Greg Rutkowski, a digital artist known for his surreal style, opposes AI art but his name and style have been frequently used by AI art generators without his consent. In response, Stable Diffusion removed his work from their dataset in version 2.0. However, the community has now created a tool to emulate Rutkowski’s style against his wishes using a LoRA model. While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5. The debate highlights the blurry line between innovation and infringement in the emerging field of AI art.
While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5.
What kind of argument is that supposed to be? We’ve stolen his art before so it’s fine? Dickheads. This whole AI thing is already sketchy enough, at least respect the artists that explicitly want their art to be excluded.
His art was not “stolen.” That’s not an accurate word to describe this process with.
It’s not so much that “it was done before so it’s fine now” as “it’s a well-understood part of many peoples’ workflows” that can be used to justify it. As well as the view that there was nothing wrong with doing it the first time, so what’s wrong with doing it a second time?
Yes, it was.
One human artist can, over a life time, learn from a few artists to inform their style.
These AI setups are telling ALL the art from ALL the artists and using them as part of a for profit business.
There is no ethical stance for letting billion dollar tech firms hoover up all the art ever created to the try and remix it for profit.
No, it wasn’t. Theft is a well-defined word. When you steal something you take it away from them so that they don’t have it any more.
It wasn’t even a case of copyright violation, because no copies of any of Rutkowski’s art were made. The model does not contain a copy of any of the training data (with an asterisk for the case of overfitting, which is very rare and which trainers do their best to avoid). The art it produces in Rutkowski’s style is also not a copyright violation because you can’t copyright a style.
There is no ethical stance for letting billion dollar tech firms hoover up all the art ever created to the try and remix it for profit.
So how about the open-source models? Or in this specific instance, the guy who made a LoRA for mimicking Rutkowski’s style, since he did it free of charge and released it for anyone to use?
One human artist can, over a life time, learn from a few artists to inform their style.
These AI setups […] ALL the art from ALL the artists
So humans are slow and inefficient, what’s new?
First the machines replaced hand weavers, then ice sellers went bust, all the calculators got sacked, now it’s time for the artists.
There is no ethical stance for letting billion dollar tech firms hoover up all the art ever created to the try and remix it for profit.
We stand on the shoulders of generations of unethical stances.
I don’t like when people say “AI just traces/photobashes art.” Because that simply isn’t what happens.
But I do very much wish there was some sort of opt-out process, but ultimately any attempt at that just wouldn’t work
There’s nothing stopping someone from licensing their art in a fashion that prohibits their use in that fashion.
No one has created that license that I know of, but there are software licenses that do similar things, so it’s hardly an unprecedented notion.
The fact of the matter is that before people didn’t think it was necessary to have specific usage licenses attached to art because no one got funny feelings from people creating derivative works from them.
pirating photoshop is a well-understood part of many peoples’ workflows. that doesn’t make it legal or condoned by adobe
I don’t know what this has to do with anything. Nothing was “pirated”, either.
That’s true, but only in the sense that theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different things.
Generating stuff from ML training datasets that included works without permissive licenses is copyright infringement though, just as much as simply copying and pasting parts of those works in would be. The legal definition of a derivative work doesn’t care about the techological details.
(For me, the most important consequence of this sort of argument is that everything produced by Github Copilot must be GPL.)
That’s incorrect in my opinion. AI learns patterns from its training data. So do humans, by the way. It’s not copy-pasting parts of image or code.
It’s actually not copyright infringement at all.
Edit: and even if it was, copyright infringement is a moral right, it’s a good thing. copyright is theft.
Aside from all the artists whose work was fed into the AI learning models without their permission. That art has been stolen, and is still being stolen. In this case very explicitly, because they outright removed his work, and then put it back when nobody was looking.
Let me give you a hypothetical that’s close to reality. Say an artist gets very popular, but doesn’t want their art used to teach AI. Let’s even say there’s even legislation that prevents all this artist’s work from being used in AI.
Now what if someone else hires a bunch of cheap human artists to produce works in a style similar to the original artist, and then uses those works to feed the AI model? Would that still be stolen art? And if so, why? And if not, what is this extra degree of separation changing? The original artist is still not getting paid and the AI is still producing works based on their style.
Well said. Copyright is whatever, but the disrespect shown here is remarkable.
We will probably all have to get used to this soon because I can see the same happening to authors, journalists and designers. Perhaps soon programmers, lawyers and all kinds of other people as well.
It’s interesting how people on Lemmy pretend to be all against big corporations and capitalism and then they happily indulge in the process of making artists jobless becaus “Muh technology cool!”. I don’t know the English word to describe this situation. In German I would say “Tja…”
Just as quickly as people disregard the human art enjoyer, who now has access to a powerful tool to create art undreamed of a year ago.
I have found over the years that forums that claim to be about various forms of art are almost always really about the artists that make that art, and have little to no regard for the people who are there just for the art itself. The AI art thing is just the latest and most prominent way of revealing this.
What blurry line? An artist doesn’t what his art stolen from him. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.
