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AI-generated content: Legality, ethics, and the nature of art

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Figured that since it's the new big thing sweeping the globe, and how it'll likely have a profound impact on media going forward, I decided to open up a thread specifically to discuss the topic of AI art generators like Dall-E, Midjourney, and the like.

It's a polarizing subject, but I think there's merit in debating the various issues surrounding it.

Such issues include "is it ethical for AI art generators to be trained on data scraped together from copyrighted works, and how is it different from humans getting inspiration from art?" and "what do you see as the future of commercial artistic endeavors going forward (comics, game asset creation, animation, etc)?"

EDIT: Expanding the topic to all forms of AI-generated art, including creative writing and music composition.


There's also a more general thread for discussion of AI as a whole.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 22nd 2024 at 11:56:23 AM

Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#4301: Jun 25th 2025 at 4:54:09 AM

What reason did he give for this?

GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4302: Jun 25th 2025 at 4:57:42 AM

Using the books was deemed "transformative work" and thus falls under fair use. Using pirated books, however, was not deemed acceptable, despite Anthropic trying to claim that "the method through which the books were acquired is irrelevant" (I would've reported whatever genius came up with that to the Bar Association for sheer incompetence...), so they're also looking at a possible fine of 150,000 dollars per book they pirated to train their models.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#4303: Jun 25th 2025 at 5:04:43 AM

[up] How many did they pirate? Because it looks like he just said they could use any books they want?

GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4304: Jun 25th 2025 at 5:10:58 AM

According to the Reuters article, they have fair use over them if they buy them legally (the same way I can buy a book, read it for inspiration, and base a work of mine on it as long as I don't copy it). They pirated about 7 million of those books... so, math says that in a certain scenario where they'd pay the full sum for statutory damage for each work, they'd owe a trillion dollars.

Despite it being impossible, part of me wishes that such a scenario could come true.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#4305: Jun 25th 2025 at 5:14:29 AM

[up] Any way they can prove those books were pirated?

Edited by Kaiseror on Jun 25th 2025 at 8:11:09 AM

GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4306: Jun 25th 2025 at 5:17:12 AM

The geniuses at Anthropic admitted it themselves, after those who sued gave evidence of such acts. They claimed that "the source of the work is irrelevant", which the judge shut down.

As I said, if I had a Bar membership I would've asked for whoever came up with that defense to be stripped of their right to practice out of sheer incompetence.

Edited by GearFriedTheKnight on Jun 25th 2025 at 2:18:17 PM

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#4307: Jun 25th 2025 at 6:11:56 AM

Think they're actually going to act on it?

GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4308: Jun 25th 2025 at 6:44:44 AM

Some definitely will, especially big publishers. Minor publishers and self-published works? That depends on if they can afford the legal fees or if they can find good enough lawyers to do the work pro bono.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
Stage7-4 Since: Nov, 2014
#4309: Jun 25th 2025 at 7:43:32 AM

Disregarding the pirated library fine, that's two cases now: one against fair-use (Reuters v Ross) and now one for fair use (Anthropic v ... uh, none of these news sources can cite the case name?).

Meaning copyright and ai is even less settled law than before and will either need more case settlements or a higher court to deliberate. Or something. I've gotten used to the US court system failing us time and time again but shit this still stings.

Edited by Stage7-4 on Jun 25th 2025 at 7:44:30 AM

GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4310: Jun 25th 2025 at 7:56:10 AM

It's likely this will go up to the Supreme Court. Considering the bans on some topics, that is the only thing I can say.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#4311: Jun 25th 2025 at 8:01:17 AM

There's also the Disney/Universal case as well. That might be the concern given the sheer amount of legal resources the platiffs have on disposal and they would have reason to back the anti piracy ruling (they already own a wealth of content so they are free to train AI on that abd don't need piracy that much)

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#4312: Jun 25th 2025 at 8:03:45 AM

Keep in mind that the details are likely to matter to each's case outcome, never mind the details of the outcome.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#4313: Jun 25th 2025 at 8:16:28 AM

[up]x4 Apparently, this same judge dismissed a case against Exxon in 2018 over climate change. So I guess you don't want this guy if you're making a case against big businesses.

Would they be able to another lawsuit with a different judge?

GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4314: Jun 25th 2025 at 8:19:56 AM

Double jeopardy very much says no. Another lawsuit over a different event would have to be made.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#4315: Jun 25th 2025 at 10:08:47 AM

Double jeopardy is a criminal concept isn’t it? Now you genrally still can’t just file a lawsuit again, but an appeal may go to a different judge on a different circuit.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4316: Jun 25th 2025 at 10:19:01 AM

Yeah, I got tripped up there because I'm still not very familiar with common law, the civil equivalent is res judiciata. They can appeal this sentence, but they cannot sue again in another court.

Also, it was already a federal judge, the appeal stays in the circuit where the base case was held unless plaintiffs find a way to pull it away (again, ban on a topic, so cannot talk about it at length). If I'm not mistaken, the next appeal would go to the Supreme Court, who can decide to just not hear the case.

Edited by GearFriedTheKnight on Jun 25th 2025 at 7:20:05 PM

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#4317: Jun 28th 2025 at 5:53:02 AM

Just found out that Wikimedia Commons - the official image repository of Wikipedia and related websites - has a guideline about AI-generated images, which also summarizes their copyright status. Apparently in most places, making an image with AI doesn't entitle the image maker. The UK is a notable exception. They also assume that training on a copyrighted work does not create a copyright violation in and of itself; only if the resulting AI image would count as a derivative work.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#4318: Jun 28th 2025 at 5:11:28 PM

ChatGPT got "absolute wrecked" by the AI of the Atari 2600 version of Chess on beginner difficulty.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Resileafs I actually wanted to be Resileaf Since: Jan, 2019
I actually wanted to be Resileaf
#4319: Jun 28th 2025 at 5:21:06 PM

Chat GPT isn't actually playing chess. It's generative text after all. It just guesses a move and plays it, whether it's legal or not, because it has no idea what the chess board is or looks like.

Edited by Resileafs on Jun 28th 2025 at 10:48:49 AM

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#4320: Jun 28th 2025 at 7:07:17 PM

Chat GPT's intelligence IMO is a little underrated, but it's unsurprising that it's not good at chess. That's not really what it's designed to do. It's designed to converse and to generate text.

If you're having it play chess, it's going well outside normal conversation.

As a test I did have it play chess against Marvin (an intentionally crappy chessbot) until I got bored. Chat GPT seemed to understand the concept of chess and made generally sensible (not necessarily great, but sensible) decisions, though it did have trouble remembering the board's positioning.

Leviticus 19:34
Resileafs I actually wanted to be Resileaf Since: Jan, 2019
I actually wanted to be Resileaf
#4321: Jun 28th 2025 at 8:04:27 PM

A lot of people have tried to play chess with Chat GPT. Here's a memey video about it being set against Stockfish. As you can see, the moves it makes quickly start getting nonsensical because it doesn't see the board and isn't actually playing chess. It's just making moves that sound logical because of whatever data it's pulling from.

Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#4322: Jun 29th 2025 at 4:17:03 AM

Chat GPT is a noob at chess

git good

grin

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4323: Jun 29th 2025 at 4:34:44 AM

You could've just stopped at "Chatbots are not good". And they want them to do medical examinations?

That these kinds of generative AI indiscriminately pull from their data without looking things is something I noticed when playing around with image generator — ask them to generate logos, and they will pull from royalty free vanilla stuff. In general, they seem flat-out incapable of doing more abstract, creative things — which is already an issue with logo design, seen how minimalism is throttling any creativity out of it.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."
Ultimatum Disasturbator from The Wiggle Room (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#4324: Jun 29th 2025 at 5:01:45 AM

> And they want them to do medical examinations?

We're not at the stage where we have 'medical droids' but we are at the stage where robots/computers have been used in sugary,I don't think we'll ever have fully automated medical examinations,it's just too expensive and risky to leave everything to an AI.

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
GearFriedTheKnight BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century. from The nearest road that can be raced (Experienced Trainee) Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
BLOCKING - A weapon for the 21st century.
#4325: Jun 29th 2025 at 6:03:53 AM

They are already advertising AIs being capable of analyzing medical documents and doing medical examinations by themselves, with zero human input. "It's cheaper, and AI cannot make mistakes unlike humans!" For the record, this is quite possibly one of the worst ideas ever, up there with AI replacing legislators, administrators and judges.

Medical droids are completely different, as they're almost always operated by surgeons and work as part of medical teams.

''There's no magic in tuning; yet, it's something that tends to escape from any logic."

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