherlock. Literally everything an AI makes is a derivative work of everything in the training dataset. It’s completely 100% impossible for any AI to create anything that isn’t copyright infringement unless every single thing in the data set is licensed in a way that is both (a) mutually-compatible and (b) allows derivative works to be made. In other words, if the dataset includes even a single copyleft thing then the resulting output had better be copyleft, if the dataset includes even a single proprietary thing then the owner of the resulting output had better comply with the terms of that proprietary license, and if the dataset contains both then you might as well delete the trained model and start over because legal use of the output is impossible.
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 4 months ago
Do human artists not take any influence from art they’ve seen before? I could name you the photographer that has influenced me the most and if you compare our photos it’s quite apparent. Is my art just a hoax?
chitak166@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Copyright and patent laws need to die.
I see no issue here.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It is In no way illegal to generate copyrighted material. It is illegal to sell that material. You’re more than free to draw or other wise create any pic of bart Simpson you want.
It’s called fair use.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Isn’t OpenAI selling it though?
Dkarma@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You don’t have to pay them to use stable diffusion or mid journey or dalle, no.
phx@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
There’s a weird line here because I’m pretty sure the restriction is “commercial use” rather than outright selling. So even if they’re including these AI products as “value-add” bundles or including them in i.e. Bing, they’d be tied the (ad, etc) revenue of the underlying product. There’s also a difference between commercial entities and “personal use”.
You might not be selling me a picture of Homer Simpson, but if you’re providing it via a tool on a page with ads etc there’s still a tie-in to a revenue stream and commercial activity
Dkarma@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Correct but if you’re just generating the picture it’s not illegal at all…which is exactly what this tool does.
burliman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
You know what I found interesting? The article has both midjourney cherry picked outputs, but also has the original screen caps from the various movies. Neither image was licensed from the creators to produce the content of this website, but they are still allowed to serve this article with “infringing” images far and wide.
fidodo@lemmy.world 4 months ago
This easily falls under fair use.
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports.
www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
This article fulfills pretty much all of those things.
0xD@infosec.pub 4 months ago
Infringement depends on the use, and they are not selling it - they are informing.
itscozydownhere@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Yeah. The only useable one (for commercial stuff too) is Adobe Firefly which is trained on its stock database and it pays authors whose works the model has been trained on
Blaster_M@lemmy.world 4 months ago
What goes unsaid is how artists make a few dozen dollars… a year for having their stocks trained.
itscozydownhere@lemmy.world 4 months ago
So low? Then yeah it’s bad… not sure if it’s opt in. I guess so. Anyway, since there was an agreement it’s not breaking copyright at least. Will this fundamentally change the already frail creative industry? Yes. Its inevitable. I’m a creative too.
Voyajer@lemmy.world 4 months ago
There are untagged ai generated images in their stock database as well
itscozydownhere@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Well shit
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I’m getting really tired of this shit. These images are so heavily cherry picked. If you put those prompts into Midjourney you may get things similar, but they aren’t going to be anywhere near that. My guess: someone used the copyrighted images as part of the prompt, but is leaving that bit out of their documentation. I use Midjourney daily, and it’s a struggle to get what I want most of the time, and generic prompts like what they show won’t get it there. Yes, you can roll the prompt over and over and over again, but coming up with something as precise as what they have is a chance in a million on your first roll or even 100th. I’ll attach the “90’s cartoon” prompt to illustrate my point.
Image
The minion bit is pretty accurate, but the Simpsons is WAAAAY off. The thing is, that it didn’t return copyrighted images, it returned strange amalgams of things that it blends together in its algorithms. Getting exact scenes from movies isn’t something it’s going to just give you. You have to make an effort to get those, and just putting in “half-way through Infinity War” won’t do it.
Image
At best that falls under fair use. If a human made it, it would be fanart, and not copyrighted scenes. This is all just lawyers looking to get rich on a new fad by pouring fear into rich movie studios, celebrities, and studios. “Look at this! It looks just like yours! We can sue them, and you’ll get 25% of that we win after my fees. Trust me, it’s ironclad. Of course, I’ll need my fees upfront.”
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
The new version of midjourney has a real overfitting problem. The way it was done if I remember correctly is that someone found out v6 was trained partially with Stockbase images, so they went to Stockbase and found some images and used those exact tags in the prompts. The output from that greatly resembled the training data, and that’s what ignited this whole thing.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Anything to slow the progress of publically accessible power.
Fight them tooth and nail. Self governance over interference from ignorant, decrepit politicians.
Also stop using copyrighted materials when training. You put in the extra mile now, and you’ll be able to make your own (automated) copyright material.
Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net 4 months ago
That Tree God on the bottom right looks really neat, and a worthy addition to the “Villain with legitimate grievances that murders for no good reason” club
burliman@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Thank you for saying this way better than I would have, and saving me the effort too! Agreed! I am getting tired of this shit too.