How can an argument for these models being "plagiarism machines" be made when the system itself doesn't have any intention of plagiarism? — Christoffer
the way they function is so similar to the physical and systemic processes of human creativity that any ill-intent to plagiarize can only be blamed on a user having that intention. All while many artists have been directly using other people's work in their production for decades in a way that is worse than how these models synthesize new text and images from their training data. — Christoffer
The user of the system is accountable — jkop
possibly its programmers as they intentionally instruct the system to process copyright protected content in order to produce a remix. It seems fairly clear, I think, that it's plagiarism and corruption of other people's work. — jkop
What's similar is the way they appear to be creative, but the way they appear is not the way they function. — jkop
A machine's iterative computations and growing set of syntactic rules (passed for "learning") are observer-dependent and, as such, very different from a biological observer's ability to form intent and create or discover meanings. — jkop
A) A person has a perfect photographic memory. They go to the library every day for 20 years and read every book in that library. They then write a short story drawing upon all that has been read and seen in that library during these 20 years.
B) A tech company let an algorithm read through all books at the same library, which produces a Large Language Model based on that library as its training data. It's then prompted to write a short story and draws upon all it has read and seen through the algorithm. — Christoffer
Neither man nor machine becomes creative by simulating some observer-dependent appearance of being creative. — jkop
Numerous research studies have found links between how the human mind generate new ideas to that of how AI models do it. — Christoffer
If the user asks for an intentional plagiarized copy of something, or a derivative output, then yes, the user is the only one accountable as the system does not have intention on its own. — Christoffer
But this is still a misunderstanding of the system and how it works. As I've stated in the library example, you are yourself feeding copyrighted material into your own mind that's synthesized into your creative output. Training a system on copyrighted material does not equal copying that material, THAT is a misunderstanding of what a neural system does. It memorize the data in the same way a human memorize data as neural information. You are confusing the "intention" that drives creation, with the underlying physical process. — Christoffer
The intention isn't built into the AI models, it's the user that forms the intended use and guiding principle of creation. — Christoffer
Numerous research studies have found links between how the human mind generate new ideas to that of how AI models do it. Not in a self-aware way of intelligently guiding thought, but the basic fundamental synthesis of data into new forms. — Christoffer
But just a few years ago, manual scraping for images used in concept art was a fairly common practice. So these concept artists have been making money on photobashing copyrighted photos into their concept art for years, but now they criticize diffusion models (that doesn't even do this) to be infringing on copyright, effectively calling it "theft". Is this not clearly a double standard perspective? — Christoffer
According to you, or copyright law? — jkop
If 'feeding', 'training', or 'memorizing' does not equal copying, then what is an example of copying? It is certainly possible to copy an original painting by training a plagiarizer (human or artificial) in how to identify the relevant features and from these construct a map or model for reproductions or remixes with other copies for arbitrary purposes. Dodgy and probably criminal. — jkop
You use the words 'feeding', 'training', and 'memorizing' for describing what computers and minds do, and talk of neural information as if that would mean that computers and minds process information in the same or similar way. Yet the similarity between biological and artificial neural networks has decreased since the 1940s. I've 'never seen a biologist or neuroscientist talk of brains as computers in this regard. Look up Susan Greenfield, for instance. — jkop
Your repeated claims that I (or any critic) misunderstand the technology are unwarranted. You take it for granted that a mind works like a computer (it doesn't) and ramble on as if the perceived similarity would be an argument for updating copyright law. It's not. — jkop
There is data, and at a deeper level there is what the data means. Can an AI algorithm ever discover what data means at this deeper level? — RussellA
That's one of the main issues right? How comparable human creativity is to that of AI. When an AI "draws upon" all the data it is trained on is it the same as when a human does the same like in the two scenarios you've brought up?
