AI Generated Assets on the Marketplace?

[VertexMachine (VertexMachine @ Vertex Rage Studio)]

@cannasoftware

Whereas Midjourney is curated, not scraped from the internet.

Sorry to disappoint you, but they themselves admit in their discord that at least part of the data comes from LAION. And curated just mean that they did additional cleaning to the data, not that they didn’t use data randomly scrapped from the internet, potentially violating copyright of others. I don’t have proofs per se, as they are very secretive about the data. What is suggesting that the data is not ‘pure’ are:

• David himself admitted multiple times during “office hours” (weekly livestreams) that V3 did get ingested with a lot of pornographic and violent images (like the one from LAION5B)
• The post I mention above that you chose to ignore, one of the people associated with MJ points to LAION dataset

• This post from one of official MJ guides:

• Getting a lot of images that look like data scrapped from ecommerce shops like etsy:

I even put one of images into reverse google image search and got that:

• getting images with watermarks (that’s from one of the discord users, i now don’t get them frequently as I follow MJ guides that say to use --no watermark, which reduces the problem)

• getting images like that:

@cannasoftware

Again, you make an assumption that Midjourney is operating exactly the same way as OpenAI. Without proof, you have but speculation.

And vice verse - you are assuming a lot how OpenAI is operated without proof aside from shady licensing terms that force you to defend them in courts, etc.

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@AntiGravity

Why operate this way AI researchers, why? Because you can, right?! No one wants to own this problem, just point fingers. Wasn’t that the excuse behind WWII atrocities or sadistic health experiments on minorities in the US decades later. What’s the difference between that and an AI researcher today who behaves just like a Cambridge-Analytica data scraper? There is none… Its all about the money.

It’s not “AI researchers”. It’s some AI researchers working for startups and some of the less ethical corporations. I’ve worked as AI researcher for 18 years (mostly in areas unrelated to vision) in both academic and corporate settings. And I can assure you that researchers in academia are very careful about ethical side of their research. The corporation I worked for had a little more relaxed (still very strict) ethical standards compared to academia in research phases of projects. But during commercialization phase we were even stricter than academia.

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Also, this, while not strictly aimed at AI Art generators, will probably affect them by a lot:

The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright

[alberto]

Very interesting

Proof-of-Concept of an AI Assistant Designer using Stable Diffusion, Whisper, Metahuman & ChatGPT

[cannasoftware]

@VertexMachine

Sorry to disappoint you, but they themselves admit in their discord that at least part of the data comes from LAION.

Yes, I also understand what ‘curated’ means. This is quite different than what OpenAI or Stable Diffusion did.

@VertexMachine

I don’t have proofs per se, as they are very secretive about the data.

Speculation isn’t proof, and yet you wish to offer you speculation as proof.

@VertexMachine

The post I mention above that you chose to ignore, one of the people associated with MJ points to LAION dataset

I didn’t ignore it at all, you do not seem to understand what ‘curated’ means — it is very important, in my humble opinion, for training purposes.

@VertexMachine

And vice verse - you are assuming a lot how OpenAI is operated without proof aside from shady licensing terms that force you to defend them in courts, etc.

No, I’m going by what they literally say in this document.

Pairs were drawn from a combination of publicly available sources and sources that we licensed.

You can intuit from this that they used publicly available sources that were not licensed as well as sources that were licensed. That isn’t me reading a shady license, that is me reading what they actually say regarding the dataset. This is the belief that if it is available on the internet it is somehow copyright free.

@VertexMachine

Which again can be interpreted both ways. But negative interpretation is that they also use copyrighted material without permission (LAION).

Okay, I’m really puzzled how you interpret it both ways.

Midjourney is not employing any of the public data sets available for look-up or img2text.

That makes sense.

At best, we can say ‘some’ part of Midjourney’s specialized data set comes from LAION

Because there is public domain art that is, well, public domain and if two datasets have the same public domain art, your argument is that the curated one is suspect because the first is known to use copyrighted artwork and text.

That makes little sense. I don’t see a court following that reasoning either.

I had both Stable Diffusion and Midjourney generating me images with (illegible) watermarks and signatures.

Oddly, there is plenty of art that is signed that is public domain. Getty Museum allows the download and use of images in the public domain and many of those have signatures!

Comparing apples to oranges doesn’t really get you much because it makes the false assumption that all outfits are crooked.

This will search the database that MJ was trained with, however MJ dataset was filtered and this might mean the results from the search engine is not always relevant to MJ.

Because it wasn’t the entire dataset. Ergo, there are differences.

Not acknowledging that it’s very possible that MJ operated in a strictly ethical manner is the weak point in your argument. Speculation that MJ operates exactly the same as OpenAI or Stable Diffusion is problematic (since, by your own admission, you don’t know how they trained their AI).

Until it is proved otherwise, I’m not assuming that MJ is in violation of copyright law and I will continue to use and support it, because speculation is not proof.

[VertexMachine (VertexMachine @ Vertex Rage Studio)]

I will just leave this here

And I’m out of discussing this with you as you don’t even see contradictions you make in one post. Have a nice life.

[cannasoftware]

@VertexMachine

And I’m out of discussing this with you as you don’t even see contradictions you make in one post. Have a nice life.

I’m sorry you were unable to highlight the “contradictions": I would have been more than happy to explain it in detail.

You have a nice life as well! I’m sorry this topic was a source of consternation for you.

[spacegojira]

@cannasoftware

I’m sorry you were unable to highlight the “contradictions": I would have been more than happy to explain it in detail.

Mate, we have been pointing out contradictions in your arguments ever since you joined this discussion, you just chose to ignore them because it doesn’t fit with what you want to believe.
How you can still, after both me and VertexMachine very clearly laid out - even with comments from Midjourney, that the copyright question is more than unclear and at times clearly breaks existing copyrights, is beyond me.

