First off, I am not a lawyer but have consulted them. A lot of this is a gray area and not well defined. As you mention, there is the code, the given models, models fine-tuned on those models, models trained from scratch, using styelgan reimplementations, etc. Even with the license being included there does not mean that the output of a model trained from scratch counts as derivative work. And technically I just sell things like upscaling, keeping images private, google sync etc and provide unlimited image creating for free (not sure if that would hold up in court but I think it's relevant). So, no I do not think I am violating the license. But some lawyers may feel differently.
Also, I try hard to cite everything involved. Google was thrilled by my use of the biggan model and how it showed off the model. With the amount of money I have spent on Nvidia cards, I hope they are happy too :)
and then image ownership is a whole other question. Everything in arbreeder is CC0 to keep things simple https://artbreeder.com/terms.pdf
Best, Joel
If so, was that a recent change? When I checked several months ago, your latent space sliders were compatible with nVidia's FFHQ model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23149739
The only explanation seemed to be that Artbreeder was fine-tuned from nVidia's released FFHQ model.
To rephrase the question: It seems like you were using nVidia's model (or a fine-tuned version) at some point in the past. At the time, you were also selling subscriptions via your pricing page. Do you just sort of ignore the legal implications and hope that it never becomes an issue?
(That's sometimes an effective strategy.)
If you click "Edit Genes" (e.g. on the upper-right of https://artbreeder.com/i?k=755521d9fe07456286a06f06) you'll find a bunch of sliders. StyleGAN uses sliders like this to control various facial features. For any given StyleGAN model, you can find a slider for a given attribute as follows: Create a classifier for that attribute (for example, "blond hair" probability), generate 50,000 or so outputs from the model, classify each image, then plot a fitted line through all 50k latents. You now have a blonde hair slider for your specific model.
Ok, but sliders aren't unique to nVidia's licensed model. How do we check?
Suppose Artbreeder used a model that was trained from scratch. Since it has a random initialization, its latent space wouldn't be compatible at all with nVidia's FFHQ model. Sliders on Artbreeder wouldn't work with nVidia's model, and vice-versa. A "blond hair" slider for Artbreeder would result in nonsense when applied to nVidia's model.
Artbreeder has an API, through which you can get the latent vector of any given image. You can use this to extract Artbreeder's sliders as follows: Extract the latent vector for a given Artbreeder image; move a slider to the maximum setting; extract the latent vector for the result; subtract the two latent vectors. Presto, you now have the slider.
If you add the resulting slider values to nVidia's FFHQ model, you will find that they control the same facial features on both Artbreeder and nVidia's FFHQ model. They don't match exactly – Artbreeder appears to be fine-tuned from nVidia's base model – but it's very close. So it's clearly derivative, and thus falls under nVidia's "no commercial usage for derivative work" restriction.
But I asked it because I've spent many nights wondering the same thing about my work in AI, in the United States. Should I pursue something knowing it's legally questionable? How about knowing it's illegal? Big companies seem to walk the tightrope. Joel isn't a big company, yet he's guiding Artbreeder to commercial success. Should I be more ambitious?
These questions affect us all, not just Joel. So I ask it with the sole intention that it might help us navigate the strange waters we often find ourselves in, both as AI researchers and as individuals. I suspect in the coming years that we'll see many more lone-wolf type projects (https://thisfursonadoesnotexist.com/ has recently been making headlines) and legal issues are becoming more and more of an elephant in our shared room.
There are broader ethical questions at play here, too. nVidia trained their model using people's faces, without paying any of them, then claims to hold the rights to limit how people are allowed to make money on the result. Legal, perhaps, but ethical? And if it's unethical, what does that mean we should do, if anything?
Joel's project is a concrete example to point to when someone says "This project has license X, so get real and stop dreaming about starting a business." (The sentiment is shockingly common with almost any AI project, since most AI work comes from big companies with licenses like nVidia's.) Personally, I find it inspiring that someone is doing it anyway.
> Can we safely take your comment as legal advice in making business decisions about the use of the nVidia model?
What advice were they giving? It seemed like they were mostly asking questions. I don't think any bar in the United States would take those comments as advice, legal or otherwise.
Maybe I missed something. In the interests of quality comments and constructive feedback, maybe you could walk us through your line of reasoning?
Given that nVidia has a pretty clear license saying that their model and all derivates may only be used non-commercially (https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2/blob/cec605e0834de5404d5...) and Artbreeder is clearly commercial (https://artbreeder.com/pricing) but is using StyleGAN (https://artbreeder.com/i?k=755521d9fe07456286a06f06), do you feel that Artbreeder is intentionally violating nVidia's license?
For what it's worth, I fully support your project and I nearly launched something similar myself. But many people choose not to do projects such as yours due to licensing considerations, and I'm wondering in general how to reconcile the moral dilemma. On one hand, nVidia almost certainly doesn't care. On the other hand, they did say very clearly "thou shalt not use this model, or any derivative thereof, commercially."
(It's tempting to believe the license only covers the code, not the model. But the same license appears in their download drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QHc-yF5C3DChRwSdZKcx...)