At the very least it can be said that the consensus is that AIs don't think like we do, which is why don't see tech companies proclaiming that they've achieved AGI. There are certainly some clear shortcomings to how current AI models work compared to human brain activity, though given how little we know about neuroscience (in particular the process of human creativity) and how much less we seem to know about AI I'd say that the matter of whether we should differentiate human inspiration and AI's' "inspiration" currently is at best unclear. — Mr Bee
It's not like photobashing isn't controversial too mind you. So if you're saying that AI diffusions models are equivalent to that practice then that probably doesn't help your argument. — Mr Bee
Again, I ask... what is the difference in scenario A and scenario B? Explain to me the difference please. — Christoffer
So, what are you basing your counter arguments on? What exactly is your counter argument? — Christoffer
A and B are set up to acquire writing skills in similar ways. But this similarity is irrelevant for determining whether a literary output violates copyright law. — jkop
You blame critics for not understanding the technology, but do you understand copyright law? Imagine if the law was changed and gave Ai-generated content carte blanche just because the machines have been designed to think or acquire skills in a similar way as humans. That's a slippery slope to hell, and instead of a general law you'd have to patch the systems to counter each and every possible misuse. Private tech corporations acting as legislators and judges of what's right and wrong. What horror. — jkop
If your claim is that similarity between human and artificial acquisition of skills is a reason for changing copyright law, then my counter-argument is that such similarity is irrelevant. — jkop
What is relevant is whether the output contains recognizable parts of other people's work. — jkop
One might unintentionally plagiarize recognizable parts of someone else's picture, novel, scientific paper etc. and the lack of intent (hard to prove) might reduce the penalty but hardly controversial as a violation. — jkop
The system itself lacks the central human component that is the intention of its use. — Christoffer
AGI doesn't mean it thinks like us either. AGI just means that it generalizes between many different functions and does so automatically based on what's needed in any certain situation. — Christoffer
It might draw something that is accidental plagiarism out of that memory, but since the diffusion system generates from a noise through prediction into form, it will always be different than pure reality, different from a pure copy. — Christoffer
Let's say humans actually had a flash card in our brain. And everything we saw and heard, read and experienced, were stored as files in folders on that flash card. And when we wrote or painted something we all just took parts of those files and produced some collage out of them. How would we talk about copyright in that case? — Christoffer
Why is it irrelevant? — Christoffer
The processors in AI facilities lack intention, but AI facilities are owned and operated by human individuals and corporations who have extensive intentions. — BC
AGI doesn't necessarily have to think exactly like us, but human intelligence is the only known example of a GI that we have and with regards to copyright laws it's important that the distinction between an AGI and a human intelligence not be that all that wide because our laws were made with humans in mind. — Mr Bee
The question is whether or not that process is acceptable or if it should be considered "theft" under the law. We've decided as a society that someone looking at a bunch of art and using it as inspiration for creating their own works is an acceptable form of creation. The arguments that I've heard from the pro-AI side usually tries to equate the former with the latter as if they're essentially the same. That much isn't clear though. My impression is that at the very least they're quite different and should be treated differently. That doesn't mean that the former is necessarily illegal though, just that it should be treated to a different standard whatever that may be. — Mr Bee
Depends on what we're talking about when we say that this hypothetical person "takes parts of those files and makes a collage out of them". The issue isn't really the fact that we have memories that can store data about our experiences, but rather how we take that data and use it to create something new. — Mr Bee
Because a court looks at the work, that's where the content is manifest, not in the mechanics of an Ai-system nor in its similarities with a human mind. — jkop
What's relevant is whether a work satisfies a set threshold of originality, or whether it contains, in part or as a whole, other copyrighted works. — jkop
There are also alternatives or additions to copyright, such as copyleft, Creative Commons, Public Domain etc. Machines could be "trained" on such content instead of stolen content, but the Ai industry is greedy, and to snag people's copyrighted works, obfuscate their identity but exploit their quality will increase the market value of the systems. Plain theft! — jkop
Because a court looks at the work, that's where the content is manifest, not in the mechanics of an Ai-system nor in its similarities with a human mind. — jkop
Machines could be "trained" on such content instead of stolen content, but the Ai industry is greedy... Plain theft! — jkop
One difference between A and B is this:
You give them the same analysis regarding memorizing and synthesizing of content, but you give them different analyses regarding intent and accountability. Conversely, you ignore their differences in the former, but not in the latter. — jkop
You ask "Why is B theft?" but your scenario omits any legal criteria for defining theft, such as whether B satisfies a set threshold of originality.
