Skullpt-Art OP t1_jae4n33 wrote on February 28, 2023 at 7:55 PM

Reply to comment by SwagginsYolo420 in AI Art Just Got Slapped With A Crucial And Devasting Legal Blow by Skullpt-Art

Here's what was said about the difference between photography and AI art generation :

'The office argued that, unlike a photographer, Midjourney users have
very limited control of the final images. Photographers manipulate
framing, lighting, subject, exposure time, depth of field, composition,
and more when creating a photograph. According to USCO, “The process by
which a Midjourney user obtains an ultimate satisfactory image through
the tool is not the same as that of a human artist, writer, or
photographer… the initial prompt by a user generates four different
images based on Midjourney’s training data. While additional prompts
applied to one of these initial images can influence the subsequent
images, the process is not controlled by the user because it is not
possible to predict what Midjourney will create ahead of time.'

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/law/midjourney-ai-images-us-copyright-office-226437.html

SwagginsYolo420 t1_jaey7qm wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:10 PM

That may sound convincing to somebody unfamiliar with the software, but how the process is characterized is misleading.

Certainly, the less information given to the AI, the more random the output. However if you sculpt your prompt to include all of the photographic and desired image factors, you can produce a very specific result. The AI model can simulate all of the photography factors, listed, if you instruct it to do so. Lens type, exposure time, lighting, film stock etc.

A person could take an actual photo. Then recreate that image from scratch through the AI by providing enough information to sculpt the output with all the factors involved in the photo's composition.

That would leave you with two nearly identical images created by the same person, but only one of those images able to be protected by copyright law. But both images required the same compositional choices on behalf of the image creator.

I recommend every play with software like midjourney or stable diffusion themselves and learn the basics about how AI prompting is done, and learn how specificity on the part of the artist/software user is always going to be necessary to produce the desired result.

Certainly with the comic book artist in the article, it should become obvious that the images in question aren't completely at random, but all done in a similar style that served to illustrate the story and in a specific order that matches and illustrates the written text. That can't occur at random, it required very specific decisions made by the artist for each image.

Skullpt-Art OP t1_jaez8yn wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:17 PM

Has there been any examples of what you've described? The two nearly-identical images, one produced by human and one produced by AI with explicit direction, as opposed to 4 generated close-enough ones?

Also, I think the argument is that the actions of one using AI to create art is closer to what an Art Director does, rather then what an artist does. You can direct a person or a computer with directions, but that doesn't mean you are the one putting pen to paper, so to speak.