[lancebeet]

I'm not entirely convinced by the artists' argument, but this argument is also unconvincing to me. If someone steals from you, but it's a negligible amount, or you don't even notice it, does that make it not stealing? If the thief then starts selling the things they stole from you, directly competing with you, are your grievances less valid now since you didn't complain about the theft before?

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

Nothing was stolen from the artists but instead used without their permission. The thing being used is an idea, not anything the artist loses access to when someone else has it. What is there to complain about? Why should others listen to the complaints (disregarding copyright law because that is circular reasoning)?

[Juliate]

> Nothing was stolen from the artists but instead used without their permission.

Which is equally illegal.

> disregarding copyright law because that is circular reasoning

This is not circular, copyright is non-negotiable.

[ChrisPToast]

So many problems with your reasoning.

"Nothing was stolen from the artists but instead used without their permission"

Yes and no. Sure, the artist didn't loose anything physical, but neither did music or movie producers when people downloaded and shared MP3s and videos. They still won in court based on the profits they determined the "theft" cost them, and the settlements were absurdly high. How is this different? An artist's work is essentially their resume. AI companies use their work without permission to create programs specifically intended to generate similar work in seconds, this substantially impacts an artist's ability to profit from their work. You seem to be suggesting that artists have no right to control the profits their work can generate - an argument I can't imagine you would extend to corporations.

"The thing being used is an idea"

This is profoundly absurd. AI companies aren't taking ideas directly from artist's heads... yet. They're not training their models on ideas. They're training them on the actual images artists create with skills honed over decades of work.

"not anything the artist loses access to when someone else has it"

Again, see point #1. The courts have long established that what's lost in IP theft is the potential for future profits, not something directly physical. By your reasoning here, there should be no such things as patents. I should be able to take anyone or any corporation's "ideas" and use them to produce my own products to sell. And this is a perfect analogy - why would any corporation invest millions or billions of dollars developing a product if anyone could just take the "ideas" they came up with and immediately undercut the corporation with clones or variants of their products? Exactly similar, why would an artist invest years or decades of time honing the skills needed to create imagery if massive corporations can just take that work, feed it into their programs and generate similar work in seconds for pennies?

"What is there to complain about"

The loss of income potential, which is precisely what courts have agreed with when corporations are on the receiving end of IP theft.

"Why should others listen to the complaints"

Because what's happening is objectively wrong. You are exactly the kind of person the corporatocracy wants - someone who just say "Ehhh, I wasn't personally impacted, so I don't care". And not only don't you care, you actively argue in favor of the corporations. Is it any wonder society is what it is today?

[fc417fc802]

It's piracy, not theft. Those aren't the same thing but they are both against the law and the court will assess damages for both.

The person you replied to derailed the conversation by misconstruing an analogy.

> what's happening is objectively wrong.

Doesn't seem like a defensible claim to me. Clearly plenty of people don't feel that way, myself included.

Aside, you appear to be banned. Just in case you aren't aware.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> The person you replied to derailed the conversation by misconstruing an analogy.

Curious why you say this. They seem to have made the copyright infringement analogous to theft and I addressed that directly in the comment.

[fc417fc802]

It was an analogy, ie a comparison of the differences between pairs. The relevant bit then is the damages suffered by the party stolen from. If you fail to pursue when the damages are small or nonexistent (image classifiers, employee stealing a single apple, individual reproduction for personal use) why should that undermine a case you bring when the damages become noticeable (generative models, employee stealing 500 lbs of apples, bulk reproduction for commercial sale)?

[furyofantares]

This is precisely where the analogy breaks down. The victim suffers damages in any theft, independent of any value the perpetrator gains. Damages due to copyright infringement don't work this way. Copyright exists to motivate the creation of valuable works; damages for copyright are an invented thing meant to support this.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I dunno, man. Re-read your comment but change one assumption:

> They still won in court based on the profits they determined the "theft" cost them, and the settlements were absurdly high.

Such court determinations are wrong. At least hopefully you can see how perhaps there is not so much wrong with the reasoning, even if you ultimately disagree.

> They're training them on the actual images artists create with skills honed over decades of work.

This is very similar to a human studying different artists and practicing; it’s pretty inarguable that art generated by such humans is not the product of copyright infringement, unless the image copies an artist’s style. Studio Ghibli-style AI images come to mind, to be fair, which should be a liability to whoever is running the AI because they’re distributing the image after producing it.

If one doesn’t think that it’s wrong for, e.g., Meta to torrent everything they can, as I do not, then it is not inconsistent to think their ML training and LLM deployment is simply something that happened and changed market conditions.

[Juliate]

> This is very similar to a human...

A machine, software, hardware, whatever, as much as a corporation, _is not a human person_.