How could we know whether B is theft when you don't show or describe its output, only its way of information processing. Then, by cherry picking similarities and differences between human and artificial ways of information processing, you push us to conclude that B is not theft. :roll: — jkop
And those extensive intentions are what, in your perspective? And in what context of copyright do those intentions exist? — Christoffer
There is a matter of trust here. There is no reason we should trust AI technology and its corporate owners — BC
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young
- Donald Fagan, IGY
The difference between the systems and the human brain has more to do with the systems not being the totality of how a brain works. It's simulating a very specific mechanical aspect of our mind, but as I've mentioned it lacks intention and internal will, which is why inputted prompts need to guide these processes towards a desired goal. If you were able to add different "brain" functions up to the point that the system is operating on identical terms as the totality of our brain, how do laws for humans start to apply on the system? When do we decide it having agency enough to be the one responsible for actions? — Christoffer
Because when we compare these systems to that of artists and how they create something, there are a number of actions by artists that seem far more infringing on copyright than what these systems do. If a diffusion model is trained on millions of real and imaginary images of bridges, it will generate a bridge that is merely a synthesis of them all. And since there's only a limited number of image perspectives of bridges that are three-dimensionally possible, where it ends up will weight more towards one set of images than others, but never a single photo. An artist, however, might take a single copyrighted image and trace-draw on top of it, essentially copying the exact composition and choice of perspective from the one who took the photograph.
So if we're just goin by the definition of a "copy" or that the system "copies" from the training data, it rather looks like there are more artists actually copying than there are actual copying going on within these diffusion models. — Christoffer
Copyright law has always been shifting because it's trying to apply a definition of originality to determine if a piece of art is infringement or not. But the more we learn about the brain and creative process of the mind, the more we understand of how little free will we actually have and how influential our chemical and environmental processes are in creativity, and how less logical it is to propose "true originality". It simply doesn't exist. But copyright laws demand that we have a certain line drawn in the sand that defines where we conclude something "original", otherwise art and creativity cannot exist within a free market society. — Christoffer
Anyone who studied human creativity in a scientific manner, looking at biological processes, neuroscience etc. will start to see how these definitions soon become artificial and non-scientific. They are essentially arbitrary inventions that over the centuries and decades since 1709 have gone through patch-works trying to make sure that line in the sand is in the correct place.
...So, first, creativity isn't a magic box that produce originality, there's no spiritual and divine source for it and that produces a problem for the people drawing the line in the sand. Where do you draw it? When do you decide something is original? — Christoffer
Second, artists will never disappear because of these AI models. Because art is about the communication between the artist and their audience. The audience want THAT artist's perspective and subjective involvement in creation. If someone, artists or hacks who believe they're artists, think that generating a duplicate of a certain painting style through an AI system is going to kill the original artist, they're delusional. The audience doesn't care to experience derivative work, they care only about what the actual artist will do next, because the social and intellectual interplay between the artist and the audience is just as important, if not the most important aspect rather than some derivative content that looks similar. That artists believe they're gonna lose money on some hacks forcing an AI to make "copies" and derivative work out of their style is delusional on both sides of the debate. — Christoffer
Then you agree that the training process of AI models does not infringe on copyright and that it's rather the problem of alignment, i.e how these AI models generate something and how we can improve them not to end up producing accidental plagiarism that the focus should be on. And as I mentioned above, such a filter in the system or such an additional function to spot plagiarism would maybe even be helpful to determine if plagiarism has occurred even outside AI generations; making copyright cases more automatic and fair to all artists and not just the ones powerful enough to have a legal teams acting as copyright special forces. — Christoffer
#1. Make money. — BC
I do not know what percent of the vast bulk of material sucked up for AI training is copyrighted, but thousands of individual and corporate entities own the rights to a lot of the AI training material. I don't know whether the most valuable part was copyrighted currently, or had been copyrighted in the past, nor how much was just indifferent printed matter. Given the bulk of material required, it seems likely that no distinction was made. — BC
The many people who produce copyrighted material haven't volunteered to give up their ideas. — BC
I was unable to generate the image due to content policy restrictions related to the specific artistic style you mentioned. If you'd like, I can create an image inspired by a surreal landscape featuring a windmill and stone structures at sunset, using a more general artistic approach. Let me know how you'd like to proceed!
