On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train Midjourney

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by spamizbad on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @01:55PM (#39017228)

If the boundary isn't enforced you'll likely see art move increasingly to a patronage system, whereby a select elite will get to choose what art is suitable for your consumption. Maybe you'll like that, maybe you won't.

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Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by godelski on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @04:53PM (#39019665)

> you'll likely see art move increasingly to a patronage system

It is?

But also this is dismissive without understanding either system at play. Traditional art has galleries because no one wants to buy art that they haven't seen. But this creates a problem if our galleries are on the internet. It no longer matters how much you attempt to stop a user from downloading or copying the art, they still can. We even see efforts to watermark art on public posting but we also see efforts to remove the watermarks. It's very clear to me that this is becoming a more complex time to be an artist than it was, say 5 years ago. Maybe better than 100 years ago, but that would be ridiculous to compare to as we'd have to get into an argument about the point of societies and if a goal is to make life better.

Strangely this is something some in the NFT crowd were attempting to solve. We can all agree that there were lots of scams (I'd even say dominated by scams and grifting) in the area and that there was poor execution of even good faith attempts, but I'm just trying to say that this was motivation for sum. They weren't even trying to solve as difficult of a problem, they were just trying to solve the problem of proof of ownership. It's not like you can use timestamps or public/private key pairs for proof. It still wouldn't even solve the problem of redistribution or training. It wouldn't prevent someone from even buying the art and training on it even if the artist specified that that was against the TOS (a whole other philosophical debate about TOS and physical ownership that I don't want to get into).

I think you're simplifying the problem and being ready to dismiss without adequately demonstrating an understanding of the issues and environment. I don't know what the answer is but I sure as hell know it is a lot more complex than "let the 'free market' run its course".

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Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by 8note on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @02:14PM (#39017570)

We have a patronage system today. See: services like patreon

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Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by jMyles on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @05:15PM (#39019908)

I think it depends in large part on how the moving parts interact.

If the emergence of automata and internet creatures also means that people can spend more of their time doing what makes them happy, and if people doing that results in amazing art and music emerging, then I don't think that the purvey of selection will be so dangerously cornered by an elite.

But it's up to us to do the work to build that future.

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