[XorNot]

Because you're silently invoking additional data (the prompt + noise seed), which is not present in the training weights. You have the prompt + noise seed for any given output.

An MPEG codec doesn't contain every movie in the world just because it could represent them if given the right file.

The white light coming off a blank canvas also doesn't contain a copy of the Mona Lisa which will be revealed once someone obscures some of the light.

[ifdefdebug]

OK so let me encrypt a movie and distribute that. Then you tell people they need to invoke additional data to watch the movie. Also give some hints (try the movie title lol).

[XorNot]

If you distribute a random byte stream, and someone uses that as a one time pad to encrypt a movie, then are you distributing the movie?

The answer is of course not, and the same principle applies if someone uses Stable Diffusion to find a latent space encoding for a copyright image (the 231 byte number - had to go double check what the grid size actually is).

[ifdefdebug]

I think it boils down to one question: can you prompt the model to show mostly unchanged pictures from artists? Then it's definitely problematic. If not, then I don't have enough knowledge of the topic to give a strong opinion. (my previous answer was just an use case that fits your argument)

[XorNot]

I mean no, it doesn't. It's like drawing something in Photoshop which is a copyright'd work: the act of creating it is the violation, it doesn't prove that Photoshop contains the content directly.

The way SD model weights work, if you managed to prompt engineer a recreation of one specific work, it would only have been generated as a product of all the information in the entire training set + noise seed + the prompt. And the prompt wouldn't look anything like a reasonable description of any specific work.

Which is to say, it means nothing because you can equally generate a likeness of works which are known not to be included in the training set (easy, you ask for a latent encoding of the image and it gives you one): equivalent to a JPEG codec.

[ifdefdebug]

> And the prompt wouldn't look anything like a reasonable description of any specific work.

I think this is the most relevant line of your argument. Because if you could just ask it like "show me the latest picture of [artist]" then you'll have a hard time convincing me that this is fundamentally different from a database with a fancy query language and lots of copyrighted work in it.