So your claim is that adding intentionality to current diffusion models is enough to bridge the gap between human and machine creativity? Like I said before I don't have the ability to evaluate these claims with the proper technical knowledge but that sounds difficult to believe. — Mr Bee
Okay, but in most instances artists don't trace. — Mr Bee
I don't see how originality is undermined by determinism. I'm perfectly happy to believe in determinism, but I also believe in creativity all the same. The deterministic process that occurs in a human brain to create a work of art is what we call "creativity". Whether we should apply the same to the process in a machine is another issue. — Mr Bee
Indeed the definitions are very arbitrary and unclear. That was my point. It was fine in the past since we all agree that most art created by humans is a creative exercise but in the case of AI it gets more complicated since now we have to be more clear about what it is and if AI generated art meets the standard to be called "creative". — Mr Bee
However the problem is that in today's art industry, we don't just have artists and consumers but middle men publishers who hire the former to create products for the latter. The fact is alot of artists depend on these middle men for their livelihoods and unfortunately these people 1) Don't care about the quality of the artists they hire and 2) Prioritize making money above all else. For corporations artists merely create products for them to sell and nothing more so when a technology like AI comes up which produces products for them for a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time, then they will more than happily lay off their human artists for what they consider to be "good enough" replacements even if the consumers they sell these products to will ultimately consider them inferior.
There are people who take personal commissions but there are also those that do commissions for commercial clients who may want an illustration for their book or for an advertisement. Already we're seeing those types of jobs going away because the people who commissioned those artists don't care in particular about the end product so if they can get an illustration by a cheaper means they'll go for it. — Mr Bee
Of course the data collection isn't the problem but what people do with it. It's perfectly fine for someone to download a bunch of images and store it on their computer but the reason why photobashing is considered controversial is that it takes that data and uses it in a manner that some consider to be insufficiently transformative. Whether AI's process is like that is another matter that we need to address. — Mr Bee
Sorry if I missed some of your points but your responses have been quite long. If we're gonna continue this discussion I'd appreciate it if you made your points more concise. — Mr Bee
The painting of Mona Lisa is a swarm of atoms. Also a forgery of the paining is a swarm of atoms. But interpreting the nature of these different swarms of atoms is neither sufficient nor necessary for interpreting them as paintings, or for knowing that the other is a forgery. — jkop
Whether something qualifies for copyright or theft is a legal matter. Therefore, we must consider the legal criteria, and, for example, analyse the output, the work process that led to it, the time, people involved, context, the threshold of originality set by the local jurisdiction and so on. You can't pre-define whether it is a forgery in any jurisdiction before the relevant components exist and from which the fact could emerge. This process is not only about information, nor swarms of atoms, but practical matters for courts to decide with the help of experts on the history of the work in question. — jkop
Regarding the training of Ai-systems by allowing them to scan and analyse existing works, then I think we must also look at the legal criteria for authorized or unauthorized use. — jkop
Doesn't matter whether we deconstruct the meanings of 'scan', 'copy', 'memorize' etc. or learn more about the mechanics of these systems. They use the works, and what matters is whether their use is authorized or not. — jkop
Just a random question. Had someone sold the database of all posts of a forum (not this one, in my mind), would that be considered theft or public information? — Shawn
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