I can put a similarly simple "prompt" into Ableton to create a simple drum loop, then copyright the resulting song. What makes AI significantly different then an audio rendering engine such that only one can be copyrightable?
Stable Diffusion uses all of the art as input and this is actually incredibly important. In fact, any specific piece of art can be removed and it will still work the same and this is also incredibly important.
Both show that there is no intent for individual infringement, with along with no infringing material being produced and the significant non-infringing commercial use like family photo touch-ups, it makes for a very strong narrative for the defense!
To change lanes to art for a second…
When I’m using a tool like Logic I can coax drums, Hammond Organ, 70s analog synths, out of my laptop. I can’t make any of those sounds with my body. I need a tool.
Without Logic I would have to own a drum kit (which I happen to do), know how to play it, know how to record it… with logic I just click a dozen times and I’ve got a drummer playing four-on-the-floor.
So when I do work with a real drummer don’t tell them exactly what to play on a grid like with a drum sampler in Logic, rather they just listen in contribute. Logic has a virtual drummer that does basically the same.
How different is it to fire up another piece of software and employ a virtual painter?
Ok, shift back over to technology and creative work… what are the pros and cons of drum samplers? Don’t they put drummers out of business? Isn’t the trade-off that now a lot more people have access to nice sounding drums and that the world has more music?
> In fact, any specific piece of art can be removed and it will still work the same and this is also incredibly important.
This is provably false: if any specific piece can be removed and there is no difference then you can keep doing that until there is no art left. I'd bet a very substantial amount of money that the output at that point will definitely have changed. Induction is a powerful thing.
I didn’t say remove all the art, I said remove a specific piece of art. No one needs to do thought experiments. Remove all the plaintiff’s works, retrain the model, and the model is still just as useful.
Or if we want to do thought experiments, randomly remove any thousand images and the tool is still just as useful. If it’s random, not specific images, that are removed, then it is non-specific images that power the tool… yes, millions of those images, so a specific quantity is required but no specific works.
No, the input for Ableton is a simple set of commands for how to control the synths to create the beat, the input for AI is text, the "specific art" maybe have created the model, but the model won't do anything without a prompt.
It is possible for a prompt to create a copyright violation, just like if I recreate an existing iconic drum loop it would be. But, just because a tool can infringe doesn't mean the tool itself is infringing.
> It is possible for a prompt to create a copyright violation, just like if I recreate an existing iconic drum loop it would be. But, just because a tool can infringe doesn't mean the tool itself is infringing.
That's fair. But if you would sample Phil Collins (just to name one famous drummer) to create a Phil Collins sample pack and you'd then create your own drum loop with it that wouldn't mean you can't expect some expensive mail incoming. And it will likely stick.
The easiest way to create original art without having this shadow hanging over you would be to make your own sounds, use licensed sounds or to attempt to license the sounds you want to use (but that are not available for public use). Any other path is likely going to be a legal minefield and may lead to you losing your rep and a bunch of $.
There are plenty of examples of people that did this, went to court and lost.
What is original to begin with? What's original about Bob Dylan's Blowin in the Wind? Certainly not the form! It's a standard AB folk song. Certainly not the chords! The melody? Sure, but very bounded by Western music theory and containing a number of common American melodic tropes. The words and specific rhymes have all be used before in previous poems and light verse. He used a standard 6-string guitar with standard tuning with standard guitar chords that have been strummed in similar patterns on hundreds if not thousands of previous recordings.
Beyond the technical skill required to create something there's nothing left but just a series of choices about how to rearrange what culture has provided for you. A truly original work would be incomprehensible to an audience in a way that a truly original language would be incomprehensible to an audience. The originality, the agency of the artist, stems from the choices being made, regardless of if that tool simulates a drummer based on the placement of notes on a grid or if that tool simulates a photographer based on the input of some key words.
Now, you can certainly say that if everyone has access to Stable Diffusion that the value of its output is relatively diminished and that is of course true. The same thing happened to drum machines. No one is that impressed by a four-on-the-floor beat coming out of a laptop and they soon won't be impressed by simulated painters but this is on a different axis of examination than originality.
So yes, that’s the legal proof of ownership… no one claimed to have written the song otherwise.
But I thought you were interested in originality outside of just the legal perspective? You know, that crimes can be committed without evidence and all?
What makes Blowing in the Wind different from another folk song of the time? What makes them the same? Why are some non-original aspects allowed in a work considered original?
