A federal judge rejected arguments from Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt that the suit is intended to suppress its free speech.
Fair enough. I am really pro AI but even then this suit is important and the mills of the courts need to start grinding on this suit since about 2y ago. So let’s get this going. Right call.
Out of curiosity, why do you say you’re really pro AI? I feel like I’m stuck in an anti-AI bubble ATM.
For me, I just recognize that AI, or any technology isn’t the problem. It’s context it exists in, who gets to use it, and how.
We shouldn’t have to choose between automating boring or dangerous jobs and letting people live dignified lives free from the fear of poverty. We shouldn’t have to choose between having AIs that can generate all sorts of interesting media quickly (even if a lot of it isn’t that good yet, it can still serve its purposes, like say, quickly mocking up an idea to see if it’s worth going forward with it.) and ruining the livelihoods of the real artists that made it possible. We also shouldn’t have to deal wit the mountain of garbage that will be created and shoved in our faces by corporations that don’t understand what the limitations of the technology are.
These are all capitalism problems. We should probably do something about that instead of asking dumb questions like if AI can really make “art” or if it’s copyright infringement.
Not parent, but because of the following reasons:
- Stability AI for images, and many others like Llama for chatbots are open source and can run on commodity hardware
- AI doesn’t replace skills, it’s only a tool to enhance them: As a coder, I can use Stability AI to make cool art, but my AI generated work isn’t nearly as cool as when an artist uses AI tools
- You can’t really fight it, so you may as well embrace it
I think the issue with point 2 is that most of the people doing the work know that, but the people making decisions tend to not. We’ve seen time and time again that companies will absolutely ruin their future prospects for short terms profits. This isn’t going to be an exception, and a lot of people that the companies can’t actually afford to lose are going to get laid off.
If an AI tool helps your output by doing something intelligent for you that “enhances” the work but you didn’t do the part the AI did - the AI doing something intelligent was a substitute for you doing something intelligent.
In the minimal a single skill loss is not significant to you producing output, but in the maximal none of your human skill is needed. AI will think of better prompts than you, or artists, to make cool art.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
They had argued that the suit targets their “speech” because the creation of art reflecting new ideas and concepts — like those conveyed in text prompts to elicit hyper-realistic graphics — is constitutionally protected activity.
The suit, filed last year in California federal court, targets Stability’s Stable Diffusion, which is incorporated into the company’s AI image generator DreamStudio and allegedly powers DeviantArt’s DreamUp and Midjourney.
Orrick sided with artists on the issue of whether the companies can dismiss the claim under the state’s anti-SLAPP statute, finding that the “public interest exemption is met here.” He noted that the claim was initially dismissed because the suit failed to substantiate allegations that the companies used the names of Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan or Karla Ortiz — the artists who brought the complaint — to advertise their products.
In December, scrutiny around Midjourney intensified after its latest update no longer remixed images and figures enough to obfuscate what legal experts said is clear copyright infringement.
One example: When prompted with “Thanos Infinity War,” Midjourney responded with an image of the purple-skinned villain in a frame that appears to be taken straight from the movie or promotional materials.
The chatbot can also seemingly replicate most animation styles, generating picture-perfect characters from an array of titles, including DreamWorks’ Shrek, Pixar’s Ratatouille and Warner Bros.’ The Lego Movie.
The original article contains 695 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
