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

I meant “strong enough computer” as a sliding scale relative to the art being generated, and the time given. Apparently stuff like DALL-E doesn’t have high demands, and even a more demanding version would, to a certain degree, translate to “longer wait while the generations are compiled.”

Also, a human putting the finishing touches and finer details is, on one level, another industry’s version of having one store clerk oversee the self-checkout machines. Which is a good thing, and what I was implying by “new artistic opportunities.”

page topper: eta context

Edited by Readersprite on Oct 7th 2022 at 11:28:12 AM

The comparison to mediocre-to-horrible political debates is on point. Those have a tendency to argue in circles and dive into fallacious arguments more hole-y than the water Jesus walked on.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Oct 7th 2022 at 8:28:01 AM

Yeah, I thought the post did a really good job of laying out the actual issues, outside of the subjective question of “what is art?”

1) Commercially-used AI art (i.e. advertising or art that is used by a company for any other purpose, or any art that is sold or paid for) needs to be subject to copyright. Only public domain art can be used to feed into it, and it needs to prove that it is only using public domain art. The prompts/commands used to create it need to be recorded and available in order to verify this. It is not okay, and should not be legal, for a company just feed other people’s art into a computer and make a profit off it without the creators getting anything from it or having any control over their own work; that’s stealing.

2) AI can’t be tailored in specific ways; if all you want is a general vibe, then it works, but if you want anything more specific (“move that tree a bit to the left”) it’s a lot less versatile and straightforward than a human artist.

Reposting the link, since we’re on a new page: https://at.tumblr.com/monsterkissed/watching-the-ai-art-debate-thing-on-twitter-is-a/kkz35jhyh1hp

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 7th 2022 at 8:39:31 AM

I think when people say they feel threatened by AI art, it's mainly from the commercial side of things. Plenty of people wish to make a living as artists, and the rise of AI-generated art will definitely be disruptive in that regard. And while the more well-known and skilled artists may be safe, it could very much wipe out the kind of entry-level and small gig jobs that new artists rely on to get a foothold in the industry.

That and annoyance at a very small but very vocal subset of people who loudly proclaim that AI-generated art is a valid artform, thus making people who produce it artists, even if they do nothing more than input a prompt and select the result that pleases them the most.

AI art is an exceedingly transparent ploy to cut out that pesky human element—always trying to unionize and asking for better pay and complaining when you harass and treat them like shit... it's all very bothersome, and the weird spitefully resentful attitude that AI proponents display whenever artists get a bit too uppity is evidence enough of this. It's the same kind of shit that happens when a commission artist 'charges too much', or you ask a repost account to credit their sources or take down something and they respond by pitching a fit and blocking you. Art is pretty pictures and the people who make it have historically been little more than an annoyance to be brushed aside, at least that's how this all reads to me.

And it doesn't "democratize" visual art any more than McDonalds "democratizes" cooking as an art ^note the wide availability of frozen and fresh ingredients alongside things like cookbooks, the internet, affordable appliances, and other resources did that. I will concede that you might get a vaguely satisfactory result out of it, but it isn't yours, because the computer just made what is effectively a collage according to vague instructions, and if you want to tweak any fine details or add anything that has any sort of intent behind it, or expand upon perceived themes, good luck.

That's not even what democratization is, anyway. Art is already "accessible" to anyone with a bare minimum of motor function and a medium with which to create it, which can be literally anything. It might not look great for a good while, but it's a form of self-expression and the subjective quality is irrelevant to that end. AI proponents want pretty pictures they don't have to put in the labor or pay anyone for.

Edited by Chortleous on Oct 7th 2022 at 11:52:25 AM

The problem, or rather dilemma here to be discussed with the development of this type of AI is that, at least from a purely Western perspective, this type of technology will sooner or later have to be developed, because if someone does not do it first, someone else will.

Especially if that someone comes from a country with less scruples regarding the development of technologies that could be used for even less ethical purposes, such as Russia or China, the latter of which is emerging as a leader in the development of AI technologies.

Maybe it is not democratisation of “creating art”, but it is democratisation of “getting the pictures that I want”.

Edited by Smeagol17 on Oct 7th 2022 at 8:23:18 PM

I noticed that many of the critics from art AIs are from the Anglosphere, which is not quite surprising, considering that most of these countries consider plagiarism as a ill in the same level as pedophilia.

x4 "All work on creating AI art is because people don't want to pay artists" shows a very poor understanding of why most fields of computer science are investigated.

That is because in many occasions, the development of new technologies has been monopolized by rich kids, better known as "tech bros", who develop new technologies, which in many occasions tend to be disruptive, only seek economic purposes, do not end up solving anything and in many occasions, end up being harmful in the worst case, especially if the developers of these technologies do not bother to conduct research and analyze the potential impacts that their technologies may cause in the long term.

The thing is, a lot of AI work is also open source or actual researchers. Crediting techbros with everything is also ridiculous. e.g. Stable Diffusion does have startup funding and backing, but it's also a research group. <_>

Yeah, in the same way some computer virus exists because some nerd thought that publishing the source code of a virus in a book was a good idea in its time.

Edited by luisedgarf on Oct 7th 2022 at 1:00:00 PM

@Chortleous I don't think that logic holds up...or at least it isn't really an unethical alternative to paying for an artist.

For example, if I want a wool sweater I could hire somebody to knit it by hand. If I were to commission the creation of a wool sweater and then not pay them afterwards, that'd be unethical. This is because the knitter has done labor for me and I've failed my end of the bargain and have failed to compensate them for their labor they did for me.

