#AI lawsuits

[salmonandfox]

I AM SO FUCKING TIRED OF THIS AI SCRAPING BULLSHIT, STOP IT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.

[lvgaudet]

Why is AI (artificial intelligence) content generally frowned on in the writing community?

Why are there so many lawsuits involved AI-generated literature, and who owns the copyright, the person wo entered the key-phrase, OpenAI, the AI itself, or all of them?

Aside from the question of quantity over quality, there is the question of originality. AI is not some sentient super-being from a science fiction story come to life. It is as sentient as your Alexa that will say, “Who, who, who,” in response to your, “Who let the dogs out.” AI is a computer program. It runs on algorithms, programming, and the data input into it. It does not have the organic…

[8pxl]

and get sued 😤

[reasonsforhope]

AI models can seemingly do it all: generate songs, photos, stories, and pictures of what your dog would look like as a medieval monarch. 

But all of that data and imagery is pulled from real humans — writers, artists, illustrators, photographers, and more — who have had their work compressed and funneled into the training minds of AI without compensation. 

Kelly McKernan is one of those artists. In 2023, they discovered that Midjourney, an AI image generation tool, had used their unique artistic style to create over twelve thousand images. 

“It was starting to look pretty accurate, a little infringe-y,” they told The New Yorker last year. “I can see my hand in this stuff, see how my work was analyzed and mixed up with some others’ to produce these images.” 

For years, leading AI companies like Midjourney and OpenAI, have enjoyed seemingly unfettered regulation, but a landmark court case could change that. 

On May 9, a California federal judge allowed ten artists to move forward with their allegations against Stability AI, Runway, DeviantArt, and Midjourney. This includes proceeding with discovery, which means the AI companies will be asked to turn over internal documents for review and allow witness examination. 

Lawyer-turned-content-creator Nate Hake took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to celebrate the milestone, saying that “discovery could help open the floodgates.” 

“This is absolutely huge because so far the legal playbook by the GenAI companies has been to hide what their models were trained on,” Hake explained...

“I’m so grateful for these women and our lawyers,” McKernan posted on X, above a picture of them embracing Ortiz and Andersen. “We’re making history together as the largest copyright lawsuit in history moves forward.” ...

The case is one of many AI copyright theft cases brought forward in the last year, but no other case has gotten this far into litigation. 

“I think having us artist plaintiffs visible in court was important,” McKernan wrote. “We’re the human creators fighting a Goliath of exploitative tech.”

“There are REAL people suffering the consequences of unethically built generative AI. We demand accountability, artist protections, and regulation.” 

-via GoodGoodGood, May 10, 2024

[phoenixyfriend]

Also did you know that the reason NYT can sue openAI with the expectation of success is that the AI cites its sources about as well as James Somerton.

It regurgitates long sections of paywalled NYT articles verbatim, and then cites it wrong, if at all. It's not just a matter of stealing traffic and clicks etc, but also illegal redistribution and damaging the NYT's brand regarding journalistic integrity by misquoting or citing incorrectly.

OpenAI cannot claim fair use under these circumstances lmao.

[dduane]

Interesting, too: Amazon's decided to limit KDP authors to publishing no more than three books per day.

[brucesterling]

*It's like watching spiders fighting centipedes

[cockbiteproductions]

you think you're free from rvb. you're immune. you were a clown in their circus for so long and you finally wiped off the makeup. the reds and the blues aren't coming back and you aren't either. but then rooster teeth says rvb is ending and you're like "oh no, but it was past time." but then they say burnie is writing it and you're like "wow just like in s15e4, I can't believe rooster teeth went to scotland and tore burnie from his photogenic island life to get him to finish it."

and then they say the reds and the blues are back and you're stopped being able to comprehend words. and then they say it's the aftermath of ain't that a bitch and you blink and you've already rewatched the first 3 seasons. you stare at your own face in the reflection of the dark screen and you see the clown makeup has reappeared.

