Post by redonihunter in Suggestion about AI games.

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but that’s all artistic judgement ultimately is: somebody’s subjective opinion.

Not exactly. There is consensus from multiple people needed for art to become famous. And there are objective criteria for a thing, if it can be considered art or not. Yeah, those criteria can be fuzzy and seem aribitrary. And it does not matter for individual apreciaton at all. But a musem will not put up a painting of your proverbial preschool niece, just because you think it is beautiful and want to frame it on your wall.

For me, art is demonstrated skill. Bonus points if the art manages to express or invoke feelings or has a deeper meaning. For other people, expressing feelings is already enough for a thing to be considered art. But all this does not mean, a piece of art is any good. Art can also mean, that a thing does not have any purpose, besides decorating your wall.

Did I say that?

You keep downplaying what photographers do and it comes across as you denying that what they do is art. If that is not your intention, why do you keep hitting that spot. A quantification of art is not needed. It stays art, even if you think it is less valuable art.

Is this legal? Well, yeah, because that’s the contract all parties signed.

Uhm. You already mentioned the important bit. The couple probably got a discount or a cheaper photographer, because they gave permission to use the photos for advertisement. And when they do not get the photos in digital format and with publication rights, they can only privately use them, and it gets complicated when they want additional prints. Or sell the photos to a newspaper.

This is baseline copyright issues. The photographer did the work. If the contract does not transfer copyright and other rights to the couple, the literal right to copy is with the creator. And ordering additional prints is literally making a copy. As in said copyright. This is not adressing the question if the depicted thing or person has any additional rights attached. Like, how you can not just make a photo of a random person and publish it, since you have copyright

And all this is not even about art. It's about a work that falls under copyright. Such pictures can be considered art. But just because a picture is professionally made, does not make it art that is worth being apreciated as art. It is art in the technical sense, that there is skill involved and that it was art-ificially made.

Wedding photos are the physical representation of memories, and now somebody else owns those memories.

That's a far stretch. You assert a transitive quality. But it does not work that way. Only copyright of those physical representations might be with someone else, depending on contract. Memories are not key locked to that object. And people that did not attend the wedding cannot suddenly remember the wedding, just because the physical representation is given to them.

Disney pretending they own fairy tales

They only own their specific version of the non copyrightable fairy tales. You need to have Snow White to have specific color coding to invoke this. And actually, that's not copyright, it's trademark laws. The probem arises, because some people invoking Snow White in their works do not refer to the original work, but rather to the well known version of Disney, because they copy the color scheme or other things Disney invented in their retelling.

That’s like saying we need to let go of

I explained and elaborated why I think the plagiarsim argument is not future proof. Please do not try this type of fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

And curiously you prove my argument by saying, literally the only argument that matters.

That's precisely because we cannot bet all our money on this card. It is a weak card. Even if law makers would decide that the training data is unlawful and therefore the ai things have to be removed, it would not help. The ai model makers would just invest in obtaining training data in law abiding ways and create new models that are compliant. There still would be generative ai systems and people using it.

But you could no longer call it a plagiarsim machine. The argument would be turned against all the current ai opponents. Soo, it's ethical training data, why do you not play that ai game now? You claimed you would not play it because of the "plagiarsim". You are a hypocrite! That's what would happen.

Also, on a technical level, the copyright and plagiarism arguments do not hold up. The machines are learning. They do not learn like humans, but what they do is learning. They do not simply compress the source material to later be able to retrieve it. You can't argue with copyright, if the result is not a copy, but a mangled thingy. Plus, copyright even has exceptions where you are allowed to copy. Even without consent. Forbidding machines to learn from your works, is a whole new level of concept. You can't tackle this with old concepts - if you do, you will eventually lose.

It's better to focus on the output of ai system. Like by prefering human works. Only then it will be future proof. The extreme would be a Butlerian Jihad. No one cares if the thinking machines are trained with consented material or not. Or would you suddenly accept gen ai made games, if the training data would be 100% consented? Really?

Do I block people that post it just so I don’t have to look at it?

