FYI I am not interested in entering debate over this. I only made my post to inform others who care about non-declared ML-generated content infecting their media.
But since I wrote on the matter a while back, and I see the same arguments being made in reply to my post here, I'll copypaste my old posts as replies down below.
However, I'm leaving the conversation after this. The subject is not something I enjoy discussing publicly since people rarely engage in good faith. And debating isn't in my wheelhouse.
I'm only replying because I want to provide information for those who want to educate themselves.
Actually, more than my replies, I'd rather people watch these vids since they do a better job of addressing the issues than I could!:
"AI art is going to have consequences" by T B Skyen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIni6Eeg9rE "The End of Art" by Steven Zapata
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjSxFAGP9Ss (They both focus on "AI art", but the ethical arguments are universal and apply to things like ChatGPT too.
Both are chaptered, so you can jump to arguments you want to hear about. But they're worth listening to in full.)
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On the topic of inspiration/influences:
On AI content gen being copyright laundering:
AI content generators are built from databases full of copyrighted work, which the companies:
- did not pay to license
- did not seek permission to use (especially for paid models like Midjourney)
- do not provide renumeration to the original creators (especially the paid models)
- do not provide credit to the original creators
See, these programs don't just *magically* produce their content out of nowhere.
It all came from somewhere, and that "somewhere" was the entirety of the internet.
Which (contrary to popular belief) is NOT public domain.
For most countries, copyright applies to any created work from the moment it is created, regardless of whether the work is registered with a copyright office or not, and regardless of whether the creator seeks to make money off it or not. Everything on the internet is copyrighted by default (unless it's public domain/under a similar license, or created in a country that doesn't have copyright law, or ineligible for copyrighting due to lack of human authorship/creativity)
It is straight up illegal to take copyrighted content and make money off it without licensing it first.* Which is what the paid content generators are doing (like Midjourney).
And the companies behind the free and open-source content generators will sell the tech down the line for profit (so even if it's not generating profit from users right now, it's tech they will eventually make money from)
* Going to add here, since we're on GOG and talking about games too:
This is why code licensing exists (you're not allowed to take code snippets from others' work, unless you are licensed to do so)
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Did you look at the teacups and teapots? I linked to the timestamped section in my last post.
There's a level of warping and nonsense on those that especially doesn't make sense given the how well some other background assets were made (like the flowers and rocks in the GOG screenshots)
I don't want to doxx myself, but part of my job means I spend almost every day looking at human art in great detail. Through this I've come to learn what it looks like when human artists cut corners, leaving some assets less polished than others. I know what it looks like when multiple artists work on the same project and there is inconsistency between their outputs.
But... this is completely different. There's a consistent lack of human missteps, mistakes here that I've never seen human artists make, even amongst the most novice to the most advanced artists. But the same "mistakes" are in the myriad AI images I've studied.
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ScarletEmerald: Even before AI, art did not come completely from humans. Photoshop and other digital art tools have plenty of algorithm-based filters, scripts, etc.
These content generators are not being built as tools, they are being built as outright replacements.
Absolutely it could be used as a tool to aid actual human creativity (eg: like a rorschach for early ideas), but that's not how it's being used by the overwhelming majority of users. And it's certainly not what the "AI art" companies pushing their software want, nor the media companies they're peddling to.
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Thanks for reading. Hope you have a good day and a great weekend.