AI Blather...

[olivermoss]

I think at this point a lot of the hype around 'AI' has started to meet with reality. But, there is one story that keeps rattling around in my head

Adobe is making it's own visual AI thinger called Firefly. It only uses public domain art... or so it claims, there is no way that data set is clean! They never are!

Still, this cuts down on plagiarism massively. It doesn't involve directly imitating specific artists on dA or Artstation. The legal liabilities of using this are going to be a night-and-day difference. Why would any project involving funding, capital, investors run the risk of using anything BUT Abode? Midjourney and Dall-E will have hobbyists and people paying for subs because people like to pretend being an 'AI artist' is a real thing, but in terms of corporate accounts, Abode just ate their lunch. All the stress, anger, legal liabilities that come from using dA and Artstation scrapes? Companies can just... avoid all that.

This means the apps that do use stolen are are going to have an income problem, and they need to maintain massive data sets, make corrections, remove objectionable content... do things like disallow 'Trump' as a keyword for PR reasons...

So yeah, the smug techbros who were all 'just accept it, it's the future, it's fair use, you can't do anything, you are trying to push back the ocean... embrace it or be left behind' about stolen art... yeah, how that working out? How the multiple lawsuits going?

It's also worth nothing that the 'most obvious use case' for procedurally generated art being concept art remains a bad joke. Imagine if all the concept art for Star Wars couldn't be copyrighted, imagine if the concept art for Star Trek couldn't be... jcf that would be a nightmare for them. Again, if you know anything about anything it's so painfully dumb...

I still don't like this tech existing or how fast it's moving. It's still going to cause problems, but a lot of the claims have turned out to be paper tigers and now Abode... god I hate Abode and hate being happy for them schooling start ups but, yeah, no project with money to spend is going to risk using a slurry made from copyrighted works.

Also ChatGPT has been leaking credit card info because it doesn't know not to... jcf people don't give confidently incorrect computer apps access to your fucking bank accounts.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Adobe is garbage, but I can still be glad that they're helping to quarantine the OTHER garbage that I've grown to hate!

I also remain way happier about copyright law precedent than I would have every believed. Not being able to copyright your designs would be terrible business... probably worse business than having to pay an actual human to give you copyrightable designs!

[olivermoss]

Adobe's Firefly is the sort of 'AI assist' that I was expecting to happen... and honestly a lot of their ads from like 5 years ago made it sound like they were already there. Some competitors were just hoping we'd accept rampant plagiarism, and a lot of people are desperate to just pretend that anything posted online is fair game.

I think some NFT bros are frustration from not being able to use that to monetize other people's art and be smug, AI is their rebound relationship

[mistressofmuses]

I hope their frustration at "butbutbut I wanted to steal shit and gloat about it" eats them alive.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, not to belabor the point but so many people act like posting online is like entering a Faustian bargain 'You did this to get attention, now you have it and this is what it entails'.

Also some people in fandom who act very authoritatively are just against copyright and since they can't attack WB or Disney, they try to erode by pushing around who they can.

[mistressofmuses]

That's very much it... it's a weird subtype of entitlement, like allowing your work to be seen means that you've given up any ownership of it. (And that as the viewer, they instead should be entitled to own it and do what they want with it.) It does also come with that sort of smug, punitive attitude as well - that "yeah, YOU enjoyed the attention and praise for having created it, and now I get to punish you for it by stealing that work." It's kinda squicky, tbh.

There's a LOT of poor understanding of copyright in general. And I certainly won't argue that copyright is broken in a lot of ways (mostly relating to Disney pulling shit), and could stand to be reformed in some ways... but the existence of it *at all* is not the problem.
I mean, people can take their stance on why they think copyright shouldn't exist, but I will continue to think they're wrong. And it's also pretty telling when, like you said, they can't really do much against the big players, so they try to take advantage of independent artists and writers instead.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, they act liking seeking attention is some sort of sin. If I was doing art for 'pure' reasons I wouldn't care about credit or anything. It's really gross.

Yup, it is pretty telling that they go after small artists. This was a big problem back on Imzy when someone who definitely *wasn't* an Ao3 board member kept talking very authoritatively on copyright and Ao3's stances and never corrected people who thought she was. We butted heads a lot, esp since I'd parachute into threads specifically to be like 'yeah, she's not part of Ao3, she just knows people who are... and so do I it's not that big of a deal and that doesn't give me any ability to speak with authority'

[mistressofmuses]

That's exactly it, and I think that's probably why it's as gross to encounter as it is. It's like a hybrid of really garbage attitudes. Definitely the "if you loved this, you'd do it for free and without attribution" attitude that ALWAYS seems to get leveled at artists - the idea that anything OTHER than starving for your art is selling out, and that wanting credit is selfish. Plus the toxic "I am jealous so want to punish you" attitude that more reminds me of assholes lashing out at girls for posting pictures of themselves or the like.

Ugh. There are a lot of people who think they know more about things than they do, and speaking authoritatively enough leads a LOT of other people to think so too. (Or worse, they KNOW they don't know as much as they pretend to, but still act like they do anyway.)