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Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Technology
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I disagree with this reductionist argument. The article essentially states that because ai generation is the "exploration of latent space," and photography is also fundamentally the "exploration of latent space," that they are equivalent.
It disregards the intention of copywriting. The point isn't to protect the sanctity or spiritual core of art. The purpose is to protect the financial viability of art as a career. It is an acknowledgment that capitalism, if unregulated, would destroy art and make it impossible to pursue.
Ai stands to replace artist in a way which digital and photography never really did. Its not a medium, it is inference. As such, if copywrite was ever good to begin with, it should oppose ai until compromises are made.
Doesn't this constitute capitalism destroying art? It's literally an attack on a method that actual artists are using in their art, trying to deny small creators the ability to expand their output independently.
You're saying you're concerned about AI replacing artists, but the people you're supporting taking tools away from are artists. Artists who are able to use AI to massively increase their productivity are able to create independent works in a much shorter time frame and with much fewer resources than before AI art.
AI art can't replace anything on its own. It needs actual artistic input and adjustments by an actual human being to consistently output anything that isn't garbage. What it can do is add tremendous detail and texture to hand drawn art in a much more efficient way, and create large amounts of assets for more involved projects much more cheaply and efficiently than otherwise.
The upshot is that the people who make things actually have enough resources to just make them without having to first do a little bowing and scraping and compromising their artistic vision. AI art takes independent creators with a reasonable ability to create assets for their projects and plops the equivalent of a moderately talented and well-funded art department into their laps for free or close to it.
No boards deciding the product isn't profitable or needs monetization, no feckless executives looking for somewhere to add 'input', basically nobody whose head is full of money getting in the way of making art.
That, to me, is a better world.
So like, if you're wanting to crusade against AI on behalf of independent creators, please don't. Please instead do empower us to not have to sell out our ideas in order to make them a reality.
I'm not anti ai, I use it generative ai all of the time, and I actually come from a family of professional artists myself ( though I am not ). I agree that its a tool which is useful; however, I disagree that it is not destructive or harmful to artist simply because it is most effective in thier hands.
it concentrates the power of creativity into firms which can afford to produce and distribute ai tools. While ai models are getting smaller, there are frequently licensing issues involved (not copywrite, but simply utilizing the tools for profit) in these small models. We have no defined roadmap for the Democratization of these tools, and most signs point towards large compute requirements.
it enables artist to effectively steal the intellectual labor of other artist. Just because you create cool art with it doesn't mean it's right for you to scrape a book or portfolio to train your ai. This is purely for practical reasons. Artists today work thier ass of to make the very product ai stands to consolidate and distribute for prennies to the dollar.
you fail to recognize that possibility that I support ai but oppose its content being copywritable purely because firms would immediately utilize this to evade licensing work. Why pay top dollar for a career concept artist's vision when you can pay a starting liberal arts grad pennies to use Adobe suit to generate images trained in said concept artists?
Yes, that liberal arts grad deserves to get paid, but they also deserve any potential whatsoever of career advancement.
Now imagine instead if new laws required that generative ai license thier inputs in order to sell for profit? Sure, small generative ai would still scrape the Internet to produce art, but it would create a whole new avenue for artist to create and license art. Advanced generative ai may need smaller datasets, and small teams of artist may be able to utilize and license boutique models.
If capitalism were unregulated you’d have anarchy and no copyright law whatsoever.