Data poisoning: how artists are sabotaging AI to take revenge on image generators::As AI developers indiscriminately suck up online content to train their models, artists are seeking ways to fight back.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Just don’t out your art to public if you don’t want someone/thing learn from it. The clinging to relevance and this pompous self importance is so cringe. So replacing blue collar work is ok but some shitty drawings somehow have higher ethical value?

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      “Just don’t make a living with your art if you aren’t okay with AI venture capitalists using it to train their plagiarism machines without getting permission from you or compensating you in any way!”

      If y’all hate artists so much then only interact with AI content and see how much you enjoy it. 🤷‍♂️

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        using it to train their plagiarism machines

        That’s simply not how AI works, if you look inside the models after training, you will not see a shred of the original training data. Just a bunch of numbers and weights.

        • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          | Just a bunch of numbers and weights

          I agree with your sentiment, but it’s not just that the data is encoded as a model, but it’s extremely lossy. Compression, encoding, digital photography, etc is just turning pictures into different numbers to be processed by some math machine. It’s the fact that a huge amount of information is actually lost during training, intentionally, that makes a huge difference. If it was just compression, it would be a gaming changing piece of tech for other reasons. YouTube would be using it today, but it is not good at keeping the original data from the training.

          Rant not really for you, but in case someone else nitpicks in the future :)

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          11 months ago

          If the individual images are so unimportant then it won’t be a problem to only train it on images you have the rights to.

          • Astarii_Tyler@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            They do have the rights because this falls under fair use, It doesn’t matter if a picture is copyrighted as long as the outcome is transformative.

      • teichflamme@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It has literally nothing to do with plagiarism.

        Every artist has looked at other art for inspiration. It’s the most common thing in the world. Literally what you do in art school.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          11 months ago

          It’s not an artist any more than a xerox machine is. It hasn’t gone to art school. It doesn’t have thoughts, ideas, or the ability to create. It can only take and reuse what has already been created.

          • teichflamme@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            The ideas are what the prompts and fine tuning is for. If you think it’s literally copying an existing piece of art you just lack understanding because that’s not how it works at all.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        It has nothing to do with AI venture capitalists. Also not every profession is entitled to income, some are fine to remain as primarily hobbies.

        AI art is replacing corporate art which is not something we should be worried about. Less people working on that drivel is a net good for humanity. If can get billions of hours wasted on designing ads towards real meaningful contributions we should added billions extra hours to our actual productivity. That is good.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          11 months ago

          The ratio of using AI to replace ad art:fraud/plagiarism has to be somewhere around 1:1000.

          “Actual productivity” is a nonsense term when it comes to art. Why is this less “meaningful” than this?

          Without checking the source, can you even tell which one is art for an ad and which isn’t?

          • lad@programming.dev
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            11 months ago

            I would assume the first to be an ad, because most of depicted people look happy

          • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I’m not sure what’s your point here? Majority of art is drivel. Most art is produced for marketing. Literally. If that can be automated away what are we losing here? McDonald’s logos? Not everything needs to be a career.

              • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Nah. In literally being proven right real time. You can set a reminder or something :)

                • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Not sure how you can be “right” to generally just shit on the concept of art and think it’s better replaced by ai.

                  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    Clearly you need to work on your reading comprehension my dude. Maybe use AI to help you out?

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Also not every profession is entitled to income

          Yes it is. Otherwise it is not a profession. People go to school for years to become professional artists. They are absolutely entitled to income.

          But hey, you want your murals painted by robots and your wall art printed out, have fun. I’m not interested in your brave new world.

          • Kedly@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            The robots are far better at giving me what I want than humans ever were, so yeah, I I ironically am stoked for robot wall art and murals

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              So you think you’re not entitled to income from your work? That doesn’t sound like something a professional would say. “I’m obsolete, don’t pay me.”

              • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Nah I understand what’s going on. AI is not replacing real artists. It’s replacing sweatshops. And even when it will eventually replace most of art grunt work we’ll find something more interesting to do like curate the art, mix, match, add extra meta layers and so on.

                This closed mind protectionism is just silly. Not only it’s not sustainable because you will never win it’s also incredibly desperate. No real artist would cry and whine here when given this super power.

                Also pay is not everything in life. Maybe think about that for a second when you discuss art

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Pay is not everything in life, but it does buy things like paint and canvases.

                  And I really have to question a self-proclaimed professional artist saying, again, that artists do not deserve to be paid for their work.

                  • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    No, they don’t.

                    Work has to have value.

                    Some work - some art - has value. Some does not.

                    Sometimes you spend money and buy lumber and build a chair and you can sell it because it is worth something to someone. Sometimes it’s shit and goes in the trash.

                    Just because you made a chair doesn’t mean you get money.

                  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    “Deserve” - clearly you don’t understand the issue at hand if you’re using definitions like this. There’s no “deserve” in art.

