5mo ago

Famous AI "Artist" Says He's Losing Millions of Dollars From People Stealing His Work

The guy who used Midjourney to create an award-winning piece of AI art demands copyright protections.

The guy who used Midjourney to create an award-winning piece of AI art demands copyright protections.

Excuse me while I go grab my popcorn.

5mo ago

"Famous" AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions of Dollars From People Stealing His Work

624 173

5mo ago

"Famous" AI Artist Says He's Losing Millions of Dollars From People Stealing His Work

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60 comments

One of the reasons I like AI art is that it's pretty settled law that something produced by purely "mechanical" means can't itself have copyright, since copyright requires both originality and a human author.
It seems like a reasonably compromise, the AI was created by hoovering up the commons, so anything it creates should belong to the commons. I expect a lot of lobbying in the future to try and change it though.
- And if AI work would be copyrighted by the "prompt artist" then all the artists whose work is in the training set can sue the prompter for profiting of their work without licensing fees. It would be a legal clusterfuck so it was pretty wise to side step the whole issue.

- AI art might not be real, but Sonic giving birth to Borat is an extremely cool concept that people should be celebrated for drawing
- Dude, you can’t end it in such a rad way and expect us to despise the prompt input guy.

Oh no, the consequences of your own actions! That art competition should just add a rule "only copyrightable works"
- Apparently, the competition was a year before that ruling.
  
  And he's still crying about it?

This is actually the art bit, right? He’s doing conceptual art, like that Banksy that shredded itself upon sale.

How is he losing millions of dollars? If you're just trying to get into the art fraud money laundering scheme thing then make an NFT and find an idiot. But just the creation of a piece (be it traditional, digital, or "ai") doesn't entitle you to a payout. And if you're just complaining about the dissemination of the piece you asked someone else's computer to generate for you without a kick back link tax, well--that's not how copyright, the internet, or normal human correspondence works.
- Ah, good ol' music industry math. "1,000 people downloaded a picture that I created, and I wanted to charge $1,000 a piece, so I lost $1,000,000." In reality of course charging $0.02 would've stopped most sales.
  
  Yeah, articles are including the image because they can. If a judge had instead ruled that AI generated works were copyrightable (and to the prompter, not the designer of the tool, owner of the hardware, or even the tool itself) the end result would be that very few orgs would include his piece instead just opting for generating their own (now copyrightable) image to use as an example. He'd still get nothing, but then significantly fewer people would see his "work."

This is like piracy, just because you claim you loose money, doesn't mean any sane being would pay you even if it was necessary, most would rather just not.

I can generate Mandelbrot pictures that no one else has ever seen. That doesn't make me an artist.

Ah yes, the incredibly popular pro-AI pro-copyright stance. He's going to get very far with that one.

I make props, armour, movie replicas as a hobby. I do it all by hand.
I get a bit of an eyeball twitch when someone shows me a prop and goes "I made this too" "of yeah, what did you use as a base material?" "Oh it's 3d printed" "oh so your printer made it..."
- id consider them making it if they were also the one who designed the 3d object without taking someone elses work. if they just downloaded a model, made minor changes than print it, I would not consider it their work.
  
  Yeah, I spend hours digitally sculpting parts sometimes, and then once it's printed I spend hours filling and sanding the build lines and painting. Having also built parts by hand, they're equally skilled work in different ways. Digital sculpting is just a lot less messy which means it's much easier for me to do at home, lol. Do not miss the days of hand-sculpting foam and making silicone molds and fiberglass parts.

60 comments