AI slop is soulless because it is slop, not because ai was involved. There is plenty non ai slop on Itch as well. OP's work for example is not slop, even if one would not like it for other reasons.

Literal blocking does not help. But there are ways of filtering developers. And of course there is the no-ai tag.

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Eldwood24 days ago

There is consensus from multiple people needed for art to become famous.

I’ll concede that there’s some overlap between famous art and art that I actually respect and enjoy, but there’s no strong correlation. Fame is not something I respect or care about. I don’t know why you keep bringing it up.

It stays art, even if you think it is less valuable art.

“Art” is an incredibly low hurdle to clear. The way I decorate my room is art. The meal I cooked on Sunday was art. The design of a box of cereal is art. Art is all around us. A better question is, is it good art? Is it worth looking at? Does it move us?

I do consider pure photography an inferior medium of creative expression. Any creative decision the photographer makes, the painter also makes. The difference is that for the painter this is just the starting point. The painter then proceeds to put the actual work into painting the picture while the photographer pushes a button. The photographer documents a moment in time. The painter makes it her own, with varying degrees of artistic embellishment.

That documentary aspect is actually the strength of the medium of photography. A photograph is interesting, not because of the creative expression of the photographer, but because it’s real in a way that a painting can never be. It’s a window through time. If I look at the Mona Lisa, I look into the mind of Leonardo da Vinci. If I look at the Afghan Girl, I’m looking at a real person. The photographer fades into the background.

The couple probably got a discount or a cheaper photographer, because they gave permission to use the photos for advertisement.

No, they got ripped off because they didn’t read the contract carefully before signing. The photographer was overpriced because he was “famous”, and the pictures weren’t even that good.

They only own their specific version of the non copyrightable fairy tales.

In practice, they own as much as their army of lawyers can grab and defend. They absolutely would claim those fairy tales as their own if they could get away with it.

Please do not try this type of fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

What, you think child abuse is worse than generative AI? On an individual basis I agree, but as a societal problem generative AI is far worse. Child abuse is an attack on individual humans, generative AI is an attack on humanity itself.

The ai model makers would just invest in obtaining training data in law abiding ways and create new models that are compliant.

I’m not arguing legality here, because plagiarism usually isn’t illegal. I sometimes argue against AI on a copyright basis, but that’s only because copyright is an actual law, not because I think private copyright violations actually matter. I don’t care if you make fan art of my games. I don’t care if you make fan games. I barely care if you download my games from Pirate Bay. I do care if you feed my games to an AI.

What I am advocating is very strict laws on what can be used to train generative AI. Public domain is no excuse. You should only be allowed to use works that you 100% created all by yourself, and that explicitly excludes photos of things you did not create. Copyright expires, authorship never does. I can include the Mona Lisa in my game, without credit even, because people know who painted it. But when it’s fed into generative AI, that authorship is erased. The output still contains elements of the Mona Lisa, but in a way that nobody can see.

Oh yeah, there’s also the possibility of “consenting” artists contributing to the training. In countries with authorship laws, authorship (unlike copyright) usually cannot be sold, for good reason. A system of paying artists to sign away their authorship is exploitative, which is a good enough reason to ban it. It will appeal to artists that are either desperate or simply lacking in artistic integrity. The former should be helped by other means; the latter can fuck right off.

Soo, it’s ethical training data, why do you not play that ai game now? You claimed you would not play it because of the “plagiarsim”. You are a hypocrite!

I don’t have to justify what I play or don’t play to anybody. But if somebody did create a game using an AI trained entirely on their own artistic output, then I would have no objections to playing it. That’s basically what a roguelike is, and I played Desktop Dungeons through to the end.

It could still be a shit game, in which case I wouldn’t play it, but I have no real objection to shit games existing. One man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that. Let the masses have their pop music and their AAA games and their modern art. It doesn’t hurt me so long as they extend the same courtesy to the art I actually enjoy. Live and let live.

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redonihunter23 days ago

The things I quote are the respective context of the answers. They are usually counterarguments of your reasoning. Or differing opinions. That's why I bring up things.

The photographer documents a moment in time.

