Artists Lose First Round of Copyright Infringement Case Against AI Art Generators

[andym]

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Artists suing generative artificial intelligence art generators have hit a stumbling block in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over the uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems, with a federal judge’s dismissal of most claims.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday found that copyright infringement claims cannot move forward against Midjourney and DeviantArt, concluding the accusations are “defective in numerous respects.” Among the issues are whether the AI systems they run on actually contain copies of copyrighted images that were used to create infringing works and if the artists can substantiate infringement in the absence of identical material created by the AI tools. Claims against the companies for infringement, right of publicity, unfair competition and breach of contract were dismissed, though they will likely be reasserted.

-snip-
In his dismissal of infringement claims, Orrick wrote that plaintiffs’ theory is “unclear” as to whether there are copies of training images stored in Stable Diffusion that are utilized by DeviantArt and Midjourney. He pointed to the defense’s arguments that it’s impossible for billions of images “to be compressed into an active program,” like Stable Diffusion. “Plaintiffs will be required to amend to clarify their theory with respect to compressed copies of Training Images and to state facts in support of how Stable Diffusion — a program that is open source, at least in part — operates with respect to the Training Images,” stated the ruling.

--snip--
According to the order, the artists will also likely have to show proof of infringing works produced by AI tools that are identical to their copyrighted material. This potentially presents a major issue because they have conceded that “none of the Stable Diffusion output images provided in response to a particular Text Prompt is likely to be a close match for any specific image in the training data.”

Read more: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/artists-copyright-infringement-case-ai-art-generators-1235632929/

---

The details of copyright law will make it difficult to sue AI companies it appears. Since the created images that include facsimilies aren't exact and questions exist as to the absence of exact copies in the computer programs.

[highplainsdem]

1. Very bad news for artists and society in general, but great news for the AI peddlers who ripped off the artists

and hope to make hundreds of billions from that theft.

[hueymahl]

2. This could be the beginning of the end of art as we know it

I have a feeling it will be a painful shakeout. Especially for those commercial artists doing art for a commercial fee.

[highplainsdem]

3. It could be. All that art ripped off, so a few people who are NOT artists and

don't give a damn about art or artists, can become much richer.

[cstanleytech]

4. That's going to actually depend on if the public prefers ai to content from

living people. What I think is that we will simply see is a mesh of both.

[hueymahl]

5. Agreed

Human Artists are not going away. They will adopt new tools, like they always have. The optomist in me says this will simply expand the amount and type of art that is out there and available, making the world more beautiful. The pessimist in me says machines will replace all but the best and most creative, making it even harder to earn a living.

[highplainsdem]

6. This is a catastrophe for artists. Students are already switching majors away from art because they

don't think they'll be able to make a living from art. Working artists are already losing work, too - working.artists whose own creations went to train these monstrous AI models that are replacing them.

Working artists are finding their own work gradually disappearing online under countless images generated by AI told to copy them. There's nothing good about this.

[CTyankee]

12. I don't think art really dies, but art eras do change. Art will always be with us; we may not recognize it as such but

new art emerges. If there is no easel art, artists will model clay from the earth into their images. This was done since the beginning of mankind upon this planet.

[OldBaldy1701E]

11. 'Art' ended a long time ago.

Once it became profitable. Thanks to that, now only profitable art is even considered 'art'. Anything else is just considered a hobby or a waste of time.

"Yeah, but when are you going to get a real job?"

[LudwigPastorius]

7. I'm not surprised that 70-year-old judge doesn't understand how generative AI works.

He seems to think that it is necessary for an image to be wholly retained in a computer's memory after it is scanned in order for these things to create rip offs in a particular artist's style.

If there's any hope for artists, it has to come from the legislative end of things, and that's a long shot considering how Congress generally protects the "rights" of corporations to rape and pillage.

[Hugin]

8. Bingo!

Even though I would posit that none of the three parties in the suit knows what is going on inside the AI. I am certain that the court knows the least, which is typically the case with technology.

The defendants should be ordered to provide the entirety of their training set and if they can’t or if one copyrighted image is found in the set. The trained AI should be ordered discarded.

[Ferrets are Cool]

9. "The details of copyright law will make it difficult to sue AI companies"

One of the more difficult aspects will probably be that for "copyright" to be violated, a certain percentage of the original artists work must be recognizable in the ripoff. I do believe in the world of AI, this will be difficult to prove and will have to be done on a "piece at a time" contingent.
In other words, unless it's blatant, it's gonna be hard to prove in court.

[CTyankee]

10. when enough time has passed, reproducing old masters artwork is

licensed under CC BY 4.0, I have learned as a writer about art history.

[Kablooie]

13. AI doesn't contain copies of anything it trains on.

Each image is just used to adjust weights of digital neurons.
The same neurons are adjusted over and over and over and over again.
Billions and billions of times.

There is nothing in the AI that retains anything of any of the training images.
But the result is that if an artist's work was used to train the AI, the user can request something done it the artist's style and the AI can create it.

It's totally bizarre and doesn't fit any concepts of copyright that we have right now.
Digital neurons are a whole new concept that is so complex that even the programmers that created it don't really know how it works.

It's going to upset a lot of society but it's here so will never go away so there's no choice except to learn to get along with it somehow.