I don’t fully understand how this works, but if they’ve created a way to replicate his style that doesn’t involve using his art in the model, how is it problematic? I understand not wanting models to be trained using his art, but he doesn’t have exclusive rights to the art style, and if someone else can replicate it, what’s the problem?
This is an honest question, I don’t know enough about this topic to make a case for either side.
TL;DR The new method still requires his art.
LoRA is a way to add additional layers to a neural network that effectively allow you to fine tune it’s behaviour. Think of it like a “plugin” or a “mod”
LoRas require examples of the thing you are targeting. Lots of people in the SD community build them for particular celebrities or art styles by collecting examples of the that celebrity or whatever from online.
So in this case Greg has asked Stable to remove his artwork which they have done but some third party has created an unofficial LoRA that does use his artwork to mod the functionality back in.
In the traditional world the rights holder would presumably DMCA the plugin but the lines are much blurrier with LoRA models.
Do you know how they recreated his style? I couldn’t find such information or frankly have enough understanding to know how.
But if they either use his works directly or works created by another GAI with his name/style in the prompt, my personal feeling is that would still be unethical, especially if they charge money to generate his style of art without compensating him.
Plus, I find that the opt-out mentality really creepy and disrespectful
“If he contacts me asking for removal, I’ll remove this.” Lykon said. “At the moment I believe that having an accurate immortal depiction of his style is in everyone’s best interest.”
I still have trouble understanding the distinction between “a human consuming different artists, and replicating the style” vs “software consuming different artists, and replicating the style”.
But if they either use his works directly or works created by another GAI with his name/style in the prompt, my personal feeling is that would still be unethical, especially if they charge money to generate his style of art without compensating him.
LORA’s are created on image datasets, but these images are just available anywhere. It’s really not much different from you taking every still of The Simpsons and using it. What I don’t understand is how these are seen as problematic because a majority of end users utilizing AI are doing it under fair use.
No one charges for LORA’s or models AFAIK. If they do, it hasn’t come across the Stable Diffusion discords I moderate.
People actually selling AI generated art is also a different story and that’s where it falls outside of fair use if the models being used contain copy-written work. It seems pretty cut and dry, artists complained about not being emulated by other artists before AI so it’s only reasonable that it happens again. If people are profiting off it, it should be at least giving compensation to the original artist (if it could be adjusted so that per-token payments are given as royalties to the artist). However, on the other hand think about The Simpsons, or Pokemon, or anything that has ever been sold as a sticker/poster/display item.
I’m gonna guess that a majority of people have no problem with that IP theft cause it’s a big company. Okay… so what if I love Greg but he doesn’t respond to my letters and e-mails begging him to commission him for a Pokemon Rutkowski piece? Under fair use there’s no reason I can’t create that on my own, and if that means creating a dataset of all of his paintings that I paid for to utilize it then it’s technically legal.
The only thing here that would be unethical or illegal is if his works are copywritten and being redistributed. They aren’t being redistributed and currently copy-written materials aren’t protected from being used in AI models, since the work done from AI can’t be copywritten. In other words, while it may be disrespectful to go against the artists wishes to not be used in AI, there’s no current grounds for it other than an artist not wanting to be copied… which is a tale as old as time.
TL;DR model and LORA makers aren’t charging, users can’t sell or copywrite AI works, and copywritten works aren’t protected from being used in AI models (currently). An artist not wanting to be used currently has no grounds other than making strikes against anything that is redistributing copies of their work. If someone is using this LORA to recreate Greg Rutkowski paintings and then proceeds to give or sell them then the artist is able to claim that there’s theft and damages… but the likelihood of an AI model being able to do this is low. The likelihood of someone selling these is higher, but from my understanding artistic styles are pretty much fair game anyway you swing it.
I understand wanting to protect artists. Artists also get overly defensive at times - I’m not saying that this guy is I actually am more on his side than my comment makes it out, especially after how he was treated in the discord I moderate. I’m more just pointing out that there’s a slippery slope both ways and the current state of U.S. law on it.
Generally speaking, the way training works is this:
You put together a folder of pictures, all the same size. It would’ve been 1024x1024 in this case. Other models have used 768z768 or 512x512. For every picture, you also have a text file with a description.
The training software takes a picture, slices it into squares, generates a square the same size of random noise, then trains on how to change that noise into that square. It associates that training with tokens from the description that went with that picture. And it keeps doing this.
Then later, when someone types a prompt into the software, it tokenizes it, generates more random noise, and uses the denoising methods associated with the tokens you typed in. The pictures in the folder aren’t actually kept by it anywhere.
From the side of the person doing the training, it’s just put together the pictures and descriptions, set some settings, and let the training software do its work, though.
(No money involved in this one. One person trained it and plopped it on a website where people can download loras for free…)
they charge money to generate his style of art without compensating him.
