Disclaimer: The opinions expressed below belong solely to the author.
Who owns the copyright for the above rendition of the Merlion standing in front of the somewhat awkward Singapore skyline?
Well, some people don’t believe it, and even if it doesn’t look like the final product, if your photos and illustrations are included in millions of AI models, you should be paid. Some people think it is.
The rise of generative AI tools has caused so much panic and outrage that modern Luddites denounce the sudden rise of superior technology and threaten to replace inferior manual labor. I have to say it’s getting interesting to see that there are.
Recent discussions, particularly in the area of generative models of graphics and art, have shown that artificial intelligence has learned to create new images given millions of works of art, photographs, illustrations, and paintings, and plagiarizes human works. is guilty of committing
The demand is that AI companies should at least compensate their original creators for their work (unless the existence of their generative models is outright prohibited).
If so, I have a question for all the “creators” who are vocally protesting tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Are you going to pay everyone for the work you observe and learn from?
I myself am a designer (among other professions), but I don’t really like the “creative” crowd. They usually think they are underappreciated or completely better than everyone else around them (remember the turmoil they have experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic). When it is judged that there is no?).
And as a designer, I consume a lot of content on the internet and observe what other people are doing. In fact, isn’t this part of the purpose for which tools like Pinterest were created?
I want to know how many designers there are do not Do you use it to create inspiration boards for many projects such as illustrations, logos, shapes, packaging, etc.?
And how many of us have ever considered paying a portion of the rewards to those who seek inspiration?
how about dribbling? Deviant? Google images?
It’s time to be honest with yourself. Nothing you have ever designed, drawn, drawn, sculpted or sketched is completely original.
Get off your haughty thoughts and remember the thousands of images you experienced before you finished your work.
Observation and copying are, in fact, the basis of education in this field, where many acquire the ability to use the tools they used before, while mastering a variety of expressive techniques, none of which I didn’t create it myself.
No artist wakes up one day, picks up a brush and watercolors, and starts creating something out of nothing. Everyone learns from others.
And AI models like Midjourney, Dall-E, or Stable Diffusion learn exactly the same way. These AI models are given an image with an accompanying description, describing the object in the image and the particular style in which it was created (painted, painted, drawn, photographed, etc.).
Basically, they behave like humans. They just act much faster and on a larger scale than humans. But if we want to outlaw or penalize it, the same rules must apply to all human creators.
Even the arguments against using images with watermarks, as is often the case when AI pulls content from stock image websites, are moot because humans still do exactly the same thing. We browse thousands of unpaid images to find project ideas.
As long as no elements are copied in full, the final result will be considered our own original creation with full copyright. If so, why should different rules apply to automated systems that behave similarly?
And if your argument is that AI is not human and cannot enjoy the same rights, then you need to be reminded that these sophisticated programs have human creators and human users. I have.
You enter specific prompts into the model and you pay the system to do the work for you. It does what I tell it to do, and what it could have done manually, but now it doesn’t need to. My own intentions are the driving force behind my output, so why shouldn’t I enjoy legal rights to what it produces?
Why can I create something in Photoshop but not in Midjourney?
This is undoubtedly a legal minefield that will be gradually cleared over the next few years, with several US decisions already ruling against AI (and the basic logic is there seems to be).
But as has happened throughout history, attempts to slow technological progress have never been successful, and it is unlikely that this time will be different. Good designers and artists who push the envelope will stay in business.
Others might as well learn how to enter the proper prompts before it’s too late.
Featured image credit: Created by Midjourney