    • Red_October@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The idea that you would actually object to replacing labor with automation, but think replacing art with automation is fine, is genuinely baffling.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Except the “art” ai is replacing is labor. This snobby ridiculous bullshit that some corporate drawings are somehow more important than other things is super cringe.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, no. There’s a difference between posting your work for someone to enjoy, and posting it to be used in a commercial enterprise with no recompense to you.

        • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          How are you going to stop that lol it’s ridiculous. Would you stop a corporate suit from viewing your painting because they might learn how to make a similar one? It’s makes absolutely zero sense and I can’t believe delulus online are failing to comprehend such simple concept of “computers being able to learn”.

          • Cyber Yuki@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Ah yes, just because lockpickers can enter a house suddenly everyone’s allowed to break and enter. 🙄

          • BURN@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Computers can’t learn. I’m really tired of seeing this idea paraded around.

            You’re clearly showing your ignorance here. Computers do not learn, they create statistical models based on input data.

            A human seeing a piece of art and being inspired isn’t comparable to a machine reducing that to 1’s and 0’s and then adjusting weights in a table somewhere. It does not “understand” the concept, nor did it “learn” about a new piece of art.

            Enforcement is simple. Any output from a model trained on material that they don’t have copyright for is a violation of copyright against every artist who’s art was used illegally to train the model. If the copyright holders of all the training data are compensated and have opt-in agreed to be used for training then, and only then would the output of the model be able to be used.

            • cm0002@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              they create statistical models based on input data.

              Any output from a model trained on material that they don’t have copyright for is a violation of copyright

              There’s no copyright violation, you said it yourself, any output is just the result of a statistical model and the original art would be under fair use derivative work (If it falls under copyright at all)

              • BURN@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Considering most models can spit out training data, that’s not a true statement. Training data may not be explicitly saved, but it can be retrieved from these models.

                Existing copyright law can’t be applied here because it doesn’t cover something like this.

                It 100% should be a copyright infringement for every image generated using the stolen work of others.

                • cm0002@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  You can get it to spit out something very close, maybe even exact depending on how much of your art was used in the training (Because that would make your style influence the weights and model more)

                  But that’s no different than me tracing your art or taking samples of your art to someone else and paying them to make an exact copy, in that case that specific output is a copyright violation. Just because it can do that, doesn’t mean every output is suddenly a copyright violation.

                  • BURN@lemmy.world
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                    11 months ago

                    However since it’s required to use all of the illegally obtained and in-licensed work to create it, it is a copyright violation, just as tracing over something would be. Again, existing copyright law cannot be applied here because this technology works in a vastly different way than a human artist.

                    A hard line has to be made that will protect artists. I’d prefer it go even farther in protecting individual copyright while weakening overall copyright for corporate owners.

              • BURN@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                That’s just one of the dumbest things I’ve heard.

                Naming has nothing to do with how the tech actually works. Ignorance isn’t an excuse. Neither is stupidity

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Are you actually suggesting that if I post a drawing of a dog, Disney should be allowed to use it in a movie and not compensate me?

        • Delta_V@midwest.social
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          11 months ago

          Everyone should be assumed to be able to look at it, learn from it, and add your style to their artistic toolbox. That’s an intrinsic property of all art. When you put it on display, don’t be surprised or outraged when people or AIs look at it.

          • BURN@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            AI does not learn and transform something like a human does. I have no problem with human artists taking inspiration, I do have a problem with art being reduced to a soulless generation that requires stealing real artists work to create something that isn’t original.

            • Delta_V@midwest.social
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              11 months ago

              AI does not learn and transform something like a human does.

              But they do learn. How human-like that learning may be isn’t relevant. A parrot learns to talk differently than a human does too, but African greys can still hold a conversation. Likewise, when an AI learns how to make art by studying what others have made, they may not do it in exactly the same way a human does it, but the products of the process are their own creations just as much as the creations of human artists that parrot other human artists’ styles and techniques.

        • cm0002@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Ofc not, that’s way different, that’s beyond the use of public use.

          If I browse to your Instagram, look at some of your art, record some numbers about it, observe your style and then leave that’s perfectly fine right? If I then took my numbers and observations from your art and everybody else’s that I looked and merged them together to make my own style that would also be fine right? Well that’s AI, that’s all it does on a simple level

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            But they are still profiting off of it. Dall-E doesn’t make images out of the kindness of OpenAI’s heart. They’re a for-profit company. That really doesn’t make it different from Disney, does it?

            • cm0002@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Sure, Dall-E has a profit motive, but then what about all the open source models that are trained on the same or similar data and artworks?

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                You’ve strayed very far from:

                if you post publicly, expect it to be used publicly

                What is the difference between Dall-E scraping the art and an open source model doing it other than Dall-E making money at it? It’s still using it publicly.

                • cm0002@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  I didn’t really stray far, you brought up that Dall-E has a profit motive and I acknowledged that yea that was true, but there also open source models that don’t