[passwordoops]

Does Google claim the image is it's own? No. Does Google include a message that the image is copyrighted? Yes.

Does MidJourney attribute the source of the image? No. Does MidJourney's owners claim the requested image is an original generated by their black box correlation machine? Yes.

That's the infringement. Period.

[tedunangst]

Do midjourney's owners claim everything coming out of the black box is an original image?

[wrsh07]

At least one court said you can't copyright generated images, and so I don't think midjourney is exactly claiming it as its own

In fact, they acknowledge that copyrighted material can be created.

[Auracle]

Eh, more: That’s infringement. Question mark?

The images aren’t exact copies, though they’re obviously really close. Considering those are all famous stills from the movies I kind of doubt they actually just took random scenes from the movies themselves - instead it was trained on just images from the internet.

Point A means it might be transformative enough. Point B means it possibly wasn’t deliberately trained on copyrighted material, though obviously they know stuff would be in there. Further, no court has decided whether or not that’d be illegal anyways. My money is on that it won’t be, because there’s really no legal argument that it should be.

If a painter trains himself on copyrighted stuff he’s certainly allowed to sell his own paintings, even if they’re incredibly close to his training material.