Posted by participant3 4/3/2025
All modern art currently created by humans is already trained on copyrighted images. What seems to be missing is the innate human ability to copy someone else's homework but change it up a bit (c.f. "the hero's journey" that is so much of modern storytelling).
Maybe a thinking model would - just like my brain might after the initial reaction - add a "but the user formulated this in a way that makes it obvious that they do not explicitly mean Indiana Jones, so lets make it an asian woman" prompt, but we all know how this worked out for Google's image generator that generated black nazis.
Didn't see this one, but I've certainly played around with Dall-E (via MS image creator) and had things like "You wanted a picture of a happy shark, but we decided this one needs to be an asian woman frolicking in the sea" or "You wanted a picture of Beavis doing something so in one of the images we made him a pretty racist middle-eastern caricature"
> (though I find it funny that the same people that would boycott Disney for suing a fanfiction author are now on the side of copyright holders)
Is that a contradiction?
Certainly some of the hate comes from the fact that they take from small producers just as much as from large. I have an author friend who is annoyed at present to find out that facebook slurped up his books as part of their training set without so much as a by-your-leave or (as far as he could tell) even purchasing a copy.
As such, the people on the sharp end are often the underdog, with no way to fight back.
When it comes to the properties mentioned in the article, I think it's very different from fanfiction or fan-art - that's a labour of (nerdy) love, rather than wholesale, automated rip-off for profit.
I'll see myself out now.
How is it that my FF preference (something like 'Always show scrollbars') is regularly just ignored.
I want my scrollbars! And I wat `em fat and in my UI's color scheme!
And why the HELL would a web designer think this is a good idea. Maybe their beret and hipster pants are too tight?
Thanks for being here for my rant. I owe you one :-)
Give me "An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip, as if he was defeated by the righteous fight against patriarchy by a strong, independent woman, that is better at everything than he is": Sure, here is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny for you.
In fact, when generative video evolve enough, it will usher an era of creativity where people that previously were kept out of the little self pleasing circle of Hollywood, will be able to come up with their own idea for a script and make a decent movie out of it.
Not that I believe AI will be able to display properly the range of emotions of a truly great actor, but, for 99% of movies, it will be just fine. A lot of good movies rely mostly on the script anyway.
... as showcased by the cited examples?
More so, this derivative work would otherwise be unreachable for regular folk with no artistic talent (maybe for lack of time to develop it), but who may aspire to do such creative work nevertheless. Why is that a bad thing? Sure, simple posts on social media don't have much work or creativity put into them, but are enjoyable nevertheless, and the technology _can_ be used in creative ways - e.g. Stable Diffusion has been used to turn original stories drawn with stick figures into stylized children's books.
The author argues against this usage for "stealing" the original work, but how does posting a stylized story on social media "steal" anything? The author doesn't present any "pirated" copies of movies being sold in place of the originals, nor negative impact on sales figures. In the case of the trending Studio Ghibli, I wouldn't be surprise to see a positive impact!
As for the "soulless 2025 fax version of the thing", I think it takes a very negative mindset to see it this way. What I've seen shared on social media has been nothing but fun examples, people playing around with what for them is a new use of technology, using it on pictures of fond memories, etc.
I'm inclined to agree with the argument made by Boldrin and Levine:
>”Intellectual property” has come to mean not only the right to own and sell ideas, but also the right to regulate their use. This creates a socially inefficient monopoly, and what is commonly called intellectual property might be better called “intellectual monopoly.”
>When you buy a potato you can eat it, throw it away, plant it or make it into a sculpture. Current law allows producers of a CDs and books to take this freedom away from you. When you buy a potato you can use the “idea” of a potato embodied in it to make better potatoes or to invent french fries. Current law allows producers of computer software or medical drugs to take this freedom away from you. It is against this distorted extension of intellectual property rights that we argue.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4980956_The_Case_Ag...
Right now it's an unencumbered exploration with only a few requirements. The general public isn't too upset even if it blatantly feeds on copyrighted data [1] or attacks wikipedia with its AI crawlers [2].
The end state once legislation has had a chance to catch is breath looks more like Apple being forced to implement USB type C.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/why-the-new-york...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/04/ai-bo...