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Ordinaryaverageguy
Nov '22
CAOMouse

I kind of think the answer depends on what you mean by "replace".

If AI art sells more works than human artists, is that replacing them? It could be deemed so, in a marketplace sense.

If AIs became capable of looking at a scene & rendering it in the same way a human would paint or draw it, is that replacing them? It could be deemed so in the sense of replacing capabilities.

Also, the claim is sort of open-ended. Can they now? Or can some future improved AI do so? Who can say for sure when we know little about how AI will develop?

RobertBMarks
Nov '22
Ordinaryaverageguy

That's trademark, not copyright. There is a difference, part of which is that trademarks have to be defended or a court can declare them to be abandoned (a thing that does not happen with copyrights). So yeah...don't try to pass off a copy of Mickey Mouse as your own.

From what I understand, it depends on the AI. There are AIs that will literally take "cat from picture X" and "background from picture Y" and just mash them together, which probably is transformative enough, but probably also really shouldn't be. Then you have something like Midjourney, which will literally generate the art in front of you as you watch (and this is amazingly cool), generate variations, etc. I don't think a Midjourney picture would ever cross the line into infringement unless somebody actually told it to draw Mickey Mouse (which is why I was comfortable using it for the two covers I did).

RobertBMarks
Nov '22
Ordinaryaverageguy

I'm going with a hard "no" on this one.

I've seen these sorts of moral panics before. Supposedly, back when photography became available to the masses, there was a panic that photographs would replace art. It didn't. I'm far too young to have seen that one, but I do remember the whole "e-books have made print books obsolete and will replace them" - that didn't happen either. Instead, each new technology found its niche.

I think AI art is here to stay, but if artists could be so easily replaced by free/low cost options, it would have happened years ago. The existence of large archives of public domain art hasn't replaced the artist, and neither will AI art. As I said in a previous post, there's a very high possibility that AI art will be folded into the toolbox of the digital artist, and it will probably be used by people just starting out in publishing who don't have the money for an actual artist. But, what an artist can do in regards to working with a client cannot be replaced. It's the difference between having your characters on the cover and having a good enough approximation of a person who could be one of your characters on the cover. One will always be better than the other.

BoomerZ
Nov '22

Here is the problem with AI art. You only see one picture. Never a sequence of pictures telling an actual story. How do you explain a med shot to a AI. Or a any of the other shots used in comics and storyboards. And how is it going to follow a script. So yes AI will be able to replace static shots in the future if you are picky about the outcome. There is too much of the small things computers don't get and for the foreseeable future will not get.

By the way, its not really AI. its just a computer compiling images. It actually doesn't understand what those images are or what they represent. The smartest computer is actually dumber than an insect when it comes to this.

Ordinaryaverageguy
Nov '22
RobertBMarks

Good point. It's my understanding that Disney characters are covered by copyrights, though. Is that incorrect? I understand trademarks can become lost if not defended (a travesty of its own) & copyrights are lost due to passage of time.

That jives with & clarifies the remarks I'd read from artists on Deviant Art, etc. There seems to be a long running argument (mostly among non-lawyers) as to whether copy-pasting bits from here & there into a composite are really copyright violations. Also whether an original work can be copied & edited to a degree that it's not a copyright violation. I've had at least one legally-trained person opine that both processes are violations no matter how much tinkering is done to the original pixels.

RobertBMarks
Nov '22

To a degree, they're covered by both. I now have to say that I am not a lawyer, although I have been a legal researcher, and my expertise comes from experience in publishing and should not be considered legal advice. So, Steamboat Willie and the Mickey Mouse who appears is covered by copyright. However, Mickey Mouse, the character used for commerce and as a mascot by Disney, is covered by trademark. This means that in a few years, the version of the character who appeared in Steamboat Willie will be in the public domain, but the Disney mascot will covered under trademark.

The question is whether it is transformative. If I was to start with somebody's character (such as Altair from Re:Creators) and use them as a writing prompt, creating a new character with a similar yet modified back story but different personality (now named Aquila) this is transformative and thus a derivative work. Aquila has the DNA of Altair inside her, but she is a new character with her own personality and character arc.

(And yes, this is a real example, and everybody gets to meet her in mid-December.)

To bring that to AI art with copying and pasting, if you just take a person from one picture and put them on a new background, then it probably isn't transformative enough to count as a derivative work - it's still that same person. If you take this person, replace their head with a toaster, and call them "Toaster Head the Great," this would be transformative, and thus a derivative work. It is no longer the same person, and all of the elements (body, toaster, background) have been used to create something new.

EDIT: Hopefully that makes sense.

Ordinaryaverageguy
Nov '22

Yes, that all makes sense & I thank you for taking the time to share your understanding of it. If we were lawyers, we'd be billing everyone for our comments here! LOL

Lensing
Nov '22

I hear that A.I art can replace human artists, is this true?

No

If you live to 100 years old, what would you expect to see?

AI ruling the world

CAOMouse
Nov '22
Kelheor

1) Thank you, now I can sleep soundly :yum:
2) I think people need at least 200 years to fly like Cowboy Bebop, but who knows

CAOMouse
Nov '22

New question:
3) What would happen to the world if we discover anti aging drug? (Only prevent people from dying of old age, people still die because of accidents and deadly diseases).

Lensing
Nov '22

It will be really expensive and only a few people can effort it so it will not really effect the rest of the world

thepenmonster1
Nov '22
CAOMouse

It would be hoarded by the wealthy and they would dangle it above the heads of the plebeians as a way to keep them in line.