I am still torn on this issue. On the one hand, it feels like a copyright violation when other people's works are used to train an ML model. On the other hand, it is not a copyright infringement if I paint a picture in the Studio Ghibli style myself. The question is whether removing a ‘skill requirement’ for replication is sufficient grounds to determine a violation.
I believe the case is that you're welcome to paint a picture perfectly copying Studio Ghibli, but you cannot sell it. You're welcome to even take the style and add enough personal creativity that it becomes a different work and sell that, but only if a random on the street doesn't look at it and say "wow, what Studio Ghibli film is that from?".
That's the problem here, there's no creative input apart from the prompt, so obviously the source is blatant (and often in the prompt).
> I believe the case is that you're welcome to paint a picture perfectly copying Studio Ghibli, but you cannot sell it.
Technically, you can't, but there's no way to enforce copyright infringement on private work.
You can paint a Studio Ghibli-style painting -- the style isn't protected.
These rules assume that copying the style is labor intensive, and righteously rewards the worker.
When an LLM can reproduce thousands and thousands of Ghibli-style paintings effortlessly, not protecting the style seems less fair, because the work of establishing the Ghibli-style was harder than copying it large-scale.
I'm in the "don't fight a roaring ocean, go with the flow" boat:
If your entire livelihood depends on having the right to distribute something anyone can copy, get a stronger business.
The works by Bill Mudron skirt an intersting line with Ghibli-style prints:
https://www.billmudron.com/ghibli-prints
I think we can put your last sentence in a more compact form: If your entire livelihood depends on your art, get a stronger business.
or even better: if you make art, get a stronger business
or maybe simply: stop making art
Or just: stop
That’s not really what I’m saying.
Large brand copyright holders gonna sue. It is part of their core business.
If you’re a musician, you gotta tour to make money. If you’re a painter, you need patrons.
There already were a ton of ways organised IP theft would make money on your creative force.
AI training seems different because it can gobble up anything out of order and somehow digest it into something valuable without human intervention.
The training is absurdly expensive, but considering how they capture the profit on the value created, and the training input owners won’t, will just mark the end of the open internet for non-FOSS normies.
A lot of people will need to stop identifying as 'someone who makes art with enough value to trade it for the decent wage'. Millions of egos destroyed, not a dollar of GDP lost.
Not a dollar lost, and yet all of society is poorer. Less social commentary via art. Less beauty. Less novelty and less new forms invented. Less entertrainment (entertainment that has some human values imbued into it, but there will be more 'entertainment', just now devoid of intentionality/humanity/novelty, a firehose of images/noises/colors with nothing behind it, a firehouse of slop). Less personal discipline trying to master something. Less seeing through the eyes of another person, so less relation, less empathy, less humanity. Less, less, less. AI is an inertia machine.
No dollars burned, just huge huge amounts of cultural capital. Just a reduction to a more primitive, less cultured/developed version of what it means to be human. Less thinking out loud, sharing of thoughts, exposure to new thoughts. More retreating into (a now lesser developed, now culturally atrophied) self.
So I guess you don't read books/comics, watch TV/Movies/plays, play video games or listen to music? People aren't born skilled artists, that takes time and effort. Being able to prompt GenAI well just makes you a skilled prompter, not a skilled artist. Over time, we will lose a lot of skilled artists and that is something worth thinking more deeply about, instead of giving a callous hot take. Artists are trained to view the world critically, and I want more critical thinkers - not less.
My wife and I went for wall decoration. There’s an art gallery and a poster shop right next to each other. The price difference is a factor 100 for an average art piece.
In the poster shop you can choose between a bunch of classics, or you can upload your own AI-generated picture and have that printed as a poster.
Art was always expensive, and posters as an alternative to paintings existed way before AI. Same with copying all kinds of art.
The main difference seems to be that we can’t clearly pay royalties to anyone for AI artwork, because it’s not obvious exactly where it came from.
There was a YouTube channel dedicated to Warhammer lore narrated by an AI David Attenborough. It got taken down for infringing on his voice, but its replacement came up, starting out with a generic old man’s voice and over time gradually more Attenborough-like. When should the Attenborough estate start to get royalties? At 60% Attenborough? Or at 80% Attenborough?
In my original comment I was asking people to follow me into an imaginary future where there are less artists. Artists reveal something about the world that speaks to us, which they do through critically breaking down and reforming what they see. I can't remember who said it, but they said when art speaks to you, it's a momentary bridge between the artist's soul and yours.
I'll answer your question, but my question for you is: why were you buying wall decorations in the first place? To me, it sounds like you were searching for a product category, and not specifically for art.
Regarding your example, if the AI is capable of imitating David Attenborough by including his name in the prompt, then it was probably trained on his data. If he didn't consent, then I might argue that is ethically wrong and, in my view, theft. If the channel was not monetized and done without his consent, I might argue that is just an ethical failing. In using his voice, the channel betrays the fact that it has value, otherwise they would continue to use the random old man voice.
Your belief is incorrect. There's no copyright law that is dependent on whether someone is made for selling or not.
This is incorrect.
Two of the four core tests for fair use hinge on this.
1. Purpose and character of the use. With emphasis on whether the copy was made for commercial use.
4. Effect on the work's value, and the creator's ability to exploit their work.
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Both can be dramatically impacted by the intent of the copy, usually with enforcement and punishment also being considerably stronger if the copy is being made for commercial gain and not private use.
This for the actual work, definitely not for transformative works like llm output. So a ghibli style image of me is fine legally, whether I sell it or not.