You seem to try reducing the work of a photographer to that of a random observer with no creative input.

In your eyes, it's inferior art. That's your opinion. But if you want to use that opinion as a premise for further argument, it is pointless. For one, that opinion is not the majority. But mostly because even bad or inferior art is art. And trying to quantify art so you can compare worth of different art is problematic. You do not compare your sunday meal to a Mona Lisa. You compare it to other meals. You compare the painting to other paintings. You compare art photography to your holiday pictures.

is worse than generative AI

As I said. Please do not go down that road of fallacies.

I sometimes argue against AI on a copyright basis

It's the same line as the plagiarism angle. To clarify the word. Plagiarism is copying parts or a whole work of someone else and publishing it under your own name. It is at core a copyright issue. With added complications that often are not legally covered. Copying an idea is not forbidden, but claiming it was your own original idea usually is. Oh, and trivially, the whole not your original idea but claiming it was aspect of plagiarism is completely void, as soon as you tell that gen ai was used.

On a technical level the copyright issue is factual wrong. You would have to accept constructed and ludicrus chains of arguments, that would include things like accepting that reading things into a memory would constitute a copyright violation. People alredy tried that years ago long before ai, for people visiting web sites. They argued that the browser would "copy" things into the memory and argued with copyright.

The output still contains elements of the Mona Lisa, but in a way that nobody can see.

Not really and that's why the copyright and plagiarism arguments fail. It contains knowledge how to construct a thing that looks like a painting. If you give the right prompts, it will generate a thing that from far away might look like that famous painting. For that particular painting though, it might contain a little bit more knowlege, because it is so ubiquitously famous.

It is not unlike a facial composite and describing features to a composite artist. The artist did not see the culprit. But prompts by the witness and a little feedback are enough to create a likeness. Because the artist does know how faces look in general and can connect that look to descriptions.

But if somebody did create a game using an AI trained entirely on their own artistic output, then I would have no objections to playing it.

I appreciate the consistency. But I do not believe that many of the vocal ai opponents would do likewise. It's why I think ethcial type arguments about the training data against ai are shortsighted.

I do not like most ai things in general. Because they look bland and boring. And because I want to spend my recreational time with human made games. And this would not change, just because there would be an ai model, that is 100% free of whatever other ai models are accused of.

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Eldwood22 days ago

You seem to try reducing the work of a photographer to that of a random observer with no creative input.

You seem to be entirely incapable of nuance, after I already explicitly acknowledged the creative input that goes into a photograph.

Photography fits on the spectrum of art forms. It goes below “accurate” painting from life, which in turn goes below fantasy painting. It probably goes above coloring in coloring books, but I would never say that coloring in coloring books involves no creative input.

On a technical level the copyright issue is factual wrong.

On a technical level you have a machine where you feed pictures in on one end and different pictures come out the other end. Put nothing in, and nothing comes out. The output is in the most literal sense a function of the input. Sometimes the output doesn’t look a lot like the input (although it usually looks like some combination of its inputs, because the algorithm has no creativity of its own). A zip file also doesn’t look a lot like its input. At other times the relationship is obvious. Generative AI has been known to quote its training data.

You claim that you’re not an AI advocate, but you also claim that it’s possible to wash off the authorship and copyright of a work by passing it through an algorithm. Your criticism of AI basically amounts to “this soylent green tastes bland”.

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redonihunter21 days ago

you also claim that it’s possible to wash off the authorship and copyright of a work by passing it through an algorithm

I do not need to claim this. That's how copyright works. Look up, what a collage is as an example how weird copyright is. And that's why it is pointless to try argue with copyright against ai.

There's a difference between a function that is reversible and one that is not. Zip is reversible. A learning matrix is not.

I am not arguing against or for ai. I am arguing against your argument against ai. Preference for human work is a far more stable and longer lasting argument. And it will also work against ai that would be trained entirely by commissioned work.

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Eldwood21 days ago

Look up, what a collage is as an example how weird copyright is.

