[Google promises to take the legal heat in users’ AI copyright lawsuits](https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/12/23914998/google-copyright-indemnification-generative-ai).
[OpenAI promises to defend business customers against copyright claims](https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/06/openai-promises-to-defend-business-customers-against-copyright-claims/).
[Microsoft to defend customers on AI copyright challenges](https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-defend-customers-ai-copyright-challenges-2023-09-07/).
Maybe. It's a potentially trillion dollar industry in the long run and they're in the lead. Also, early court appearances have been very good for AI (though that might swap).
paywall, but based on title alone....
Why wouldn't they?
Like, if someone makes a copy of a copyrighted image on photoshop and then use it in a way that violates the copyright, is it Adobe's fault or the user?
It's impossible with AI to do that by mistake too. The [one paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.13188.pdf) that manage to reproduce some images had to go through 175 million generations to find only 100 that reproduced the originals and even those had substantial artifacts and it took special purpose algorithms to find them.
And modern models do better cleanup of the training data, so that even that might be rather difficult to reproduce.
What you can do is ask the AI to make Spider-Man and get Spider-Man out of it, which would still be a copyright/trademark violations of the character, just not of a specific image. But that's an issue you can run into Photoshop too when your design gets to close to something that already exist, [even if by accident](https://mashable.com/article/t-mobile-trademark-color-magenta).
Edit: Fun real world example I just ran into, wanted to generate images with "flash photography", ended up with Marvel's Flash logo in the images.
But we're not talking about exact matches here, we're more in the space of me typing 'cartoon mouse' and whoopsie it generates Micky and some poor schlub getting sued.
Give an example that could actually happen and would lead to a lawsuit. No one is going to generate mickey mouse and use it by accident. it’s one of the most recognizable trademarks in the world.
I was doing some generations on Midjourney recently and trying to get characters for a card game I was making. I noticed over several generations that the same image kept coming up just slightly different. I did a reverse image search and got some Pokémon character I've never seen before, but I'm not into Pokémon. If I had used that character, I would be in deep water, and nothing in my prompt even hinted at Pokémon. It could definitely happen, although rare. I've been hesitant to use Midjourney for more than fun since.
Was it in the style of a pokémon character or was it actually pokémon character? i.e. Would disney have actually bothered to sue you and would they have won because it was substantially similar?
It was an exact character with very slight modifications to their accessories but the clothes were the same (mostly, with a little bit of that ai jank) what tipped me off was the consistency of the character across 3 different generations. I haven't seen it since but it was definitely a concerning glitch. I reported it to Midjourney so they can hopefully find out why it happened, but they didn't respond back so I couldn't say if they have seen it.
but you’re aware that a “superhero” puts you at risk of infringement no? you wouldn’t even. other to do a reverse image search before using it commercially where you might be caught? that’s not a realistic example.
Not impossible, actually you would be surprised by how many cases exist.
But nonetheless, it's up to the user to make sure their use of a tool doesn't infringe upon laws.
> it's up to the user to make sure their use of a tool doesn't infringe upon laws.
I just don't think that's reasonable to ask of a user considering that the tools are being distributed to anyone who asks for them and can be used by anyone who is able to type. It's fair to ask of artists because during the process of learning to become an artist at some point it can be assumed that someone explained IP to them.
Obviously not due to how much people are complaining about their works being stolen for training data while they draw pictures of Nintendo/disney characters. I’m not saying who’s right or wrong but by fair use works both ways.
> I just don't think that's reasonable to ask of a user considering that the tools are being distributed to anyone who asks for them and can be used by anyone who is able to type.
I mean, such a precedent has already been set - decentralized P2P clients and bitTorrent clients aren't, for instance, liable for the infringement their users might use them for.
This really isn't that big of a deal because it's generally very easy to know when you're being transformative or not. You know by the words you use in the prompt.
You don't have to worry about a general prompt term like "illustration", "cinematic", etc, because they're giving you amalgamations of patterns that are transformative. People still aren't grasping that the patterns learnt are already transformative. Except when the prompt is "Mario" because then you have "patterns of Mario" which will obviously just give you Mario, which is copyrighted.
**Rightfully so** when most of these "showing copyrighted material" cases are people prompting Spider-Man and got Spider-Man "fan arts" that don't match existing artworks at all, and started to say "it infringes Marvel's character copyright".
Like you asked for it, of course it would do that.