Yes, I agree. Style is not subject to copyright, only actual works.
But even for actual works, the above is incorrect. How you use the copy absolutely matters.
The language used to describe LLM behaviour such as "training" and "reasoning" has led people to treat them the same as humans, instead of a new and different entity that requires us to update our set of rules.
If I was the first person to invent a car, for example, and I named its method of locomotion "walking", would you treat it the same as a human and let it "walk" in all the same places humans walk? After all, it's simply using kinetic energy and friction to propel itself along the ground, as we do.
Because a car is so obviously different to a human, we intuitively understand it requires an alteration to our rules in order for us to coexist peacefully. Since LLMs are so abstract, we don't intuitively understand this distinction, and so continue to treat them as if they should be bound by the same rules and laws as us.
It's less about paint a picture yourself, arguably there is little to no value there. OpenAI et al, sell the product of creating pictures in the style of their material. I see this as a direct competition to Studio Ghibli's right to produce their own material with their own IP.
I agree with this. I don't know how to create artistic styles by hand or using any creative software for that matter. All the LLM tools out there gave me the "ability" and "talent" to create something "good enough" and, in some cases, pretty close to the original art.
I rarely use these tools (I'm not in marketing, game design, or any related field), but I can see the problem these tools are causing to artists, etc.
Any LLM company offering these services needs to pay the piper.
Is it not a copyright infringement if you pain it yourself? Why is that the case? I thought it would be just that studios wouldn't care for the most part. Hasn't Disney gone after this type of personal projects in the past?
Using character is copyright infrigement. Using style is not.
I am mostly ok with these copyright crackdowns in AI in the spirit of - if a human were to do it commercially, it would be illegal.
We can argue if that should be the case or not, which is a different issue.
However, it should not be legal to automate something at scale that is illegal when done by an individual human. Allowing it just tips the scale against labor even more.
You are not a for profit software product. You are a human. If you make a drawing, that drawing MIGHT be a for profit product.
If I make a for profit AI, that AI is a product. And if that product required others' copyrighted works to derive it's deliverable, it is by definition creating derivative works. Again, creating a small human, not creating a product. Creating a for profit AI, creating a product.
If my product couldn't produce the same output without having at some point consumed the other works, I've triggered copyright concerns.
If I make and train a small human, I am not creating a for profit product so it doesn't come in to play at all. The two are not similar in any way. The human is not the product. If THEY create a product later (a drawing in this case) then THAT is where copyright comes in.
It is a tough issue, but legalese will probably start from where and on what and how did this thing train on in order to be able to produce such results. It's similar to (guitar) amp modeling. Eventually they will either have to remove it or license it. I don't see other way. What makes it challenging is that vast majority of things that it was trained on can make a similar claim and it opens the floodgate. Outcome is either youtube-like thing where things exist in certain capacity, but not full or alternative is Napster like destiny where it gets banned altogether. Stakes are now a bit too high for Napster scenario. OpenAI might have a youtube-like angle for licensing with its Sora thing which seems to be turning into its own social network of sorts.
Scale and purpose is what you are missing.
If you paint a Studio Ghibli totoro on your cup, pillow, PC, T-shirt, nobody is going to care. If you do this a thousand times it obviously is an issue. And if you charge people to access you to do this, it is also obviously an issue.
The difference is that you’re not making money off your pictures (or else you'd probably need a licensing agreement), whereas the AI companies are making money off of the IP holders.
Why are you torn on the issue? Its not a secret many original IPs were stolen therefor its a violation.
None of the training data was originally drawn by OpenAI. OpenAI also actively monetizes that work.
it's a form of slavery when someone is profiting off the looong and hard, concentrated work of others without reimbursing them adequately.
that's why piracy Robin Hood Style is fine, but corporate piracy is not. I downloaded a Ghibli movie because I could't afford the DVD. I didn't copy it on VHS then to sell it via e-commerce to 1000 people.
AI companies grabbed IP and pull hundreds of thousands of customers with it, then collect their interactions either way and profit exponentially while Ghibli, Square Enix et al. don't profit from users using more and more AI ...
and most people are not "training" ML models ... people are using copy machines that already learned to compensate for their lack of will to put effort into stuff.
a lot of us been there and enough decided to move beyond and get/become better at being human aka evolve vs get cozy in some sub-singularity. some didn't and won't, and they are easiest to profit from.
Can we not use loaded words like slavery which just cheapens real slavery?
It is absolutely infringement if you paint a picture in Ghibli style. You just have fair use to infringe in a personal, noncommercial, educational, etc. purpose.
Fair use is a defense to infringement, like self defense is a defense to homicide. If you infringe but are noncommercial, it is more likely to be ruled fair use. If Disney did a Ghibli style ripoff for their next movie, that is clearly not fair use.
OpenAI is clearly gaining significant material benefits from their models being able to infringe Ghibli style.
> It is absolutely infringement if you paint a picture in Ghibli style.
Of course not because by this twisted logic every piece of art is inspired by what comes before and you could claim Ghibli is just a derivative of what came before and nobody has any copyright then...
> It is absolutely infringement if you paint a picture in Ghibli style.
Only if you copy their characters. If you make your own character and story, and are replicating ghibli style, it is OK. Style is not copyrightable.
You can’t copyright a style, e.g look at the fashion industry.
But do not look at the music industry, because a lot of what people would think of as style is a melody, score, composition and so on.
vanilla ice would like a word