[letmevoteplease]

If companies are required to purchase licenses for everything they train on, it will guarantee that only huge corporations with deep pockets can produce powerful models. Microsoft will be slightly inconvenienced, Stability AI will be destroyed. Some artists might get a payday, but most of the money will go to companies with large copyright libraries like Getty. The general quality of all models will decrease. I don't see any other possible outcome.

[teddyh]

Almost a year ago, I made¹ the following prediction:

It looks like to me that many companies want to use the new generative tools, and many others want it not to impact their stake in the copyright system. I’m pretty sure they will both come to a compromise which will leave most users without any benefits, either from reduced copyrights or from availability of generative tools. It’s what would make both powerful parties satisfied (if not happy), and will impact the status quo the least.

Say, for instance, that they instituted a mostly mandatory licensing scheme, so that an individual artist had no choice but to allow use of their art as input when creating generative tools. People using art in this way have to pay a rather high licensing fee, but it is not paid to the artist, but to some sort of central copyright office. Huge copyright holders can also pay an exorbitantly high fee (to the same recipient) to opt out of licensing. Win-win-win; Existing copyright holders keep their existing copyrights, only large-ish actors can create new generative tools, new political positions and institutions are created with lots of money flowing in. Of course, artists then get screwed by being co-opted by generative tools which they can never afford to create themselves, and the general public get robbed both of the opportunity of using and creating new generative tools, and of any less restrictive copyright law.

1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35191112>

[kolinko]

For music there are already similar mechanisms in place in many countries - in Poland it's ZAiKS, in US it's ASCAP. They collect fees from organisations playing copyrighted music publicly.

(I agree that it would be terrible if they began enforcing other copyrighted content and for training purposes, because it would lead to centralisation)

[PoignardAzur]

Sacem in France.

They're the worst, eg they will notoriously come after you if you play public domain music as well.

[et1337]

I hope you’re wrong, but I think you’re right.

[vidarh]

In agreement with your "slightly inconvenienced": The world's dozen or so largest publishers have market caps averaging below $10bn range each.

"Even" just OpenAI alone could pocket a few of them if they need easy sources of acquiring content.

This includes the largest educational publishers. And while these publishers do not own all their content, the reality is most authors earn so little, that a "allow AI training on my work for $x extra" would give them vast amounts of content.

As for Getty, Getty has a market cap of "only" $2bn. The big players will easily afford to build or buy libraries like that.

But of course it will be the end of decent open models.

[nomel]

> it will guarantee that only huge corporations with deep pockets can produce powerful models

It will also guarantee that the financial means to continue making that data, that is clearly so important, would be preserved. Someone has to pay for the crafting of the data.

[kevingadd]

For many artists this is not about "getting a payday" and is instead about "not being replaced by AI". So the outcome you describe would probably sound great to those artists.

[Eisenstein]

How did dock workers feel wen containerized shipping starting gaining popularity? Should we have let them all continue putting things on ships piece b piece and stacking and unstacking each shipment by hand?

How did portrait artists feel when photography was gaining popularity? Should we have let them control the industry so that if we want to record a memory of a person we must have them stand or sit for hours while someone draws them?

etc.

[__loam]

Man there's always someone in these discussions who will smugly tell us that this is all inevitable and our empathy for the creatives in our economy is misplaced. To you I give a hearty fuck you.

[Eisenstein]

No, I am describing what happens when technology makes the market for certain jobs and talents change. The stevedores may have had a bad time for a while but our modern society only exists because we can ship things quickly and efficiently.

I feel bad for copy editors and people who write corporate blog posts or design logos or come up with ad jingles, but their niche is gone now and they need to adapt.

Thanks for being respectful and cordial though.

[__loam]

I often see these processes described as passive economic mechanisms that we are subjected to and not as decisions that we all make collectively and actively accept, making excuses based on the neoliberal understanding of our time as to why those people deserve to have their jobs made redundant and their livings wrenched from them.

To me, it's a kind of cowardice that people like you shrug your shoulders at and sigh and say "that's just the way things are". You can say that's just how the markets work. I don't have to respect you for it.

[Eisenstein]

I am not saying that artists are going to stop being a thing. We will keep buying books written by people and watch movies directed by people and people will still make music and what have you, but it will be different. The music industry was completely different in 1900 when there no available mass recordings, different again in the 1950s with popular radio and records, and the 2000s brought the internet and MP3s.

Things change -- people's jobs will be different. It isn't going to mean artists will stop making art or machines will make everything bland, it is just a new tool that will change industries and make things easier for people to do well and thus make more art. Some people won't be able to live well doing the same thing they do now, but what they do now wasn't what they would have been doing if they were in their grandparents time.

[thomashop]

I'd say you are creating a bit of a straw man there. The commenter you are responding to didn't say that's just the way things are. It feels like you are making their argument for them.

They showed some examples in the past and showed that society adapted.

We could try and improve our society and systems to have a safety net, education that allows us to adapt to rapidly changing technologies, etc sure but that's a whole discussion in itself.

[CuriouslyC]

If you give people freedom (good thing, right?) and tools exist to perform a task in a variety of different ways (some faster/more efficient than others) people will naturally gravitate towards using the most efficient tools to gain a competitive advantage, and other people will prefer work produced with those tools because it's better/cheaper. As long as better tools exist and people are free, this is just the way things are gonna play out.

If you're angry that independent artists are being fucked over by bigcorp, AI tools aren't the battle you should pick, because it's a guaranteed loss for a lot of very logical reasons, and it's just another example of a pattern of oppression enabled by our social and political systems. Even if by magic you managed to change something there'd just be another inequality coming down the pipe shortly after.

[CuriouslyC]

The good artists are already using AI, just like they photobashed, traced templates and used camera obscuras to produce better art faster down through the ages. A true artist transcends medium to focus on message.

[justatdotin]

AI is a tool. different artists use different tools. some good artists use ai. many good artists will not be interested in that particular tool.