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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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This is the way I see it as well. When people say "stealing," they actually mean "infringing on IP rights," and that raises the issue of what are IP rights and what justifies them. As best as I can tell, the only justification for IP rights is that they allow for us as a society to enjoy better and more artworks and inventions by giving artists and creators more incentive to create such things (having exclusive rights to copy or republish their artworks allows greater monetization opportunities for their artworks, which obviously means greater incentive). The US Constitution uses this as the justification for enabling Congress to create IP laws, for instance.

Which is why, for instance, one of the tests for Fair Use in the US is whether or not the derivative work competes against the original work. In the case of AI art and other generative AI tools, there's a good argument to be made that the tools do compete with the original works. As such, regardless of the technical issues involved, this does reduce the incentives of illustrators by reducing their ability to monetize their illustrations.

The counterargument that I see to this, which I buy, is that generative AI tools also enable the creation of better and more artworks. By reducing the skill requirements for the creation of high fidelity illustrations, it has opened up this particular avenue of creative self expression to far more people than before, and as a result, we as a society benefit from the results. And thus the entire justification for there being IP laws in the first place - to give us as a society more access to more and better artworks and inventions - become better fulfilled. I recall someone saying the phrase "beauty too cheap to meter," as a play on the whole "electricity too cheap to meter" quote about nuclear power plants, and this clearly seems to be a large step in that direction.

Which is why, for instance, one of the tests for Fair Use in the US is whether or not the derivative work competes against the original work. In the case of AI art and other generative AI tools, there's a good argument to be made that the tools do compete with the original works. As such, regardless of the technical issues involved, this does reduce the incentives of illustrators by reducing their ability to monetize their illustrations.

Yes, but AI art does not rely on fair use. The argument that the copyright issue is nonsense is that in almost no other circumstances, except where a EULA is enforced, does copyright limit the way someone can use a work. It only means they can't copy it. But the case against AI art would have to extend the concept of copying a work beyond any reasonable point in order for those restrictions to apply. You can't copyright concepts or styles for this reason, only specific works. Obtaining legitimate copies of works and assimilating them for novel synthesis has never implicated copyright before.

The argument that the copyright issue is nonsense is that in almost no other circumstances,

But this is the core of my objection to the objection. LLMs are a novel paradigm and the expectation that previous legal frameworks that were designed for other paradigms should work just as well here without reflection is my objection. It is question begging to answer the question of how copyright out to work around AI to how it worked in non-AI.

That is not to say that it necessary should end up somewhere different. What I am rejecting is the simplistic, predetermined conclusion that it's not different so isn't different. IP protections are not some immutable natural force, and society should have a right to consider refinement in the face of massively disruptive technological innovations. that said...

Realistically nothing can be done anyway. Anything would be impossible to enforce, so I'm not going to lose sleep where you can't do anything anyway.

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