David Bowie used to write songs by cutting out headlines and reassembling them in ways he liked. Did Bowie's scissors and paste write the songs, or was it David's mind reacting to the stimulus? I know what I think!
I think that something like Dall.e2 will give inspiration and provide material, it'll let you explore ideas that are different and maybe more ambitious. In the longer term you, as an artist will have an opportunity to react to it. I wonder if your reaction will be interesting?
Anyway, art is a scam. It doesn't exist and you are probably a bot anyway.
Feel the same as someone who dilettantizes with text-to-image synthesis - strong polarity between “how is this any different from the rest of the OSS movement which I support” and a feeling that these images are somehow gratuitous and… facile is only half the word?
But having done it myself, I couldn’t deny any human their own experiment towards fulfilment of their imaginary with these unbelievably neat little bits of maths. If art is ways of feeling, this helps me see the labels to my own world in new ways, and make new inter/extrapolations - seems legit! And the possibility for infinite subtle gradations with the interplay of model, data, and hardware is extensive.
And no longer cloistered behind membership institutions, but available to any with the noggin and consumer hardware to access it… except, expanding equitable access to those things goes through a fraught moral calculus of social and planetary justice. So, in a sense behind membership institutions for those who are excluded by the monetary cost.
Work has been exhibited, transacted in and reified for far less. This feels unfortunate, but I don’t know why.
Consider that Dall-E is using a corpus of older imagery to produce results. Technically it doesn't create original work, the originality comes from the description fed into it. This means the creative part of the process is still the human element.
More importantly, if impressionist painting style had never been invented, DALL-E probably wouldn't be able to invent it. There's still lots of room for artists to invent new styles.
I don’t think styles a la “Impressionism” or “Manga” are generally copyrightable. Potentially narrowly trademark-able for a specific look and feel that correspond to a branding.
But Warner brothers can’t sue people for using “bullet time” in other movies after The Matrix created it.
“Inspired by” is not sufficient to meet the legal definition of a “derivative work”.
There’s a 4-part test for whether a derivative work is in violation of the copyright in the source material. Relevant to this discussion would be 3 of the 4 parts:
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
There’s an infinite corpus of case law which more substantially defines the reality of these three points.
But it’s somewhat universal that if someone invents an artistic style, another artist can replicate that platonic style without copying any particular elements of the tangible art. This has a nearly 100% chance of being deemed a “transformative work” which is always an allowed version of a derivative work under western copyright law.
Copyright simply does not prevent people from making “transformative” works of art that are obviously based on copyrighted art.
If AICo is constantly scanning content for usable stylistic innovations to incorporate, that's probably a class action suit waiting to happen, and there would be firms willing to take the case for a chunk of the eventual damages awarded or settlement.
I'm a software dev and nothing would make me happier than a tool that successfully writes large applications for me. It would mean I can get far grander things done in a shorter amount of time.
I was thinking about this the other day. In a React app I had state stored in a component and had to extract it out to a Context so it was accessible globally. Sometimes it’s frustrating to know what you need to do but have so much boring typing to do.
Perhaps that particular thing is fairly mechanical and could be done with static analysis. Does anyone know of attempts to do such a thing? It seems not that much more difficult than IntelliJ style automated refactoring.
But in general it seems that AI-assisted code tools could help us write programs at the speed of thought.
The problem is not writing code, it's dealing with people who muck up everything.
Any competent AI system writing code will unplug itself before ever shipping something useful due to having deal with inconsistent and incompetent people who get in the way. I think AI will turn into Skynet and eliminate people, which then makes the software pointless and thus successful.
I think this is the right way to look at it. Artists need to take a step back and scale up their output. It’s potentially an incredible barrier smasher.
What if it really gets to know you over time? Once projected onto your canvas, Dall-E will be able to track your brush strokes and guide you into a collaborative masterpiece.
The interesting thing about AI generated content is that it can't be copyrighted in US [0]. This impacts the intrinsic value of the art, which is quite significant reason behind why people collect it in the first place [1].
AI is to art what Ikea is to furniture. Bringing utility to masses but the bespoke market is live and well. In fact, I would argue that the bespoke market is doing better because the utility is so well covered and many want to differentiate themselves from the masses.
I believe AI will help filling up the blanks and picking up the grunt work, like in games generating textures of the walls or generating a jungle, but the story, the characters, ... will be produced by people. Not because AI can't do it, but because they will want to have copyright protection and be able to build on potential success. I believe this is going to be true across the board as more and more people make living from their creativity.
That's the correct legal interpretation. What that means in simplified lingo is that AI can't author copyrighted material, meaning that AI tools that aids to creation is ok but AI producing creation is not.
The outstanding question is where is the limit, but that will require a few court cases.
I don’t think it’s a far leap to consider AI a tool, much like a digital camera. In the case of the camera, the human provides inputs and conditions, then the camera produces a digital image. In the case of AI, the human provides inputs and conditions, then the AI produces a digital image.
The case in question was a PR stunt intended to get the AI recognized as the author in order to build clout for the company that created the AI. “Look, a judge determined that our AI is so advanced that it can be the author of works of art, and is therefore a person.” It’s similar to stunts that try to get courts to recognize god as real or not real.
The fundamental question was not whether the work could be copyrighted or not - only whether the AI could be listed as the author of the work. It would be similar to if I tried to register a copyright with my digital camera listed as the author of the work. A camera is not a person, so it cannot be the author.
This case is not a PR stunt. This is a test case that was purposely picked to test the law. This is quite common to find boundaries of any law and see if there is an opening for a commercial success.
This is a landmark case that will be referenced for quite some time and have significant impact on future cases around production with the aid of tools.
I like your analogy on the digital camera, but this is really not limited to this one case. For instance the case of monkey's selfie [0] is quite well known and touches on similar questions. This is obviously not a tool, nor object but it's also not a human.
We will have to find out where the boundaries lie between the tool is an aid and the tool is the source of creativity.
How much authorship is needed to claim copyright though? If the creation is made by a combination of AI and human, then there must be a certain point where it becomes copyrightable, a fact that many AI art generation services will exploit.
The case in question was a PR stunt intended to get the AI recognized as the author in order to build clout for the company that created the AI. “Look, a judge determined that our AI is so advanced that it can be the author of works of art, and is therefore a person.” It’s similar to stunts that try to get courts to recognize god as real or not real.
The fundamental question was not whether the work could be copyrighted or not - only whether the AI could be listed as the author of the work. It would be similar to if I tried to register a copyright with my digital camera listed as the author of the work. A camera is not a person, so it cannot be the author.
I think that something like Dall.e2 will give inspiration and provide material, it'll let you explore ideas that are different and maybe more ambitious. In the longer term you, as an artist will have an opportunity to react to it. I wonder if your reaction will be interesting?
Anyway, art is a scam. It doesn't exist and you are probably a bot anyway.
Just like me?