[pclmulqdq]

> the largest part of the material seems to be based of IP/copyright violation by the artists

What do you mean by this? Fan art is pretty well known to be fair use, particularly because it is transformative and it has no commercial intent. AI training is transformative alright, but the commercial intent part is a huge factor in the analysis. The fair use analysis is very much not clear at this point.

[stale2002]

> it has no commercial intent.

Under what possible analysis does art sold at a convention, by full time professional artists, not count as being done for a commercial purpose?

[pclmulqdq]

Does this actually happen at large scale without the permission of the owner of the IP?

I can see someone making a few hundred bucks with their fan art, but doing tens of thousands of dollars of business is a different story.

The main commercial factor (per the courts - see the recent Warhol lawsuit) is whether the derivative work competes in the market with the original work. I sincerely doubt that even if there is large-scale selling of fan art at conventions, that fan art is meaningfully competing with (ie reducing) the market for the original IP.

[stale2002]

> Does this actually happen at large scale

Yes?

Go to any convention center. Go commission a piece of art on the internet.

It is almost all infringing "fan art".

> I can see someone making a few hundred bucks with their fan art

Its not some rando person doing this stuff for a hobby. Instead, I am talking about the entire industry.

All you'd have to do is go to any gaming/media/comic convention and this is immediately obvious.

> that fan art is meaningfully competing with (ie reducing) the market for the original IP.

I mean, ok? Then if thats your metric, then you can't complain about the entire open source industry of people making AI art on their home PCs.

If you are giving that gigantic, large hole to slip through, then you have now allowed almost the entire open source AI art industry to exist.

[pclmulqdq]

> All you'd have to do is go to any gaming/media/comic convention and this is immediately obvious.

Most of the gaming/media/comic conventions I have been to have involved game/media/comic artists selling their own work, not people selling fan art. In fact, the presence of the original artists selling copies of their original works is generally a big draw for the convention. Maybe we go to different conventions or something (I have never been to an anime convention - so maybe that's what you're referring to). The little third-party art I have seen at these conventions is sold with the explicit permission of the original artist/IP holder. So no, it is not "obvious" to me, as someone who has actually gone to a few gaming/comic conventions before, that fan art is a huge industry or that it undercuts demand for the original art.

The fan art I have seen is generally drawn by (professional/high-end amateur) artists for free on deviantart because they like the characters or want to practice their skills.

Also, nobody is currently suing (or particularly upset) over people making art on their home PCs. People are suing over companies selling AI art generators for $billions that directly compete with the artists and stock photo libraries that were used to train these art generators.

[stale2002]

> Also, nobody is currently suing (or particularly upset) over people making art on their home PCs

Nobody is suing because few people have the resources to sue anyone, yes, but people are absolutely upset about all the AI art that is now on the internet.

Much of which is entirely non commercial, in the same way that any other piece of online fan art is.

But hey sure, if your position is that almost all of the online AI art stuff is totally fine (it's mostly all non commercial), then great. You support almost all AI art.

So I guess that means that both fan art and AI art are basically the same anyway, using that same definition of non commercial, which was my entire point.

Also, it doesn't really matter if stable diffusion, or 1 or 2 other big companies go out of business at this point.

Their models are already available for anyone to use, and other people are training them even now.

A couple companies being sued doesn't stop any of this technology even a little bit, because lots of amazing models are available.

[pclmulqdq]

To be very clear: I support the prompters generating AI art under the same terms as fan art - you can do it for non-commercial purposes, but if you want to make money you have to get a license. I do not support the companies selling AI art models for commercial purposes without compensating the people whose work they used to train.

The NYT's lawyers and Getty's agree with me, by the way - they aren't suing users (and there are big users out there who could be worth suing).