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OpenAI's viral Studio Ghibli moment highlights AI copyright concerns (techcrunch.com)
submitted 4 days ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@beehaw.org
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It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away.”

In the last 24 hours, we’ve seen AI-generated images representing Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk, “The Lord of the Rings“, and President Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even seems to have made his new profile picture a Studio Ghibli-style image, presumably made with GPT-4o’s native image generator. Users seem to be uploading existing images and pictures into ChatGPT and asking the chatbot to re-create it in new styles.

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[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 35 points 3 days ago

Ok, now I’ve finally come to a conclusion about this debate. When a human learns to draw or write in a particular style, there are no copyright issues. However, when a machine does the same, you need to compensate the people who made the training data. Here’s why.

The training data is an essential component of of the model. It’s like building a house with bricks you didn’t pay for. If you’re building something like a house, ship, software or a machine learning model, you need to pay for the materials that are required to build it.

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 24 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I agree with tackling this issue intuitively because humans like other animals have a basic sense of injustice and its setting all kinds of alarms right now. We have already dealt with this - it’s called fair use. Machine processing of someone else’s art for commercial purposes will never be a fair use.

[-] luciole@beehaw.org 17 points 3 days ago

I’d like to add that machine learning is not learning, just like a network firewall is not a wall and doesn’t protect against fire. Lending the same legitimacy to machine learning than to true learning is an equivocation, a fallacy.

[-] thejevans@lemmy.ml 18 points 3 days ago

It's even simpler than that: In the first instance a human learned a thing. In the second instance a bunch of humans wrote software to ingest art and spit out some Frankenstein of it. Software which is specifically designed to replace artists, many of whom likely had art used as inputs to said software without their consent.

In both cases humans did things. The first is normal, the second is shitty.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago

Our current AIs are kinda pathetic, and might realistically only replace mediocre artists. However, people who buy art, can’t tell the difference between good art and mediocre art, so the financial impact could be felt by a larger number of people.

It’s a bit like comparing factory made clothes to properly tailored ones. We still have both, but machines have clearly won this race. Besides, only very few people appreciate tailored clothes so much that they are also willing to pay for them. Most don’t, so they wear cheap lower quality clothes instead. I think the same will happen to music and paintings too.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 8 points 3 days ago

Copium ITT. You can't put the genie back in the bottle guys, not sure how long it's going to take to sink in for you all. You guys realize you can run these bots on your home computer, no Internet connection required? How do you plan to stop that?

[-] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 30 points 3 days ago

Oh there’s definitely no going back. This will continue to erode the art scene and continue to steal artwork from humans that spent hours making it. No government or entity can or should go into homes and take these things away, but it’s not really about that. Companies are vacuuming up artwork, books, etc and paying nobody for them, while telling us some nonsense like it’s a positive for society. No compensation for the thing they are now going to make money off of, but they’d sue you into oblivion in a second if you stole something from them. That simple fact is why this is all shit.

I love the idea of AI and I’ve built things using ChatGPT’s API (miserable), but these capitalists have gone about it all wrong per usual. It could’ve been a public resource that people willingly contribute to, but the capitalists took it upon themselves to break the rules again, while hiding behind a shield of excuses for why they should pay nobody.

[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 days ago

Bingo.

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, but you can bust skulls over the rank hypocracy of the tech CEOs.

[-] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 4 points 3 days ago

Machines in the hands of the working class can thrive in a way that benefits everyone equally, and is available to everyone. But as soon as capitalists get it, the whole idea becomes corrupted because the sole purpose is profit at all costs. AI is not profitable yet, which is why these companies will pull out all the stops (including downloading content from illegal sources that they otherwise scold everyone else for using).

[-] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

AI companies should be fined percentages of their total worth by the government whose artists they are taking advantage of. For example: Japanese government penalises OpenAI 50% of their network for every image which is even marginally similar to any publishing house in Japan. And they should be very lenient about taking on these cases.