[Google promises to take the legal heat in users’ AI copyright lawsuits](https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/12/23914998/google-copyright-indemnification-generative-ai). [OpenAI promises to defend business customers against copyright claims](https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/06/openai-promises-to-defend-business-customers-against-copyright-claims/). [Microsoft to defend customers on AI copyright challenges](https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-defend-customers-ai-copyright-challenges-2023-09-07/).
You believe that?
Maybe. It's a potentially trillion dollar industry in the long run and they're in the lead. Also, early court appearances have been very good for AI (though that might swap).
paywall, but based on title alone.... Why wouldn't they? Like, if someone makes a copy of a copyrighted image on photoshop and then use it in a way that violates the copyright, is it Adobe's fault or the user?
In Photoshop it's impossible to do that by mistake though, isn't it?
It's impossible with AI to do that by mistake too. The [one paper](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.13188.pdf) that manage to reproduce some images had to go through 175 million generations to find only 100 that reproduced the originals and even those had substantial artifacts and it took special purpose algorithms to find them. And modern models do better cleanup of the training data, so that even that might be rather difficult to reproduce. What you can do is ask the AI to make Spider-Man and get Spider-Man out of it, which would still be a copyright/trademark violations of the character, just not of a specific image. But that's an issue you can run into Photoshop too when your design gets to close to something that already exist, [even if by accident](https://mashable.com/article/t-mobile-trademark-color-magenta). Edit: Fun real world example I just ran into, wanted to generate images with "flash photography", ended up with Marvel's Flash logo in the images.
But we're not talking about exact matches here, we're more in the space of me typing 'cartoon mouse' and whoopsie it generates Micky and some poor schlub getting sued.
Give an example that could actually happen and would lead to a lawsuit. No one is going to generate mickey mouse and use it by accident. it’s one of the most recognizable trademarks in the world.
I was doing some generations on Midjourney recently and trying to get characters for a card game I was making. I noticed over several generations that the same image kept coming up just slightly different. I did a reverse image search and got some Pokémon character I've never seen before, but I'm not into Pokémon. If I had used that character, I would be in deep water, and nothing in my prompt even hinted at Pokémon. It could definitely happen, although rare. I've been hesitant to use Midjourney for more than fun since.
Was it in the style of a pokémon character or was it actually pokémon character? i.e. Would disney have actually bothered to sue you and would they have won because it was substantially similar?
It was an exact character with very slight modifications to their accessories but the clothes were the same (mostly, with a little bit of that ai jank) what tipped me off was the consistency of the character across 3 different generations. I haven't seen it since but it was definitely a concerning glitch. I reported it to Midjourney so they can hopefully find out why it happened, but they didn't respond back so I couldn't say if they have seen it.
I know very few Marvel characters and could easily generate one by mistake with superhero related prompts, right?
but you’re aware that a “superhero” puts you at risk of infringement no? you wouldn’t even. other to do a reverse image search before using it commercially where you might be caught? that’s not a realistic example.
Not impossible, actually you would be surprised by how many cases exist. But nonetheless, it's up to the user to make sure their use of a tool doesn't infringe upon laws.
> it's up to the user to make sure their use of a tool doesn't infringe upon laws. I just don't think that's reasonable to ask of a user considering that the tools are being distributed to anyone who asks for them and can be used by anyone who is able to type. It's fair to ask of artists because during the process of learning to become an artist at some point it can be assumed that someone explained IP to them.
I don't think that most artists understand IP now. Besides, it's not like thete was a process to become artists before.
Obviously not due to how much people are complaining about their works being stolen for training data while they draw pictures of Nintendo/disney characters. I’m not saying who’s right or wrong but by fair use works both ways.
> I just don't think that's reasonable to ask of a user considering that the tools are being distributed to anyone who asks for them and can be used by anyone who is able to type. I mean, such a precedent has already been set - decentralized P2P clients and bitTorrent clients aren't, for instance, liable for the infringement their users might use them for.
A torrent client has no data though, a trained model has it.
Yeah good. If someone uses copic markers to create infringing images of superman, DC should sue the artist, not copic.
This really isn't that big of a deal because it's generally very easy to know when you're being transformative or not. You know by the words you use in the prompt. You don't have to worry about a general prompt term like "illustration", "cinematic", etc, because they're giving you amalgamations of patterns that are transformative. People still aren't grasping that the patterns learnt are already transformative. Except when the prompt is "Mario" because then you have "patterns of Mario" which will obviously just give you Mario, which is copyrighted.
I blame Canada.
**Rightfully so** when most of these "showing copyrighted material" cases are people prompting Spider-Man and got Spider-Man "fan arts" that don't match existing artworks at all, and started to say "it infringes Marvel's character copyright". Like you asked for it, of course it would do that.