The reasonable price comes from not paying any artists to source the learning datasets. Shady use of 'non-profits' to do that but and hope to avoid legal trouble.

100% agree. I’m just talking about what they actually paid, not what they should be paying.

If artists didn't want their art to be used (for a variety of purposes!) they shouldn't have made it freely available on the internet.

Maybe art websites will add checkboxes to the effect of "don't use this art to train AI models" to submission forms. That won't be enforceable in court (unless the law changes), and it will only deter completely scrupulous actors much like robots.txt.

Art websites might start using javascript to compose images in the browser so they can't be easily downloaded, but that will be quickly defeated and ultimately that arms race is unwinnable.

>If artists didn't want their art to be used (for a variety of purposes!) they shouldn't have made it freely available on the internet.

that isn't how copyright works. I can pirate any book in the world but if I try to pass it or parts of it as my own (minus fair use and time wise) I can be sued for copyright violation. how this applies to AI models is an open question, but "I can freely get it therefore it's ok" is a brain dead legal take

>Maybe art websites will add checkboxes to the effect of "don't use this art to train AI models" to submission forms. That won't be enforceable in court (unless the law changes), and it will only deter completely scrupulous actors much like robots.txt. Art websites might start using javascript to compose images in the browser so they can't be easily downloaded, but that will be quickly defeated and ultimately that arms race is unwinnable.

"it's inevitable" also won't hold up in any sane court

Use != distribution. This isn't a copyright issue. This is a "licensing" issue, in the sense that authors believe they have "licensed" people to view their works, but not to train models on them. That view is incorrect given current law, though there is a small chance the law gets updated to make that position more tenable in court.

I think it's more like authors have not "licensed" people to use their works to make profit from, which is current law. The AI companies just use a 'non-profit' entity to collect the images to skirt around the law, otherwise why would they use a non-profit subsidiary and be very careful about only using non-copyrighted music for music based AI?

I can grind up CDs and use the glittery material to make an outfit that I sell to a fashion collector for a million dollars. Use doesn't matter, transmission of a copyrighted work or something sufficiently derivative is what matters.

The image collection has been primarily performed by Laion, which made up of researchers from various academic institutions. The datasets are very popular in research, and they've enabled a lot of advances in the field.

Copyright law doesn't care about "use". It cares about copying and redistribution. The code at issue here was copied by GitHub and OpenAI for training. A fair use defense is warranted here because if it's successful no license will need to be abided by.

>If artists didn't want their art to be used (for a variety of purposes!) they shouldn't have made it freely available on the internet.

There’s all sorts of software and source code freely available online, but you can’t do whatever you want with it because of the license agreement it’s released under?

>Maybe art websites will add checkboxes to the effect of "don't use this art to train AI models" to submission forms. That won't be enforceable in court (unless the law changes), and it will only deter completely scrupulous actors much like robots.txt.

How is this any different from software license agreements, or terms of service agreements on websites? People have to check boxes all the time saying they will or won’t do certain things. And those terms are definitely enforceable (in principle).

You are correct that this will eventually be a licensing issue, with art websites being updated to try to prevent people from downloading with the intent to train models. That approach will probably fail as EULAs have been beaten down in courts repeatedly. There's also a loophole there, in that if you downloaded the images from a pirate site, you aren't bound by the EULA, and if you didn't upload data to others you aren't committing copyright infringement.