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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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The models that are out there are already very powerful and can run very quickly on old consumer-level hardware, so even if all development in this were to stop right now, the trouble will remain.

A close analogy is to cryptography, which the government tried at first to regulate as literal weapons, but not only was this a ridiculous position, it was impossible in practice due to the nature of cryptography itself.

And now crypto is ubiquitous and, of course, runs on consumer grade hardware.

Hard to see AI taking a different path, honestly.

just because some piece of image is in the public domain wouldn't prevent a business from using it and from having copyright over the final product.

Well that's what I'm saying, if you use AI work in your commercial product, the law states now that the whole work is public domain.

Thus there is incentive on the creator's part to be very, VERY careful about what they include in their product and fastidious about keeping records to prove each step is non AI-generated. And creates an incentive on others to try and catch them in the act.

Well that's what I'm saying, if you use AI work in your commercial product, the law states now that the whole work is public domain.

Thus there is incentive on the creator's part to be very, VERY careful about what they include in their product and fastidious about keeping records to prove each step is non AI-generated. And creates an incentive on others to try and catch them in the act.

I see, so you mean essentially creating another type of copyright status that's a sort of "infectious public domain," where its mere use in another work "infects" the entirety of the work with "public domain" status. If this were implemented and enforced, it seems like it could work, but my guess is it that it would also effectively decimate the current entertainment industry. Having to fastidiously document every single brush stroke that went into creating every single background prop in a film or every single floor texture in a video game would increase the costs of production of these things massively, to the extent that I think the business case just wouldn't be there anymore for most companies. And I think such level of documentation would be required so as to prevent companies from trivially getting around the regulation with a "don't ask, don't tell" approach.

I suppose there could be multiple tiers of "infectious public domain" for AI generated images where businesses could use AI for some low level things but not others and still retain copyright over the final product so as to not to be so onerous to the production process, but I admit that's getting too deep into the details of things that I'm ignorant of for me to form a meaningful opinion on.

but my guess is it that it would also effectively decimate the current entertainment industry.

Not seeing the downside, personally.

Having to fastidiously document every single brush stroke that went into creating every single background prop in a film or every single floor texture in a video game would increase the costs of production of these things massively, to the extent that I think the business case just wouldn't be there anymore for most companies.

Yeah, but we'll have to do that anyway if our goal is to limit copyright to only human-created works.

I don't know how you solve this issue any other way.

And I think such level of documentation would be required so as to prevent companies from trivially getting around the regulation with a "don't ask, don't tell" approach.

Oh yes, there would be people who consider it worth the risk. Especially as it becomes way, way harder to tell AI art from human.

A simple one would be to just pay a given artist to sign off on AI art as if he was the creator, and who is willing to lie under oath and investigation that he personally created all of those works.

I suppose there could be multiple tiers of "infectious public domain" for AI generated images where businesses could use AI for some low level things but not others and still retain copyright over the final product so as to not to be so onerous to the production process,

Yeah concept art, storyboarding, rough drafts, all things that don't make it into the final, saleable product could probably escape scrutiny.

The way I'm conceiving this is that "if you publish a work for purpose of sale to the public, it must not contain AI generated content."

but my guess is it that it would also effectively decimate the current entertainment industry.

Not seeing the downside, personally.

Well, the issue is that the entire purpose of such regulations is to appease the people who depend on these industries for their income. If the regulations just destroy their income in a different way - instead of replacing 10 artists with 1 artist who uses AI to be 10x as productive, it's just replacing 10 companies that hire artists with just 1 company that hire artists - it seems like it wouldn't appease those people. The ultimate point of any law surrounding copyright or intellectual property in general is to protect incomes, after all.

Yeah concept art, storyboarding, rough drafts, all things that don't make it into the final, saleable product could probably escape scrutiny.

The way I'm conceiving this is that "if you publish a work for purpose of sale to the public, it must not contain AI generated content."

This seems workable, but also kind of a nightmare scenario for the people who would want these regulations. In this scenario, all the rote work that goes into producing the textures you actually see on the screen must be painstakingly hand-painted, but all the creative work that went into creating the concepts behind could have AI aid, thus reducing the number of the less rote, more creative artistic jobs. Perhaps better than AI being used in every step of the process at least, I suppose, and perhaps only a little worse than how it is now, since from what I understand, most art jobs in the industry tend to be rote work anyway.

Well that's what I'm saying, if you use AI work in your commercial product, the law states now that the whole work is public domain.

Do you have a citation for this? That sounds extremely unlikely to me and would completely upend my understanding of copyright law. Which isn't to say you're wrong as I'm not well versed in copyright law, but a lot of people I work with have been including AI-generated material in their commercial products for a while now and I'd be shocked if their legal teams okayed that if it made the whole work public domain.

EDIT: Nevermind, I missed that this was a hypothetical.

Yeah, I'm proposing a policy solution that might be politically viable, not one that currently exists.

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