I want OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and IBM to get fucked so bad they won't even dream of coming back and doing this. I don't know why the EU penalises these companies in monetary amounts. They should be putting rules like a certain percentage of your company for a certain type of wrongdoing.

TBH if Japan or other asian countries bleed these companies dry they will be sitting on an immense sum of money which will propel them to superpowers in their own right. It's a win-win for everyone

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 15 points 3 days ago

People can do it on their own computers - that’s not a problem. The problem is when they try to sell it and functional governments are perfectly capable of regulating trade.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

If gets better and better at looking genuine and having fewer obvious mistakes every single day. Fox News literally aired an AI video as if it were real. What are you going to do when you have no way of telling the difference?

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

US doesn’t have a functioning government, yes. In anarchy everything is permitted if you’re strong enough, can’t help you with that.

[-] jlow@beehaw.org 2 points 3 days ago
[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 days ago

Concept of anarchy in politics is pretty elusive, probably more so than utopian communism. The big difference being is that we tried anarchy and it ended up turning into some kind of feudalism in most places.

[-] Vodulas@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

When did we try anarchy?

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 days ago

Anarchy is the default system before order forms. Everywhere you look that means some sort of feudalism. That’s why free market, anarchy, deregulation etc are seen by some leftists as means of returning to that kind of order. I’m aware of other anarchist schools of thought and I consider anarcho-syndicalism as possibly the only way to oppose current order. I don’t consider anarcho-syndicalism to be a form of anarchy though as it mentions methods of organising even in its name :)

[-] Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

  1. Anarchy is not the precursor to feudalism (and even feudalism as a concept is hotly debated among historians). That statement is also incredibly Eurocentric. The reality is there was a large variety of political and social structures around the world. Hell, just look at pre-colonial Native Americans and the huge variety in culture there

  2. You are defining anarchy differently than a majority of people. And fine, whatever, but you are going to get in a lot of pointless arguments because you are coming at it with the incoreect notion that anarchy means chaos. Especially on a heavily leftist platform that has a lot of anarchists.

I recommend doing some reading and getting caught up on modern anarchist ideas instead of spouting that kind of nonsense. Hell, look into some anarchist societies and see what they are/were about. Also note that most of the non-extant ones are so because of state violence against them.

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

It might be anti intellectualism in me but there are philosophical works and then there is empirical evidence. Statehood emerges from feudalism / casteism / whatever pyramid describing social order you might want to draw. Yes, there are communities that walked a different path but they never aspired to statehood. Everywhere else power vacuum invites power hungry individuals who inevitably exploit the weakest first and work their way up from there. Libertarian anarchism is just neoliberalism with a gift wrapping.

[-] Vodulas@beehaw.org 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It might be anti intellectualism in me

Ah, ok, well I see we are done here.

Have a good one

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

What should the government do? Go on every computer in every house in America and make sure they don't have any AI software? Make it make sense. You're just crossing your arms, grunting and going, "I DON'T LIKE IT!" Let's say we had the best government in the world, what's your proposal for them stopping this?

This is akin to my mother trying to stop Walmart from getting rich by not shopping there for decades. You're pissing into the ocean hoping to turn it yellow.

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 days ago

I specifically said that private use can’t be regulated (practical reasons, ethical reasons) but most of the states exist to regulate commercial activity and are equipped to do just that.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

Dodging the question is sure to get you ahead in your goals! Have fun with the copium. Let's meet back in this thread in ten years and see if artificially generated content trained on artists work is gone or making no profits. 🙂

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 days ago

What did I dodge specifically? Anarchy allowing everything for the strongest is a tautology and entirely irrelevant to current technology bubble.

[-] InevitableList@beehaw.org 3 points 3 days ago

These AI models require huge amounts of electricity. If governments wanted to they could destroy their ability to operate, like when China banned bitcoin mining.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

Some do, some don't. Stable Diffusion isn't any worse than an intensive game.

this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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