Creating a physical collage is not copyright infringement because no copying is involved, even at the “copying into memory” level. But the creator does not hold sole copyright over the result. You can’t use collage to wash off copyright. The creator doesn’t need copyright in order to display their work.

Collage on a computer, you might be able to get away with it by arguing fair use, depending on the jurisdiction and the lawyers involved. It helps that the collage artist is actually applying their own creativity, unlike an algorithm. But the biggest protection for collage artists is that most copyright holders don’t care enough to go after them. Even if the copyright holder finds out about the collage (a big if), suing is expensive, it’s bad PR, and there’s little to gain by suing the average collage artist. Automated copyright enforcement algorithms like on YouTube absolutely will go after collages.

But my primary argument isn’t about what the law currently is, which varies a lot by jurisdiction and is generally outside of my area of expertise. My argument is about what is morally right, and what the law should be.

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redonihunter21 days ago

Creating a physical collage is not copyright infringement because no copying is involved

If you invoke copyright for arguing, you cannot use a version of copyright that only exists in your head and that you wish would be true.

When collage uses existing works, the result is what some copyright scholars call a derivative work. The collage thus has a copyright separate from any copyrights pertaining to the original incorporated works.

I did not cite a collage to argue that ai are collages. As I said, I cited collages as example how weird copyright law is. Using material for training an ai is currently also ruled as derivative.

And about morality. Well, in my opinion, the morally wrong thing here is not the training of ai. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. But rather the replacement of human work by ai output. If you focus on how ai models are made, your position is vulnerable. The copyright angle does not work. And 100% consented models would defeat that position completely. Meanwhile the ai output of such models would still replace human work.

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Eldwood20 days ago

I did not cite a collage to argue that ai are collages.

And indeed they are not. Collages, unlike AI images, contain creative input beyond their source material, which qualifies them for copyright protection separate from their source material.

Using material for training an ai is currently also ruled as derivative.

Is that what you meant to say? Because it completely undermines your previous arguments.

Derivative works are still bound by the terms of the copyright of the source material. If I create a game that incorporates GPL-licensed code, I have created a derivative work, and I am bound to release my game source code under the terms of the GPL. Furthermore, under United States copyright law, copyright ownership in a derivative work attaches only if the derivative work is lawful, because of a license or other “authorization.”.

But AI images are not derivative works because they are not works in the first place. They are merely derivative. In the US, the output of an algorithm not copyrightable separately from the input.

Well, in my opinion, the morally wrong thing here is not the training of ai. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. But rather the replacement of human work by ai output.

Using procedural art instead of of hiring an artist is not immoral. Using photographs instead of paintings isn’t immoral. Respectfully using public domain art isn’t immoral. Making a text-based game with no art at all isn’t immoral. Nobody is obligated to be a patron of the arts. None of these are based on stealing.

Meanwhile the ai output of such models would still replace human work.

You have no idea how much work goes into training an AI before it starts producing useful output, do you? If each AI were trained only on commissioned artwork produced for that AI, the AI companies could employ every artist on Earth and the AIs still wouldn’t be as good as what we have now.

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redonihunter20 days ago

Curiously how your interpretaion of law still is not working to forbid ai or ai training, is it. The conclusion is, that it does not work this way. Copyright is not the way to fight ai. It's a dead end.

Preference for human work is a better angle.

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Eldwood20 days ago (1 edit)

Curiously how your interpretaion of law still is not working to forbid ai or ai training, is it.

The typical defense of AI art is that it’s not derivative art but wholly original. Which I think is bullshit, and you seem to think is bullshit, and a whole bunch of other people think is bullshit. But we’re not the ones with the big army of lawyers and we don’t have the courts in our pocket, so the AI companies win. For now. Laws can change, and there’s a lot of anti-AI sentiment in the streets.

One confounding factor is that it’s often incredibly hard to prove where a particular AI image came from. It’s like pollution: we know who’s doing it, we know it’s killing people, but it’s often impossible to match up a single death with a single polluter. Which is why we have separate laws for pollution and for murder, and why it makes more sense to go after the training than after the final product.

At other times, finding the source of an AI image isn’t hard at all.

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