<story><title>On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney</title><url>https://catandgirl.com/4000-of-my-closest-friends/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>csallen</author><text>Computers and machines have been capable of mass production for decades, and humans have used them as tools. In the past 170 years, these tools of mass production have &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; diminished many thousands of professions that were staffed by people who had to painstakingly craft things one at a time.&lt;p&gt;Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?&lt;p&gt;Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models, when many other technologies were allowed to bloom despite killing other existing business models?&lt;p&gt;Nobody can really answer these questions.</text></item><item><author>bluefirebrand</author><text>We shouldn&amp;#x27;t hold individual humans and ML models to the same standards, because ML models themselves are products capable of mass production and individual humans are not even remotely at the same scale.&lt;p&gt;If you write that book, chances are you will gain some fans that are also fans of other authors in that genre.&lt;p&gt;If ML models write that genre, they can flood that genre so full that human artists won&amp;#x27;t be able to complete.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not even a remotely equivalent scenario</text></item><item><author>Aeolun</author><text>If I read a lot of stories in a certain genre that I like, and I later write my own story, it’s almost by definition going to be a mish-mash of everything I like.&lt;p&gt;Should I pay the authors of the books I read when I sell mine?</text></item><item><author>tedivm</author><text>I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward.&lt;p&gt;I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn&amp;#x27;t) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. Companies that commercialize copyrighted work in this manner should be paying for a license to train with the data, or should stick to using the licenses that the content was released under.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think your example is valid either. The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people&amp;#x27;s work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. That is literally what they are and how they work. That is very different than people having similar styles.</text></item><item><author>sandworm101</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&amp;#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.&lt;p&gt;But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to &lt;i&gt;copy&lt;/i&gt; copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it.  If one doesn&amp;#x27;t want anyone to see&amp;#x2F;consume or be influenced by one&amp;#x27;s copyrighted work, then lock it in a box and don&amp;#x27;t show it to anyone.&lt;p&gt;I have some, but diminishing sympathy for artists screaming about how AI generates images too similar to their work.  Yes, the output does look very similar to your work.  But if I take your work and compare it to the millions of other people&amp;#x27;s work, I&amp;#x27;d bet I can find some preexisting human-made art that also looks similar to your stuff too.&lt;p&gt;This is why clothing doesn&amp;#x27;t qualify for copyright.  No matter how original you think your clothing seems, someone in the last many thousands of years of fashion has done it before.  Visual art may be approaching a similar point. No matter how original you think your drawings are, someone out there has already done something similar.  They may not have created exactly the same image, but neither does AI literally copy images. That reality doesn&amp;#x27;t kill visual arts as it didn&amp;#x27;t kill off the fashion industry.</text></item><item><author>madeofpalk</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;But I can&amp;#x27;t even&lt;/i&gt; get &lt;i&gt;cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn&amp;#x27;t a  profit-making company, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities, that&amp;#x27;s wrong to me.&lt;p&gt;Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI&amp;#x27;s products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&amp;#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnnyanmac</author><text>&amp;gt;Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?&lt;p&gt;Because in this case the art is still necessary for the machine to work. You don&amp;#x27;t need horse buggies to make a car, nor existing books to make a printing press. You DO need artist&amp;#x27;s art to make these generative AI tools work.&lt;p&gt;If these worked purely off of open source art or from true scratch, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t personally have an issue.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models,&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t need to kill it. Just pay your dang labor. But if we are treating proper compensation as stifling technology, I&amp;#x27;m not surprised people are against it.&lt;p&gt;Maybe in the 2010&amp;#x27;s tech would have the goodwill to pull this off in PR, but the 2020&amp;#x27;s have drained that goodwill and then some. Tech&amp;#x27;s made so many promises to make lives easier and now they joined the very corporations they claimed to fight against.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Nobody can really answer these questions.&lt;p&gt;Well it&amp;#x27;s in courts, so someone is going to answer it soon-ish</text></comment>
