Why This Award-Winning Piece of AI Art Can’t Be Copyrighted::Matthew Allen’s AI art won first prize at the Colorado State Fair. But the US government has ruled it can’t be copyrighted because it’s too much “machine” and not enough “human.”

  • ThǝLobotoʍi$T@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is a very delicate and complicated matter, part of me thinks that making AI works non copyrightable would incentivize human art

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Given the presence of stolen artwork in the training data I don’t see why it should be copyright able.

      Also award winning? It honestly looks like the kind of liminal mindfuckery most models could output. There’s nothing particularly impressive with the piece.

      • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        iirc it was submitted to a small art contest without disclosing it’s AI generated and it won a prize… which made a lot of people very mad

        • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          If this is the one in thinking of, they disclosed it was made using midjourney, but the judges didn’t know what that meant and didn’t ask.

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Eh. I’ve seen abstract art that people are in awe with throughout my life. And like the uneducated swine I am, I’ve never thought they were impressive either.

        Art appraisers are weird.

        Edit: I saw the piece in question. This one is a tricky one, because if a human painted it, it would be impressive. Very nice details. But since it was generated by a machine in minutes… eh.

        • Zarxrax@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But according to the article, it wasn’t generated in minutes. The artist went through over 600 iterations of tweaking the prompt to get what he wanted. Sounds like days or even weeks of work probably. And then made additional tweaks via Photoshop.

          Not too say that makes it any more impressive, but it wasn’t something that was without effort.

          • El Barto@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Point taken. In that case, I guess one can recognize the effort. Still, the impressive part of the piece is the style, which, if one were to assume was made with actual oil paint, it would be impressive.

            With AI, I would explore styles that are inherently difficult to produce digitally. And yes, “oil paint” would be difficult to produce with digital tools alone outside of AI (maybe there are good plug-ins for it?) But you know what I mean. I don’t even know which styles those would be.

        • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Read the article. He added details and the description fed into the prompt was 624 words long. He basically wrote a page describing the scene he wanted created.

          • El Barto@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Which I can also do. “Imagine a cave full of cats. The first cat is pink with yellow dots. The second cat glows in the dark. The third cat…”

            I guess art involves expressing what you want to express it, sure. But also how you express it is part of it as well. If you make the strokes yourself, it’s more impressive. A machine? You gotta do better than making it look like someone painted it.

            It’s like 3D printing. A 3D-printed statue? Neat. But not terribly impressive. A 3D figure that defies all optical illusion explanations? Now we’re talking.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I agree completely. I think this is the best solution to the AI replacing human artists problem. Big companies can’t use AI to replace humans because if they do, whatever they make will be ineligible for copyright and everyone will be free to rip them off.