Post by Eldwood in Suggestion about AI games.

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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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Eldwood21 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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redonihunter20 days ago

I was talking about the creation of an ai model. The thing an ai uses to create output from a prompt. Training this thing is ruled derivative by courts already.

Your example is of a real person. If that person has significance to the model, than the model would know how that person looks. Creating an image that looks similar to one of the training images is of course possible. What do you think would happen, if you prompt for the Mona Lisa. This is trivial.

The typical defense of AI art is that it’s not derivative art but wholly original.

From what I gather, it's more a discussion what original means and the notion that all art is derivative. It's a trivially true claim. You do not grow up in a vacuum. You experience things. You cannot paint a tree if you have never seen one and do not even know that such a thing exists. You would construct and extrapolate it from known things, like a shrubbery. And that's how it was in old pictures, when people tried painting animals they never saw. We do stand on the shoulders of giants.

The oldest art you can find is probably cave paintings. What did people paint? Things they saw. How is that "original"?

But this is a philosophical discussion.

Of more practical implication is, that arguing against ai with copyright is fruitless. There are a lot of citations of law suits opened. But what's the outcome so far? The ruling that it is derivative. So accept that and move on to better arguments, if you need justification to avoid ai.

I do not need justifcation, because I made it a matter of taste. I do not like ai in general and prefer human work. I do not need any legal reasons that are already failing. Or arguments about energy, where I personally tried how false these claims are. But this also allows me to appreciate the occasional indie game with ai usage. Just like I occassional play a platfomer, although I dislike the genre.

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