this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Wrong. Copyright protects works, not ideas.
The part that you AI bots always forget is that the machine doesn't do shit without a dataset. No data input, no output. And if you don't own the inputs, what the hell makes you think you can claim ownership over the outputs?
If you ask an AI art program to paint you a "pretty kitty cat", it can only do so because it has been fed enough pictures and paintings (plus metadata) to synthesize an acceptable output. Your human intent is an insignificant filter over their data, and if they haven't trained on any pictures of cats, you will never achieve anything even close to your intent. Your prompt has the value of a Google search.
Finally, there is a key thing called the "artistic process" in which a human artist imagined vision of their finished work takes shape as they work. This is nothing like what happens under a neutral network, and it is why you are never going to be an artist simply by filling in a web form. You have no vision, and even if you did, the AI will never achieve it on your behalf.
Sorry, but if AI art sounds too good to be true, it's because it is simply exploiting and distorting other people's copyrighted artwork. It gives you the illusion of having created something, like the kid mashing buttons at the arcade machine without putting any money in. But the good news is that it's not too late to learn how to draw.
You're fundamentally wrong and presenting a bad-faith argument in an insulting manner. Please shut up
I was wrong to use the dismissive term "AI bots". I'm genuinely sorry about that and I let my feelings as an artist get the best of me, but other than that my point still stands. To be fair, "you're wrong" and "shut up" aren't exactly the strongest counter arguments either. No hard feelings.
The objective truth is that "AI" neural networks synthesize an output based on an input dataset. There is no creativity, personality artistry or other x-factor there, and until there is real "general artificial intelligence" there never will be. Human beings feed inputs into the machine, and they generate an output based on some subset of those inputs. If those inputs are "fair use" or otherwise licensed, then that's perfectly fine. But if those inputs are unlicensed copyrighted works, then you would be insane to believe that you own the output that the algorithm produces--that's like thinking you own the music that comes out of your speakers because you hit the play button. Just because you're in control of the playback does not mean that you created the music, and nobody would seriously think that.
I've worked as an artist and a programmer, and a simple analogy is the concept of a software license. Just because you can see or download some source code on GitLab does not mean that you own it or can use it freely for any purpose; most code repositories are open sourced under some kind of license, which legitimate users of that code must comply with. We've already seen Microsoft make this mistake and then instantly backtrack with Github Copilot, because they understand that they simply do not have the IP rights to use GPL code (for one example) to train their AI. Similarly, if a musician samples a portion of a song to use in their own song, depending on various factors they may have to share credit with the original creator, and sometimes that make sense, in my opinion.
No matter how you or I feel about it, copyright law has always been there with the basic intent to protect people who create unique works. There are some circumstances which are currently considered "fair use" of unlicensed copyrighted works (for example, for educational purposes), and I think that's great. But I think there is zero argument that unlimited automated content generation via AI ought to be considered genuine fair use. No matter how much AI fans want to try to personify the technology, it is not engaging in a creative or artistic process, it is merely synthesizing an output based on mixed inputs, just like how an AI chat bot is not truly thinking but merely stringing words together.