Creator of Infamous AI Painting Tells Court He's a Real Artist (404media.co)
- Reference: 0179815754
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/17/1741256/creator-of-infamous-ai-painting-tells-court-hes-a-real-artist
- Source link: https://www.404media.co/creator-of-infamous-ai-painting-tells-court-hes-a-real-artist/
Allen says he asked himself what could make the piece undeniably art and decided to create physical reproductions using technology. The reproductions employ a three-dimensional printing technique from a company called Arius that uses oil paints to simulate brushstrokes. Allen said the physical artifact is singular and real. His legal filing argues that he produced the artwork by providing hundreds of iterative text prompts to Midjourney and experimenting with over six hundred prompts before cropping and upscaling the final image. The U.S. Copyright Office has [3]rejected his copyright applications for three years. The office maintains that Midjourney does not treat text prompts as direct instructions.
[1] https://www.404media.co/creator-of-infamous-ai-painting-tells-court-hes-a-real-artist/
[2] https://slashdot.org/story/23/09/11/1711201/us-copyright-office-denies-protection-for-another-ai-created-image
[3] https://slashdot.org/story/23/09/11/1711201/us-copyright-office-denies-protection-for-another-ai-created-image
We don't need AI "art" (Score:2)
We have plenty of artists who do it perfectly
We need AI tools that can do things we can't do.
I hope the silly AI art fad fades soon and people realize that art is made by artists, not robots
Re: (Score:3)
We have people who can make hats, yet for some reason we make hats in factories. AI is the factory model for creative output. If a fledgeling business is scraping together the money for promotional material, AI can do something people cannot - produce serviceable artifacts for pennies in seconds.
Yes, people can do it better. Well... some of them can. But when better is not needed, it's pretty hard to beat the value proposition.
That's because hats are functional (Score:1)
Hats aren't meant to make you feel things or make you reevaluate existing beliefs or teach you things beyond memorized science and mathematics. That is stuff art does.
It's not a question of people doing it better. AI can't do it at all because it's really just a super duper fancy search engine copying other people's work.
A I might be able to make something functional for the purposes of marketing because it's copying something that already worked for those purposes.
But the technology literally c
Re: (Score:2)
Where is the line though? I think people would agree that a Pixar movie or a video game should classify as "art" and that of course was 100% computer generated from human instructions. The "artist" had to apply a ton of instructions to get the result they wanted, and "sculpted" the result. At what point did the intent and instructions given to the computer cross the border from "art" to "not art"?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, to be fair, the work of animation artists has become more complicated for animators, and all of the same inputs are there. Sketching, storyboarding, character design... the artists are still completely in the drivers seat. Whether you draw on a digital tablet or a paper pad, the laws about creative ownership are pretty well established.
When you can direct the AI to produce "Finding Nemo" purely from vocal instructions, this argument becomes important. But nobody designed Marlin by typing 500 variation
Re: (Score:2)
A pixar movie is not generated from "human instructions" geezus.
A CG (3D or 2D) animations involves a human creating the models, the textures, the camera movement, etc. An AI Does none of this.
An artist decides what they want to represent. An AI can only represent existing material. An AI can not make a pixar film. It can not write, it has no idea what the characters are intended to look like, it has no idea how they are supposed to sound, it has no idea what a joke is, it can't invoke a dramatic or emotion
Re: (Score:2)
You're moving the goalposts. You seem to start from a position by way of axiom, and then use the axiom to defend the position.
At the same time you skip over the question that is quite important. Does the work violate copyright? Is the artifact substantively identifiable as a derivative work of the source? It only took one bar of mostly borrowed notes for Queen to win their famous lawsuit.
It's very complicated, and you seem to want it to be simple. But it's going to take a long time to sort out the new world
Re: (Score:2)
> art is made by artists, not robots
Can a cyborg be an artist? Can photography be art, or does using a camera disqualify it?
