I use AI image tools like NightCafe to create backgrounds and artifacts for posters of public events. I've read AI analyses of some of my creative writing and then edited that writing in response. AI and creativity interest me. I figure you own the edited AI image in your post, because you made changes, but I also notice the image doesn't have a signature.
Are AI creations art, and how much must you change AI art before you can call it your art?

This is certainly legally a gray area but I doubt that I made enough changes to make it "intellectual property" in a legal sense.

Since I will only use it for a YouTube cover thumbnail image, it is not too important for me.

as far as I can tell from news stories and social media posts, most real artists and writers hate it. Almost all generative AI models are trained on vast datasets of stolen intellectual property, and the AI companies are fighting lots of lawsuits and continuing to steal whatever they can, and trying in some countries to get copyright laws changed to make their theft legal.

Those AI companies also peddle their AI tools as replacements for working artists. Real artists, many of whom are competing with AI that was trained illegally on their own work. I've seen AI-using fake artists on Twitter taunting real artists about how long it takes them to do a real painting. Even boasting about uploading images of that real artist's work to an AI model to copy that artist more specifically. Platforms like DeviantArt and Kindle have been flooded with AI images and books. One AI music company alone was boasting that it had already released more than 15 million songs by last year. All of this is making it harder for real artists and writers to get attention and make a living.

I think it's great when people admire writers and artists of all types. Creativity should be respected and nourished.

But if you have a lot of respect for artists and writers, you can show it best by buying and recommending their work, not using AI to copy it. If you're inspired by what they've done, you can honor that inspiration best by learning to write or create visual art and music yourself. Not by using AI that was most likely trained illegally on their work, by AI companies whose real goal is money and control of as many sectors of the economy as possible, and who would not care at all if every living real artist actually starved, as long as those companies can steal their work and peddle the AI ability to mimic it.

I understand what you are saying, yet you apply legal terms that may or may not be applicable.

Many artists are worried, and as a retired journalist, I understand. Heck, AI writes better than most of the population already.
AI writes cleaner copy than I do, but it has not kept me from writing. But how is AI any different, except by degree, than the invention of cameras, Illustrator, and and those poem generators we wrote in BASIC back in the '80s?

How is AI art different from perfectly legal derivative art? Has anyone paid a fine for using AI art that mimicked a flesh-and-blood artist?

Have any actual laws been broken?

How is your argument that people should use and respect real artists rather than use AI art any more compelling than someone in the 1880s arguing that people should use and respect real coachmen rather than drive an automobile?

The AI companies are well aware their tools are based on theft.

People, especially liberals, shouldn't back Big Tech theft and greed over artists and other workers.

So far, I haven't found well sourced documents showing AI is breaking copyright law. Lots of accusations, fear and such, but nothing that stands under scrutiny. Any fines paid? Cease and desist orders issued? Until you demonstrate theft or other copyright violation, what you have is personal opinion, scare tactics and attempts to shame people.
Lots of people from all spectrums of politics are using AI. Teachers, artists, librarians, political strategists are exploring what AI can do.
When someone tells me what people, especially liberals, should or should not do...well, I heard enough of that in church, thank you.

very clear. But if you think the union and professional organizations' actions and the multiple lawsuits by artists, the NY Times and others to fight GenAI are only "personal opinion, scare tactics and attempts to shame people" you're being very dismissive of a gigantic copyright problem the AI companies knew they were creating for themslves.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218841900

As I wrote in another post:

No resolution was the result I found as well. So we'll just have to see.

It would be strange if the result of the upcoming litigation would be that new artists would no longer be able to train by studying other artists for fear of copyright violation. I recall a story from Omni magazine back in the '80s about a musician kept in isolation their entire life in order to keep other music styles from tainting their compositions.

And your comparison of training an LLM to a human learning is also wrong. No human has the time to absorb all the data being crammed into LLMs.

There have also been a lot of copyright cases already that humans lost.

The AI companies are trying to argue that they should be exempt from the laws protecting the artists and others they stole from, while at the same time insisting on their own rights.

AI proponents are already complaining about this bill Adam Schiff introduced. See reply 2 here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143222977

Their basic arguments are that

1) it would have slowed down AI development too much if they'd had to get permission to use all that intellectual property

2) it's too much trouble now to divulge everything they stole and revealing what's in the dataset will take company time that will cost them money, which will reduce profits

3) it will reduce their profits too much if they have to compensate the intellectual property owners

4) revealing what data they stole will cost them a competitive advantage, what a lawyer called their "secret sauce"

5) they'll get sued by at least some of those whose IP they stole

6) so if we want to have AI, we have to let the AI companies have all the data they want, for free.

Not the most ethical arguments to make.

Which is why they're trying to keep datasets secret. Why they're putting clauses in their TOS making users assume full responsibility for copyright violations from a dataset whose content the users aren't allowed to know. Why they're lobbying governments around the world to exempt AI from most standard regulation, especially copyright laws.

And why they initially made so many AI tools free, in the hope that more and more users will be so enchanted with them that they'll

1) give the AI companies lots of free advertising (students using ChatGPT to cheat created most of the early hype), and

2) take the side of the AI companies despite the grand theft and all the harms done, and put pressure on courts and lawmakers to let them get away with it.

I have musical and tech skills. While I have visual art appreciation, my visual art skills are limited.

For my niche unmonetized YouTube videos, my basic A.I. skills allow me to make better YouTube presentations that may inspire and benefit others artistically and otherwise. I see that as a good thing. This image won't put any artist out of work. To the contrary, it may possibly inspire someone else in a new creative direction that otherwise might never have happened.

I don't hide my A.I. "technique". I share my process with the DU community.

Last edited Thu Apr 11, 2024, 12:34 AM - Edit history (1)