I like that the article ends like
Yeah I don't think Disney wants Midjourney gone though, they just want in on that sweet profit and maybe some cool free tech for their next cash grab they do themselves.
At least it's honest about the outcome of this.
author here - there is of course a good chance Disney will want to squash them like a bug.
While I hate AI, I hate copyright even more. I want copyright protections to erode as much as possible, but the AI-specific exceptions that has seem to pop up is not filling me with hope. The current laws are trash and we shouldn't want to expand the power Disney holds even more, it will only hurt artists.
We need some form of copyright otherwise if you make some content nothing would stop people from selling it and keeping the money for themselves. But it doesn't need to last nearly as long as it does currently.
Of course, I just dont think that the curent laws harbor innovation or creativity.
Yeah, I believe there is a sweet spot where small creators can profit off of a work for a long time but not so long that companies seek to hoard it. Plus, the larger the public domain is the more we can remix things into new adaptations. In some ways, large brands got popular through the public domain and then took up the ladder so no others could.
We need some form of copyright otherwise if you make some content nothing would stop people from selling it and keeping the money for themselves. But it doesn't need to last nearly as long as it does currently.
Wait * checks timeline * am I going to root for a Disney lawsuit now? Take me out of here this isn't funny anymore
I'll just quote a tumblr post here that I just saw. You really shouldn't root for them.
You really, really don't need to be cheerleading Disney and Universal here. It honestly doesn't matter how much you dislike AI art — if the court rules in favor of the corporations, the implicit expansion of copyright law will do a million times more harm to the arts than fucking Midjourney ever could.
Like. There is no definition of copyright that does not permit AI training, but does permit fanworks. The latter is much more clearly derivative than the former. You do fanart? Fanfic? Disney's pointing a gun squarely at your head and you're cheering because it might hit the AI artists behind you too.
And beyond that, do you know what happens to AI generation if Disney/Universal win this? They aren't opposed to the technology in principle! They'll be able to use their exclusive rights to a vast corpus of art to make their own AI, for their own purposes. Who does this help? Companies who want to reduce employment costs and disenfranchise the working artist. Who does this hurt? Well, it hurts independent AI users. Congrats, your anxiety over commission prices is gone now, not that it was well-founded to begin with. It also hurts anyone who wants to make use of fair use doctrine forever, so I hope none of what you were selling was fanart of copyrighted characters.
I've never made a secret of being rather more open to generative AI as a technology than most people in these online spheres. But for fuck's sake, you really don't need to like AI to realize that this lawsuit's success would be a terrible thing to happen to art! If you've found yourself on the same side as Disney, that should be a clue that you might wanna review your thinking!
Yeah I figured as much before you posted this, but it's a good quote. Basically if they win they'll be able to make a profit out of the ai as well as screwing you over royally as an artist.
If you're using AI to create something you're not an artist.
I wasn't suggesting one would. Simply that Disney already screws up artists who don't use AI.
Reading comprehension is truly dead.
A LOT of art is transformative works and Disney is trying to lock down copyright with this which would cause a massive hit to pretty much anything remotely transformative. This is what my original comment was about and what @Mothra was also talking about.
If you’re using AI to create something you’re not an artist.
Are the band Everything Everything not artists because the lyrics to Software Greatman are partially made with gen-AI?
Most of it you see is stupid slop because of the massive hype behind it driven by corporations who want to see line go up, but there are some good art pieces made with gen-AI. With those there is usually also significantly more creative process involved and not just "enter prompt, get output, post online" like so many people seem to imply, too.
Just to give another example of good gen-AI art, this is Meat Gala (cw: body horror!) by Rob Sheridan. Read the post body.
If you’re using AI to create something you’re not an artist.
At which point does something become art?
Is photography art? You didn't paint that portrait yourself.
Is electronic music art? You never learned to play a physical instrument and just enter notes on your computer which plays it for you.
Is Comedian art? This is just a banana, duck taped to a wall. I can do that myself in 2 minutes.
Is found art art? This is just some random object.
And so on.
It is futile to try to define what is and is not art (and therefore, who is and is not an artist) by the method(s) it was made with, that is an extremely limiting viewpoint and leads to the above assertions that I would consider extremely unserious. Gen-AI is no different.
Anyway, to get back to the original topic:
If you actually care about artists, support unions like SAG-AFTRA working against corporations who are trying to use AI as yet another method to underpay or get rid of their employees, instead of corporations trying to prevent their IP from being used in anything that doesn't make them money, which would actively hurt a huge part of artists. That is the important difference.
You literally sound like an AI with this post. AI isn't fucking art. Full stop. I work in the film industry. Fuck all AI. Fuck anyone defending that bullshit.
Ah yes, great way to dismiss any sort of criticism. Hit em with the “You sound like an AI”.
“AI is not art” is a reactionary statement and I hope someday you start thinking critically about this.
EDIT: And to actually respond to the little you were saying, just as you haven't,
It doesn't matter where you work, it doesn't make "AI art isn't art" less of a thought-terminating cliche. I think I already wrote enough in my previous reply that you never acknowledged (hey, I suppose the "Reading comprehension is truly dead" I put at the top there was more of a premonition) so I'm not going to write any more here. Read that again.
However, genuinely think about what you want to accomplish by saying that. I can say one thing, realistically the technology isn't going away.
Typing a prompt and claiming you made 'art' doesn't make you a fucking artist. Literally that is an insult to anyone making actual art. If you want to use words to make something that is artistic, fucking write a book.
To quote, uh, myself:
Are the band Everything Everything not artists because the lyrics to Software Greatman are partially made with gen-AI?
Most of it you see is stupid slop because of the massive hype behind it driven by corporations who want to see line go up, but there are some good art pieces made with gen-AI. With those there is usually also significantly more creative process involved and not just "enter prompt, get output, post online" like so many people seem to imply, too.
(emphasis mine. lol)
Let's take "prompts" out of the equation. Let's say someone takes some images, corrupts them, and presents them on their instagram page or whatever. Is that art? Surely it is, this is a popular art form called glitch art.
What if the original images are downloaded from the internet and are not their own? Is that art?
What if the computer picks out images from the internet and the person only corrupts and uploads some of what they are presented by the computer? Is that art?
What if the computer picks out and corrupts the images, and the person only decides which to upload, i.e. decides to present them as art? Are the uploaded images art?
If they are, I agree.
If they are not, at which point of these does it stop being art?
What if the source images are originally AI-generated, either by the same person with no prompt, just as a random image generator, or by someone else? Are the final images still art?
If they are, where do you think the limit is, how directly can AI be involved in something for it to still be art?
If they are not, where is the difference between someone taking essentially automatically processed pictures from the internet and curating them, and someone taking algorithmically generated images, neither of which they have direct influence over, in your opinion, that makes one of them art and the other not, despite the process of the glitch art creator being the same?
This is an interesting argument.
If a doctor uses generative AI to misdiagnose a patient the doctor is still liable. So if a user creates copyright infringing material and uses that for profit, would they not be liable for those actions?
On the other hand, if an AI doing this was a paid product would the AI company not be profiting off of copyrighted material?
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.