I can only assume you are one of the people who are trying to sell AI assets on the marketplace and you feel the need to justify that.

[VertexMachine (VertexMachine @ Vertex Rage Studio)]

@spacegojira

you just chose to ignore them because it doesn’t fit with what you want to believe.

Don’t bother, will not change his mind. He will spin any kind of argument to have black-and-white position on the issue that matches his opinion. There is fortunately a way to block users on this forum, so you will not need to engage with him if you do so.

And I just read that article: The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next - The Verge

This bit highlight the issue nicely:

To answer these questions and understand the legal landscape surrounding generative AI, The Verge spoke to a range of experts, including lawyers, analysts, and employees at AI startups. Some said with confidence that these systems were certainly capable of infringing copyright and could face serious legal challenges in the near future. Others suggested, equally confident, that the opposite was true: that everything currently happening in the field of generative AI is legally above board and any lawsuits are doomed to fail.

“I see people on both sides of this extremely confident in their positions, but the reality is nobody knows,” Baio, who’s been following the generative AI scene closely, told The Verge. “And anyone who says they know confidently how this will play out in court is wrong.”

[cannasoftware]

@spacegojira

How you can still, after both me and VertexMachine very clearly laid out - even with comments from Midjourney, that the copyright question is more than unclear and at times clearly breaks existing copyrights, is beyond me.

You may wish to review what you both “clearly laid out” was a mixture of speculation and incorrect reading of the law. This is not a failure of my ability to understand the issue, I’ve made a decision based on available facts.

@VertexMachine

I don’t have proofs per se, as they are very secretive about the data.

And that is where it all falls down. Without proof, it is all speculation and assumption. It is painting everyone as corrupt and in violation of the law.

@spacegojira

I can only assume you are one of the people who are trying to sell AI assets on the marketplace and you feel the need to justify that.

I have nothing for sale on the marketplace nor have I considered selling AI assets or plans to do so. Again, you are making an attack based on speculation that is unfounded.

@VertexMachine

He will spin any kind of argument to have black-and-white position on the issue that matches his opinion.

Again, my opinion on the matter matches with facts rather than supposition. Should the facts change, my opinion will change as well.

@VertexMachine

“And anyone who says they know confidently how this will play out in court is wrong.”

Well, considering he is well known to have violated copyright, I’m not sure I would consider him much of an expert.

[RonanMahonArt]

Well here we are, 133 posts in and not a single response from Epic @Unreal_Josh @TJ_V

Highlights for me were people running circles debating what the end game from this is.

Pikachu face goes to Alberto - bringing a product to the marketplace, saying don’t worry it wont harm anyone because I released it for free. Later wondering if this is the end of creativity. I don’t personally blame you Alberto, someone else was probably lined right up behind you.

[alberto]

@RonanMahonArt

I don’t personally blame you Alberto, someone else was probably lined right up behind you.

Did you try my plugin? it is the opposite of the end of creativity, it is the opposite of destroying jobs.

As far as I know, there is no one who tried and said something like that.

[DreamPlugin - Google Drive](Download Dream)

[Uncle_Fred]

The silence from Epic is disappointing, but the conversation was not unproductive. A few possible takeaways:

Copyright ownership questions linger around A.I. generated assets. This issue is particularly acute for market packages that consist of repackaged/unaltered A.I. generated images from generators that sample artwork without the permission of the original author. Likewise, it’s possible that text inputs to generate images don’t meet the threshold to be considered creative input by a human author, although this issue is yet to be tested in courts.

In practice, this muddies a developer’s ability to enforce DCMA requests. It’s possible that third parties may steal certain generated images from your game with no repercussions. Unlike other assets, they won’t need to produce a receipt from Epic Games.

In short, a safe approach might be to limit A.I.-generated artwork to placeholder content.

Without a response from Epic, it’s reasonable to assume that Epic is fine with it.

[VertexMachine (VertexMachine @ Vertex Rage Studio)]

@Uncle_Fred

Without a response from Epic, it’s reasonable to assume that Epic is fine with it.

… I’ve worked in big tech corporation previously. Silence usually means that lawyers said not to comment publicly, to avoid any potential liability.

[alberto]

Sean M. Ritchie & Chris Cook — CG Supervisors, Crafty Apes

In one sentence: this is a tool is not going to replace any job

[spacegojira]

Which of course is nonsense, because not words but actions make you liable. And it’s not like the Epic staff doesn’t see being repeatedly pinged in this discussion.

Epic already opens itself up to potential lawsuits by allowing these AI art assets be sold on the marketplace. All it takes is someone whos art was used by Midjourney etc. without his consent, to sue the marketplace seller & Epic for the commercial distribution.

Sadly it seems Epic has become another soulless mega-corporation desperate to make money at all costs, once again putting profits before the marketplace customers (like not doing anything about reviews being abused for Discord access), so I guess they won’t answer our questions until ■■■■ hits the fan.

[alberto]

Ladies & gentlemen Mr Chris Cook in person

UE5 Dream - Installation & workflow

[spacegojira]

Alberto, please don’t use this discussion to promote you plugin.

[alberto]

@spacegojira

please don’t use this discussion to promote you plugin

What I want is not to promote (it’s free)

[VertexMachine (VertexMachine @ Vertex Rage Studio)]

Even if its free, its still a promotion. And that has nothing to do really with the original question.

[alberto]

Got it,
my intention is to show even the veterans think is just a tool
And of course, I’d like people to understand how it works… before posting against me

[RonanMahonArt]

I morally object to using a “tool” where the foundation it is based upon is stolen from others without their consent.
I think I would be hypocritical of me as an artist to expect my clients and customers to pay me fairly for my work if I don’t hold myself to the same standard in regards to the work of others.