However, if instead of commission anything, I buy a machine which lets me make wool sweaters easily, or that just makes them for me, then I haven't cheated anyone.

What if your sweater machine puts the designs of other sweater knitter on your new sweaters? And then you decide to sell those sweaters since they're so easy to make?

To elaborate on the post, yeah, that's like saying the hand-weavers who lost their jobs to punch-card looms were cheated somehow. Certainly, their job market shrank significantly to niche products and making sure the looms were looming right, but also it was unambiguously a better situation for everyone who wasn't a loomworker.

As others have said, most of these things originated as computer science research projects, and now it turns out they have a practical use. Obviously research for its own sake is valuable, but if some of it turns out to have a practical use, all the better really.

(Also the whole "it will give people an excuse to not pay artists", while true, wouldn't be a problem if there was a functional government system dedicated to making not selling your limited time to make other people rich a viable option.)

I see a lot of concern about "what if the AI steals someone else's art" but considering that a bootleg and replica market already exists, I fail to see how AI bootlegging and replicas change anything.

Edited by Florien on Oct 7th 2022 at 11:20:08 AM

Is it literally their pattern reproduced verbatim, or a design merely made to look as similar as possible?

The thing is, there's no overlap of "in the style of", and you get into very strange legal ground if you say 'you looked at my art too well and understand it enough to emulate'. Qualifying that 'it would be fine if you did it by hand not by computer' just gets into weird territory.

Because it's an AI programmed to copy other people's art. It doesn't create, it copies a design, it copies poses, it copies shapes, it copies colors, etc. It doesn't think "I was inspired by this artist's style", it just mechanically copies things.

I'll note that my argument wasn't that a machine should be allowed to copy anything, rather it was that using a machine to save labor is not cheating the laborer.

Now, in the context of this I personally actually can see the argument that it shouldn't have a copyrighted artwork inside its "genes" if you will.

I'll note that it's actually not necessarily accurate to say that a machine is not creating anything.

And humans don't copy shapes colors and designs to make things?

People aren't going around making new shapes. They all use roughly the same library of shapes that they learned, and stick them together in ways that other people have also done. Occasionally they do it differently, and they get feedback over whether that different is good, or that different is bad, and adjust accordingly. (Or not, if they think their different that was judged bad was good actually, or their different judged good wasn't.)

But when a computer takes shapes and poses and colors and combine them in a way that other people haven't, it's stealing and mechanical. When humans do it, it's an act of creativity and okay.

Well, as someone who is against the very idea of copyright (or at least current copyright laws), you can guess which side i am taking here. And before anyone calls me an hypocrite - as an semi-professional writer the 2 books i published online were done under the copyleft formula. Hell, part of my fervent support for AI art is because i see it as one of the best chances to force reforms and liberalization in copyright laws.

Honestly, i feel like most artists angry at AI art are pissed because now their trade has been democratized and they don't hold monopoly over it anymore. Essentially, their fear over AI art has less to do with "they are going to replace us!" (which as many have pointed before, both critics and supporters, is an absurd position) and more with "i will have to share the market with the machines!" If it wasn't, they would just declare "I'm ok with it as long as they don't make money with the work" like i've seen a few artists do beforehand.

Edited by Lalapolpolpol on Oct 8th 2022 at 4:02:49 PM

But people are already making money with it. And artists, animators, and other creative job types have long been used and abused by the industry. "Democratizing" art isn't going to improve things. If anything, it'll make things worse, as now there's a free/cheap alternative that doesn't do pesky things like demand adequate compensation or reasonable working hours.

> Honestly, i feel like most artists angry at AI art are pissed because now their trade has been democratized and they don't hold monopoly over it anymore

what does this even mean? Since when has our trade been a monopoly? (unless you mean artists making art means they hold a monoploy and that's a bad thing?)

Knitters did hold a “monopoly” on knitting before the invention of knitting machines.

Here's a handy definition of what a monopoly is (from the well-trusted Wiktionary):

Knitters are not a single party. Artists are not a single party. Admittedly, AI is not a single party, either.

It's easier, however, for a single AI company to become a monopoly, or part of a duopoly or triopoly, than it is for an artist to hold a monopoly.

Well, of course there's people making money on it. Technology has always been misused by assholes before. That's besides the point of the benefits that will come with the democratization of art. You seem to be missing the part that creating art without hours of work put into it is proof of how automatization is key to ending most of the work-related problems in the world: Have machines do work for us that would take hours to do and focus on the things we actually like to do.

Many people love to look at art, but not so much having to go through the whole process of creating it. This is proof we can enjoy the fruits of entertainment without going through the labour of making entertainment itself, so to say, and it's just the start of it. We already have some primitive animation and live-action AI gens out there, so who knows what the future will hold?

Note: I'm not speaking for all of course, i'm sure some artists love the whole painting aspect of art, and hell, i do admit to enjoying some videos on this sometimes, but that's besides the point

I mean to say a Monopoly in the sense you need to learn to make art in order to create it - not many people have as much of a easy time doing it than others, some lack any talent on it and have little time to learn - i'm one of those, since my "trade" is writing. But yeah, probably not the best comparison.

I think a better word for this is not "monopoly" so much as "hegemony", a select group of people who exert undue predominance of an area over others.

Edited by Lalapolpolpol on Oct 8th 2022 at 8:21:42 AM