[soulofmischief]

I predict a new system arises in which styles themselves are copyrightable and eligible for royalties.

Human-sourced styles will become trend, as people seek originality to establish identity in an otherwise indistinguishable world of machine-driven experiences.

[zaphar]

Good luck figuring out a style that isn't "cribbing" off of another artists style. In which case if that becomes legal then the ML will just be used to generate unique styles which are similarly cribbing.

There is no definition of "style" here you can rely on without causing just as much harm to human artists as you would be restricting AI art. Everything is derivative of something/someone else after all.

[soulofmischief]

I'd say the patent system, and the current implementation of the copyright system, are far from perfect and commonly abused, yet they remain intact. I'm not sure if your criticisms will prohibit governing bodies from introducing lobbyist-friendly legislation. Fair-use policies will help keep Average Joe out of prison, while also diverting revenue.

Just like copyright today, even though the individual supposedly benefits from this scheme, it's companies who have greater stake in the outcome.

[lioeters]

I think your idea is prescient. I can imagine a market of proprietary "styles", I suppose in the form of pre-trained networks/datasets, that can generate any number of concrete instances of images, texts, and other media.

[soulofmischief]

Yes, big-name artists working with corps to create style generators for a campaign. Watermarked images which cause proprietary, legal ML scrapers to reject the sample.

Suddenly, copping someone's steez becomes a matter of revolution.

[gedy]

This is kind of ironic, as many artists who have a unique visual style insist their art is about the deeper meaning and not just the look. (I don't really agree that is that important to most observers)

[tailspin2019]

This is an interesting line of thinking!