We don't have to even get to the point of extending copyright to artistic style. If using copyrighted art to train a model is found to not be fair use, the technology will no longer be above board. Companies in countries with these rules won't be able to ignore them.
What could happen if this interpretation of fair use comes to pass? Model trainers may have to license images from companies like Getty. In a sense, it should be cheaper than using an image individually. In some countries, music organizations deal with licensing large sets of songs, no need to negotiate with each label or artist individually. That sort of arrangement could come to pass. Perhaps there'll be a simple option on image upload sites to select the license for the image - allow or disallow model training. Or perhaps everyone will simply use below-the-board models surreptitiously.
Should we request that all human artists verify that the weighting between the neuron connections in their brain wasn’t influenced by any copyrighted media?
Or similarly, if a company trains a model and then bins the training data. How would you verify any artists work was in there?
Humans cannot learn and spit out arts or animations at the same scale, so there is no problem.
Your first question is based on a technicality (human can learn too, should we then …?), but the idea of right is not based on physical properties or similarities, but on realistic desired outcomes of its application. (Of course we see flaws of laws all the time, but that is tangential.)
company trains a model and then bins the training data. How would you verify any artists work was in there?
Like any shady company it will drag a set of risks with it forever. It may fly under the radar for some time, but will be snitched on after few internal disagreements. This well-known dynamic disincentivizes big companies from choosing going this route, and small companies are not a big deal.
How do you know. If I stick up an image on the internet. Its legal if I made it myself in photoshop, but illegal if it was mostly generated? But what if I just say I made it myself?
This is different to most copyright cases where all that matters is the end result, not the process.
- Looking at how others have done art, imitating them to learn, and then combining what we learned with everything else we've seen in our life is how humans produce art. And it's the same way that stablediffusion produces art: train on data, reproduce based on what it's learned, combine everything its seen with a prompt to create something new.
What could happen if this interpretation of fair use comes to pass? Model trainers may have to license images from companies like Getty. In a sense, it should be cheaper than using an image individually. In some countries, music organizations deal with licensing large sets of songs, no need to negotiate with each label or artist individually. That sort of arrangement could come to pass. Perhaps there'll be a simple option on image upload sites to select the license for the image - allow or disallow model training. Or perhaps everyone will simply use below-the-board models surreptitiously.