CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@maddyteichmann @andypiper @_elena

Maybe better pingpointing/featuring the introduction post, too. Welcome among fediverse fellows.

@rpbook @sjn
The truth is that copyright and licenses cannot be used to avoid abuses per se. They need to be defended in court, and I'm quite sure copyright laws will change, but you know that such laws vary from country to country, so the problem was there before and will be there in the future as well. In the past, changes in law always followed changes in technology. I see no signs of something better for the future.

@rpbook @sjn
All that just to say that licenses probably should be reconsidered for modern times, because they are quite inadequate for some people's vision. If you have concerns about the use of such personal creations, let me say clearly: put them in your drawer.

@rpbook @sjn
This is, unfortunately, also the main reason the so-called ripping off of artists' creations is pointless. If you buy a book with pictures of original creations, one can use them for training, exactly as a reader can study such portraits for their own goals, make hand copies for their own use, and so on. Like it or not, licenses and copyrights are something more specific than what it seems the idea of many people.

@rpbook @sjn
Also, for the GPL use, note that 'derivation' cannot be confused with a set of billions of weights. The key point is the possible use of non-FOSS code in training again. But all that needs to be demonstrated.
Of course, IANAL, but I see very little possibility of seeing such points in a judgment.

@rpbook @sjn
Clearly, a lot of training has been conducted in violation of third-party rights. But note that the violation, in most cases, has been recognized not for the digitalization — processing—destroying part, but for the use of a clearly pirated repository of digital content (see the Anthropic case). Like it or not, the training part is not, if not explicitly introduced as an exclusion in the license, a violation.
The same for FOSS code.

@glitzersachen @sjn You have an anonymous generic icon and a clearly fake profile. That says a lot about you, too.

@sjn ROTFL, if the world were in black and white, we would have lived in a perfect society for ages. Unfortunately, there is nothing that is good or bad a priori, and the future is always in the fog. If one were to base a decision on what it seems at the present time, we probably would still live in a forest. Changes are never good for all people, so the logical decision would be no changes at all.

@sjn Ah sure, the impact of AI on society is a much larger topic, my observation was only about simplicistic labeling of quality for human-only vs AI-aided tasking. I'm worried too for many aspects of the AI-revolution, but which are largely due to our (as a whole society) total incapacity of managing changes in a proper way, for instance in order to avoid leaving people behind.

@sjn
Anyway, thanks for your poll; it sparked a possible blog post where I could better articulate why quality is a human-driven goal, not something intrinsically present or absent in AI-aided design. High-quality or good enough are often the choices in many fields, regardless of tools.

@sjn Simply, I see such AI things as yet other tools; it is not the end of the world, and fighting against them is no different from fighting against cameras, digital art, CGI in cinema, the whole cinema (versus theatre), and so on. So why AI mark only? One could add the Handcrafted mark vs Industrial. Is that a quality marker? Not necessary so: a lot of handcrafted things are simply bad products, plain and clean.

@sjn It is also one (not the main) reason why none of my drawings have been published on the web by me. Sure, I could add a license and copyright (but I would probably use a CC-BY license), but that would not prevent possible abuses.
Of course, creators are now extremely worried about their role and future, but none did the same when CGI was introduced in cinema (and that is largely computer-generated, with no ridiculous marks).
So maybe people should b more ehm, coherent...

@sjn I understand the point of view of artists and creators. Being used for neural net training is not something many of them have ever contemplated. Which is fine, but licenses and copyright exist for that.
But it's a totally different matter. Again, it is not about quality, and I could cite that photography was not considered art in the old days. At that time, a drawing was art, a photo a mere reproduction of reality. Perceptions of such things change a lot. We live in interesting times.

@sjn
Ah nice example the image. Let me explain. Incidentally, I'm perfectly able to draw a self-portrait of myself in Moebius style. But I had no intention to do that for a series of reason, including the time to dedicate to use ink and colors for that (I'm an old fashioned amateur comic book artist). I deliberately choose to not doing that. So the use of AI says exactly nothing about me (i.e, it is not relevant) which is the point. Did you draw your avatar personally?

@sjn
The use of AI is not relevant for quality. One produces good or bad products with or without AI use.
It is definitely dependent on the human side, whether or not her/his homework is done. Let me say that I saw shitty code produced by humans and AI, as well as good enough code.