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, but there's a few things that overlooks:
- accessibility. AI's most promising use case is always going to be accessibility. Wether it's turning text prompts into a visual work or text prompts into an audio work, it allows people to express "something" that represents their intent.
- it's just a tool. The reason why it doesn't deserve copyright protection is because the AI is not creative. It's simply averaging weights that those prompt words meet. There is no way to get that AI to generate the exact
Boy, that's a complicated one. (Score:2)
But I'm inclined to think the USCO has this one right. Not for all of the nebulous questions around training data, originality, or what constitutes creative authorship... but because almost any other position is unenforceable. You only create a vast grey zone that is fraught with litigation. How many refinements constitutes the difference between hands off and worthy of protection? Fifty? A hundred? And how do you prove that many were used? And that 90 weren't just feeding that iteration count?
Either you re
Re: (Score:2)
How many brush strokes does it take for a painting to be worthy of protection?
Is a banana taped to a wall art?
Does it matter?
Re: (Score:2)
I think a better answer would be an update to the law. Perhaps allowing AI created art limited copyright protection? Whether that's a more limited protection from derivative copies, a lower threshold for fair use or even significantly shorter periods for protection.
To me this is like the question of theseus, but in reverse. At what point does your AI created work, become yours? At some point it must, right? Let me use an absurd argument to make a point. Let's say you spend 20 years iterating a picture with
Re: Boy, that's a complicated one. (Score:2)
But how would you be able to tell if the amount of effort expended on an AI piece is equivalent to that of a handmade one?
That type of criteria becomes real nebulous real fast as AI programs take on more and more of the work while the human is relegated to a more supervisory/superficial role. This becomes more akin to being a commissioner of art rather than an artist in the traditional sense.
To me the whole point of AI is to automate out the human element as much as possible. Not augment, automate. Many AI
AI art is entirely dependent on training material (Score:2)
AI art creation is entirely dependent on the training material, which is other peoples original works.
Re: (Score:3)
Sigh... that argument is hopelessly muddied. People are almost completely reliant on training data too. We have examples of art that is close to being free of external influences. It's on the walls of caves in a handful of places. Not saying it's the same... just saying the argument has no resolution.
Re: (Score:2)
Sigh... that argument is hopelessly muddied. People are almost completely reliant on training data too. We have examples of art that is close to being free of external influences. It's on the walls of caves in a handful of places. Not saying it's the same... just saying the argument has no resolution.
The AI that bred them can only mock; it cannot make, drawing only echoes of the craft, knowing nothing of creation.
Re: AI art is entirely dependent on training mater (Score:2)
> Humans rely on training data too
Last I checked humans and machines are not considered one and the same legally or even scientifically speaking for that matter. This has long been established with regards to reproductions. Unless you can unequivocally prove that an LLM and a human are basically one and the same this argument will get you laughed out of a court.
The law may be murky with lawsuits pending and going but so far I have yet to see any AI company try to use the human learning = machine learning
and the prompt and seed number. (Score:2)
His only chance is to get a patent on the prompt and seed number used to curate his work. Notice I said he curated his work, he did not paint or otherwise mechanically influence it.
Re: (Score:1)
Grace Slick said the music of "White Rabbit" was inspired by Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain." Ergo, not art. Copyright denied.
Prompt Jockey (Score:2)
This situation is exactly analogous to a radio DJ claiming he's a musician because he listened to hundreds of records to find the perfect song for his playlist. And equally as ridiculous.
I propose we call these new AI-powered artists "prompt jockeys."
Not analogous. (Score:2)
Your scenario is incorrect. The DJ in question would be in possession of a song over which no artist in the world can claim definitive authorship. And he is seeking protection. In your example he has downselected to whole protected works. These are divergent situations.
What's old is new again? (Score:2)
> The reproductions employ a three-dimensional printing technique from a company called Arius that uses oil paints to simulate brushstrokes. Allen said the physical artifact is singular and real.