That’s really the big thing, not just here but any material that’s been used to train on without permission or compensation. The difference is that most of it is so subtle it can’t be picked out, but an artist style is obviously a huge parameter since his name was being used to call out those particular training aspects during generations. It’s a bit hypocritical to say you aren’t stealing someone’s work when you stick his actual name in the prompt. It doesn’t really matter how many levels the art style has been laundered, it still originated from him.
Do you know how they recreated his style? I couldn’t find such information or frankly have enough understanding to know how.
I don’t, but another poster noted that it involves using his art to create the LoRA.
Plus, I find that the opt-out mentality really creepy and disrespectful
I don’t know about creepy and disrespectful, but it does feel like they’re saying “I know the artist doesn’t want me to do this, but if he doesn’t specifically ask me personally to stop, I’m going to do it anyway.”
If I look at someone’s paintings, then paint something in a similar style did I steal their work? Or did I take inspiration from it?
No, you used it to inform your style.
You didn’t drop his art on to a screenprinter, smash someone else’s art on top, then try to sell t-shirts.
Trying to compare any of this to how one, individual, human learns is such a wildly inaccurate way to justify stealing a someone’s else’s work product.
If it works correctly it’s not a screenprinter, it’s something unique as the output.
what I’m getting from all the AI stuff is the people in charge and the people that use it are scumbags
Pretty much. There are ways of using it that most artists would be okay with. Most of the people using it flat out refuse to use it like that though.
Edit: To expand on this:
Most artists would be okay with AI art being used as reference material, inspiration, assisting with fleshing out concepts (though you should use concept artists for that in a big production), rapid prototyping and whatnot. Most only care that the final product is at least mostly human-made.
Artists generally want you to actually put effort into what you’re making because, at the end of the day, typing a prompt into stable diffusion has more in common with receiving a free commission from an artist than it has with actually being an artist. If you’re going to claim that something AI had a hand in as being your art, then you need to have done the majority of the work on it yourself.
The most frustrating thing to me, however, is that there are places in art that AI could participate in which would send artists over the moon, but it’s not flashy so no one seems to be working on making AI in those areas.
Most of what I’m personally familiar with has to do with 3d modeling, and in that discipline, people would go nuts if you released an AI tool that could do the UV work for you. Messing with UVs can be very tedious and annoying, to the point where most artists will just use a tool using conventional algorithms to auto-unwrap and pack UVs, and then call it a day, even if they’re not great.
Another area is in rigging and weight painting. In order to animate a model, you have to rig it to a skeleton (unless you’re a masochist or trying to make a game accurate to late 90s-early 00s animation), paint the bone weights (which bones affect which polygons, and by how much), add constraints, etc. Most 3d modelers would leap at the prospect of having high-quality rigging and UVs done for them at the touch of a button. However, again, because it’s not flashy to the general public, no one’s put any effort into making an AI that can do that (afaik at least).
Finally, even if you do use an AI in ways that most artists would accept as valid, you’ll still have to prove it because there are so many people who put a prompt into stable diffusion, do some minor edits to fix hands (in older version), and then try to pass it off as their own work.
Here’s my argument: tough titties. Everything Greg Rutkowski has ever drawn or made has been inspired by other things he has seen and the experiences of his life, and this applies to all of us. Indeed, one cannot usually have experiences without the participation of others. Everyone wants to think they are special, and of course we are to someone, but to everyone no one is special. Since all of our work is based upon the work of everyone who came before us, then all of our work belongs to everyone. So tough fucking titties, welcome to the world of computer science, control c and control v is heavily encouraged.
In that Beatles documentary, Paul McCartney said he thought that once you uttered the words into the microphone, it belonged to everyone. Little did he know how right he actually was.
You think there is a line between innovation and infringement? Wrong, They are the same thing.
And for the record, I’m fine with anyone stealing my art. They can even sell it as their own. Attribution is for the vain.
Greg wants to get paid, remove the threat of poverty from the loss of control and its a nonissue.
But every human activity desirable to others deserve compensation. If you want someone to do something for you or make something for you or entertain you then it deserves compensation. The way ads on the internet have trained a lot of people to think that a lot of entertainment et cetera on the internet is free has been a negative for this. But at the same time that ad-supported model does make it more available to people that otherwise couldn’t afford the price of admission. It’s partly democratizing, but it’s also a scourge.
I think people forget the reality when they take their supposedly brave and oh so altruistic stance of “there should be no copyright”.
When people already know they won’t even have a small chance of getting paid for the art they create, we will run out of artists.
Because most can not afford to learn and practice that craft without getting any form of payment. It will become a very rare hobby of a few decadent rich people who can afford to learn something like illustration in their free time.
A sad fact but undeniable truth. I work in the industry. It’s standard for us to do mood boards. I have a lot hate relationship with them because it can be helpful to hone the design to a client’s liking and get your bearings. But, the fact it’s essentially what AI is doing by “borrowing” existing art as a reference. It’s the exact same thing. And that’s why I hate doing it. Because I don’t want to take someone’s button or background pattern.
Regardless of how I feel, I still can’t recognize AI as being “stealing” but industry accepted practices that do the exact same thing aren’t?
