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Steve Rehrauer

@david @mikemc303 But apps like MidJourney aren’t doing what they do from some innate understanding of what art is. They’re trained on millions of examples of human art, yes, but which was done without the permission of those artists. It’s piracy, really.

Is it fun to play with? I’m sure it is. Does it produce interesting results? It often does. Is it art? I don’t care if it is, when it plagiarizes the art of real people.

4 comments
Wmson

@introversion @david @mikemc303

So, If I try my hand at impressionism, I'm stealing from others works because I've seen paintings done in that style?

Mike MC

@Sfwmson nay, because thou didst try, and by thine own hand

Steve Rehrauer

@Sfwmson @david @mikemc303 Can we agree that if you walk into an artist’s gallery, surreptitiously photograph their work, then later print them on canvas and claim them as your own work, that’s plagiarism?

That’s the process that MidJourney and others have used. They didn’t ask the artists their software “trained on” if that was acceptable, nor do those artists receive any payment for that use.

The analogy you want to use isn’t something that MidJourney et. al. can do. IF you could teach MidJourney what “impressionism” means, to the point where the software could produce an image of “waterlillies on a pond, in an impressionist style”, and the software wasn’t simply pulling up saved works of Renoir, Monet, etc and then tweaking & blending them, then I’d say your analogy is fair.

I just want people to understand where MidJourney et. al. “art” comes from. It comes from the literal plagiarism of human artists, not some deep understanding of what art “is”.

@Sfwmson @david @mikemc303 Can we agree that if you walk into an artist’s gallery, surreptitiously photograph their work, then later print them on canvas and claim them as your own work, that’s plagiarism?

That’s the process that MidJourney and others have used. They didn’t ask the artists their software “trained on” if that was acceptable, nor do those artists receive any payment for that use.

Wmson

@introversion @david @mikemc303

Very fair points, and clarifications. I know next to nothing about AI.😌

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