<story><title>On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney</title><url>https://catandgirl.com/4000-of-my-closest-friends/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>csallen</author><text>Computers and machines have been capable of mass production for decades, and humans have used them as tools. In the past 170 years, these tools of mass production have &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; diminished many thousands of professions that were staffed by people who had to painstakingly craft things one at a time.&lt;p&gt;Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?&lt;p&gt;Why should we kill this technology to protect existing artistic business models, when many other technologies were allowed to bloom despite killing other existing business models?&lt;p&gt;Nobody can really answer these questions.</text></item><item><author>bluefirebrand</author><text>We shouldn&amp;#x27;t hold individual humans and ML models to the same standards, because ML models themselves are products capable of mass production and individual humans are not even remotely at the same scale.&lt;p&gt;If you write that book, chances are you will gain some fans that are also fans of other authors in that genre.&lt;p&gt;If ML models write that genre, they can flood that genre so full that human artists won&amp;#x27;t be able to complete.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not even a remotely equivalent scenario</text></item><item><author>Aeolun</author><text>If I read a lot of stories in a certain genre that I like, and I later write my own story, it’s almost by definition going to be a mish-mash of everything I like.&lt;p&gt;Should I pay the authors of the books I read when I sell mine?</text></item><item><author>tedivm</author><text>I firmly believe that training models qualifies as fair use. I think it falls under research, and is used to push the scientific community forward.&lt;p&gt;I also firmly believe that commercializing models built on top of copyrighted works (which all works start off as) does not qualify as fair use (or at least shouldn&amp;#x27;t) and that commercializing models build on copyrighted material is nothing more than license laundering. Companies that commercialize copyrighted work in this manner should be paying for a license to train with the data, or should stick to using the licenses that the content was released under.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think your example is valid either. The reason that AI models are generating content similar to other people&amp;#x27;s work is because those models were explicitly trained to do that. That is literally what they are and how they work. That is very different than people having similar styles.</text></item><item><author>sandworm101</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&amp;#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.&lt;p&gt;But we are allowed to use copyrighted content. We are not allowed to &lt;i&gt;copy&lt;/i&gt; copyrighted content. We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it.  If one doesn&amp;#x27;t want anyone to see&amp;#x2F;consume or be influenced by one&amp;#x27;s copyrighted work, then lock it in a box and don&amp;#x27;t show it to anyone.&lt;p&gt;I have some, but diminishing sympathy for artists screaming about how AI generates images too similar to their work.  Yes, the output does look very similar to your work.  But if I take your work and compare it to the millions of other people&amp;#x27;s work, I&amp;#x27;d bet I can find some preexisting human-made art that also looks similar to your stuff too.&lt;p&gt;This is why clothing doesn&amp;#x27;t qualify for copyright.  No matter how original you think your clothing seems, someone in the last many thousands of years of fashion has done it before.  Visual art may be approaching a similar point. No matter how original you think your drawings are, someone out there has already done something similar.  They may not have created exactly the same image, but neither does AI literally copy images. That reality doesn&amp;#x27;t kill visual arts as it didn&amp;#x27;t kill off the fashion industry.</text></item><item><author>madeofpalk</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;But I can&amp;#x27;t even&lt;/i&gt; get &lt;i&gt;cartoons to most people for free now, without doing unpaid work for the profit-making companies who own the most use channels of communication&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the sticking point for me. OpenAI isn&amp;#x27;t a  profit-making company, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly a valuable company. A valuable company that is built from the work of content others created without transferring any value back to them. Regardless of legalities, that&amp;#x27;s wrong to me.&lt;p&gt;Put it this way - you remove all the copyrighted, permission-less content from OpenAIs training, what value does OpenAI&amp;#x27;s products have? If you think OpenAI is less valuable because it can&amp;#x27;t use copyrighted content, then it should give some of that value back to the content.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bluefirebrand</author><text>&amp;gt; Why is art some special case that should be protected, when many other industries were not?&lt;p&gt;It shouldn&amp;#x27;t be.&lt;p&gt;As soon as someone makes an AI that can produce it&amp;#x27;s own artwork without requiring ingesting every piece of stolen artwork it can, then I&amp;#x27;m on board.&lt;p&gt;But as long as it needs to be trained on the work of humans it should not be allowed to displace those people it relied on to get to where it is. Simple as that.</text></comment>