[fivepebble]

not sure who this is. been calling him "byce"

[fedoraspooky]

I truly hope the rumors of tumblr selling its user's artwork and other images to midjourney aren't real, because I am extremely tired of having to uproot and move around on the internet and still haven't fully recovered from the old dA-to-tumblr exodus... But juuuust in case a deal like that does go through, I'mma just leave this linktree post here. Just, y'know, for reasons.

The worst part is, you can't even delete or go back and edit your posts to opt out if this happens, because reblogs are unaffected. If anyone has ever reblogged your work there will be no way to opt out of this unless we can get a class action suit for tumblr going, or I guess report our own artwork and hope they nuke it themselves.

Just... Really didn't fuckin need this. Tumblr has been my internet home since 2011. I may not have a lot of followers, but I've made a lot of friends here over the years, and i don't wanna start all over from scratch AGAIN because some pissbaby CEO decided to have a transphobic breakdown and sell out all of the site's artists to theft machine robber barons for a shiny nickel.

I'm hesitant to post on insta too because zuck's vacuuming up everything for his AI too. Same with musk. Like, where the hell can we even go now?

All I can think of rn is just... Bluesky, cohost, sheezyart (which is as of this post still in closed beta), and newgrounds. There's furaffinity and stuff too but idk if I draw enough furries to be on a furry site, y'know? Idk, maybe my werecreature and nonhuman character stuff counts but just ughhh if we gotta move, can we all just agree on a place and move together and not scatter to the winds again? That would be great.

[banji-effect]

...“The proliferation of these images has exploited a shocking number of women and girls across the globe,” said David Chiu, the elected city attorney of San Francisco who brought the case against a group of widely visited websites tied to entities in California, New Mexico, Estonia, Serbia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. “These images are used to bully, humiliate and threaten women and girls,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And the impact on the victims has been devastating on their reputation, mental health, loss of autonomy, and in some instances, causing some to become suicidal.” The lawsuit brought on behalf of the people of California alleges that the services broke numerous state laws against fraudulent business practices, nonconsensual pornography and the sexual abuse of children.

[lintubintu]

Good news on the fight against AI!

[dear-future-ai]

[starrysharks]

tumblr die why are there ugly AI images on my dash

[reasonsforhope]

got anything good, boss?

Sure do!

-

"Weeks after The New York Times updated its terms of service (TOS) to prohibit AI companies from scraping its articles and images to train AI models, it appears that the Times may be preparing to sue OpenAI. The result, experts speculate, could be devastating to OpenAI, including the destruction of ChatGPT's dataset and fines up to $150,000 per infringing piece of content.

NPR spoke to two people "with direct knowledge" who confirmed that the Times' lawyers were mulling whether a lawsuit might be necessary "to protect the intellectual property rights" of the Times' reporting.

Neither OpenAI nor the Times immediately responded to Ars' request to comment.

If the Times were to follow through and sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, NPR suggested that the lawsuit could become "the most high-profile" legal battle yet over copyright protection since ChatGPT's explosively popular launch. This speculation comes a month after Sarah Silverman joined other popular authors suing OpenAI over similar concerns, seeking to protect the copyright of their books.

Of course, ChatGPT isn't the only generative AI tool drawing legal challenges over copyright claims. In April, experts told Ars that image-generator Stable Diffusion could be a "legal earthquake" due to copyright concerns.

But OpenAI seems to be a prime target for early lawsuits, and NPR reported that OpenAI risks a federal judge ordering ChatGPT's entire data set to be completely rebuilt—if the Times successfully proves the company copied its content illegally and the court restricts OpenAI training models to only include explicitly authorized data. OpenAI could face huge fines for each piece of infringing content, dealing OpenAI a massive financial blow just months after The Washington Post reported that ChatGPT has begun shedding users, "shaking faith in AI revolution." Beyond that, a legal victory could trigger an avalanche of similar claims from other rights holders.