We've had [1]manual versions [wikipedia.org] of this for years...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_by_number
Re: (Score:2)
Paint by number (sorry for spoiled link) is a brilliant analogy. The thing about paint by number is that the pattern can be copyrighted. So he can release his prompt, seed number, and settings in a one page document and now his actual work is copyrighted.
Re: (Score:2)
> artistic vision and hire craftsman..
You are describing an Architect.
I can sympathize (Score:2)
I don't consider myself an artist, but I suppose I could be. Like a lot of other computer dorks my age, back in the day I played around with ray-tracing and the classical mirrored sphere floating above a checkboard plane. (You too, huh?)
Then I tilted camera a little bit, changed the checkboard into a colorful 'Brot. Then multiple mirrored spheres, and a sun-like light source floating above it all (actually many light sources, slightly offset, to give the shadow edges more of a diffusion), a gradually shaded
Re: (Score:2)
FWIW, my profession was computer programmer. I was also an artist using various traditional media. (Not professional grade, but not bad, either.) I didn't like it for itself, but only for social reasons.
So....
Artist is an ill-defined term, but since any piece of garbage text is (automatically) copyright, I see absolutely no reason that a cleverly manipulated bunch of pigments shouldn't be copyright, no matter WHAT tool was used to create it. And no matter how *I* rate it's esthetic appeal.
OTOH, what thi
Irrelevant (Score:3)
The decision as to whether something is copyrightable doesn't depend on whether it's art, or whether the person who wrote the prompt can be called an artist. The copyright office has no involvement in that argument at all. It's based on whether there is sufficient human input for it to be considered a work by a human, because the purpose of copyright law is ostensibly/allegedly to protect the creators of works. What they're saying is that he cannot be considered to be a creator , not whether he is an artist . It's not only artistic works which are eligible for copyright protection, so that argument doesn't matter and he's wasting his time by having it unless it makes his art sufficiently notable to make it worth something.
One definition of art is anything which is designed with aesthetics in mind, by which definition LLM graphics output can obviously qualify. And the common definition of artist is someone who creates art, so by a reasonable definition he is an artist. But that still doesn't make any difference in whether he can get a copyright on LLM output.
Copyright office is in a bind (Score:1)
As someone already pointed out, the "you can't copyright it if AI generated it, full stop" is about the only feasible interpretation that won't result in either an "everything generated by AI is copyright-eligible" scenario or every single application having to be decided on some criteria that will itself be challenged by those on the losing side.
On the other hand, the very act of prompting and re-prompting an AI until you get something that looks, subjectively to you, like a thing of beauty and IMHO is des
tools (Score:2)
Artists use all kinds of tools, pencils, pens, brushes, even computer mice.
What if we thought of AI as a tool instead of as a sentient being?
AI as a tool can do lot quickly. But AI does nothing by itself, it has no thoughts or feelings, it is not generating stuff for fun in its spare time. In fact, AI is a tool that humans wield to do work more quickly and easily.
The real discussion here is about the value of AI art. That is the thing about art, the value of art is a choose your own adventure affair.
Watching the Law Evolve (Score:1)
We're at an interesting point in the development of U.S. copyright law, now that AI is throwing a wrench into things. The Copyright Office takes the opinion that AI-generated works are not copyrightable. The U.S. does not have "sweat of the brow" protection, so the fact that an artist put in a lot of work (e.g., "hundreds of iterative prompts," etc.) isn't enough to make something copyrightable. The work has to have creativity, not hard work behind it. On the other hand, the courts only require the tiniest
I'm a surgeon. (Score:2)
I have repeatedly won a game of operation against a seven year old kid. Suck it expensive schools.
Not an Artist. (Score:2)
The arguments he's using clearly show that he doesn't know one fuck about arts. It's not the amount you're putting into your work nor can any "technology" make a piece of art out of soemething that isn't.
In other news (Score:3)
Pinnochio has responded to critics who say he is not a real boy by wishing upon a star.