Unlike authors who appear most concerned about retaining the option to remove their books from OpenAI's training models, the Times has other concerns about AI tools like ChatGPT. NPR reported that a "top concern" is that ChatGPT could use The Times' content to become a "competitor" by "creating text that answers questions based on the original reporting and writing of the paper's staff."

As of this month, the Times' TOS prohibits any use of its content for "the development of any software program, including, but not limited to, training a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system.""

-via Ars Technica, August 17, 2023

[melyzard]

I was wondering if you have resources on how to explain (in good faith) to someone why AI created images are bad. I'm struggling how to explain to someone who uses AI to create fandom images, b/c I feel I can't justify my own use of photoshop to create manips also for fandom purposes, & they've implied to me they're hoping to use AI to take a photoshopped manip I made to create their own "version". I know one of the issues is stealing original artwork to make imitations fast and easy.

Hey anon. There are a lot of reasons that AI as it is used right now can be a huge problem - but the easiest ones to lean on are:

1) that it finds, reinforces, and in some cases even enforces biases and stereotypes that can cause actual harm to real people. (For example: a black character in fandom will consistently be depicted by AI as lighter and lighter skinned until they become white, or a character described as Jewish will...well, in most generators, gain some 'villain' characteristics, and so on. Consider someone putting a canonically transgender character through an AI bias, or a woman who is not perhaps well loved by fandom....)

2) it creates misinformation and passes it off as real (it can make blatant lies seem credible, because people believe what they see, and in fandom terms, this can mean people trying to 'prove' that the creator stole their content from elsewhere, or allow someone to create and sell their own 'version' of content that is functionally unidentifiable from canon

3) it's theft. The algorithm didn't come up with anything that it "makes," it just steals some real person's work and then mangles is a bit before regurgitating it with usually no credit to the original, actual creator. (In fandom terms: you have just done the equivalent of cropping out someone else's watermark and calling yourself the original artist. After all, the AI tool you used got that content from somewhere; it did not draw you a picture, it copy pasted a picture)

4) In some places, selling or distributing AI art is or may soon be illegal - and if it's not illegal, there are plenty of artists launching class action lawsuits against those who write the algorithm, and those who use it. Turns out artists don't like having their art stolen, mangled, and passed off as someone else's. Go figure.

Here are some articles that might help lay out more clear examples and arguments, from people more knowledgeable than me (I tried to imbed the links with anti-paywall and anti-tracker add ons, but if tumblr ate my formatting, just type "12ft.io/" in front of the url, or type the article name into your search engine and run it through your own ad-blocking, anti tracking set up):

These fake images reveal how AI amplifies our worst stereotypes [Source: Washington Post, Nov 2023]

Humans Are Biased; AI is even worse (Here's Why That Matters) [Source: Bloomburg, Dec 2023]

Why Artists Hate AI Art [Source: Tech Republic, Nov 2023]

Why Illustrators Are Furious About AI 'Art' [Source: The Guardian, Jan 2023]

Artists Are Losing The War Against AI [Source: The Atlantic, Oct 2023]

This tool lets you see for yourself how biased an AI can be [Source: MIT Technology Review, March 2023]

Midjourney's Class-Action lawsuit and what it could mean for future AI Image Generators [Source: Fortune Magazine, Jan 2024]

What the latest US Court rulings mean for AI Generated Copyright Status [Source: The Art Newspaper, Sep 2023]

AI-Generated Content and Copyright Law [Source: Built-in Magazine, Aug 2023 - take note that this is already outdated, it was just the most comprehensive recent article I could find quickly]

AI is making mincemeat out of art (not to mention intellectual property) [Source: The LA Times, Jan 2024]

Midjourney Allegedly Scraped Magic: The Gathering art for algorithm [Source: Kotaku, Jan 2024]

Leaked: the names of more than 16,000 non-consenting artists allegedly used to train Midjourney’s AI [Source: The Art Newpaper, Jan 2024]