Getty is benefitting from having historically paid creators for the rights to their creations. The horror.
VCs have burned oodles of cash on startups. They could do the same to fund artists and photographers to create training images. A company could earn the good will of the community by starting with public domain and CC images. People who support AI image generation could sign over their own photos.
There are options that aren’t as easy and carry more risk than unethically scraping the web. But companies are willing to be unethical until the law catches up, in hopes of cementing their foothold. See Uber and Airbnb for examples.
Getty Images is infamous for adding public domain images to their archives and then sending threatening demands for payment from anyone they subsequently spot using them. They’re a big giant corporation like any other, all they’re interested in is cash flow.
Note that I put “ethical” in quotes because ethics are a subjective matter that can’t be proven one way or another. “Scraping the web” is IMO no different from regular old reading the web, which is what it’s for. If you don’t want your images to be seen then don’t put them online in the first place.
If you don’t want your images to be seen then don’t put them online in the first place.
I don’t think anyone is objecting to the things they put online being seen. They’re objecting to companies creating derivatives for commercial purposes.
I think there is a wording issue going on here, people object to their posts being used in ways they weren’t expecting, in this case people post things for others to see not for use in AI datasets,
whether the AI is open source or not doesn’t effect anything about the training data being used with or without permission
If explicit permission for specifically AI training is required then AI is basically impossible, because nobody gave that permission.
I don’t think such permission should be required, though, either legally or ethically. When you put something up for public viewing you don’t get to retroactively go “but not like that” when something you didn’t expect looks at it. The permission you gave inherently involves flexibility.
Getty is benefitting from having historically paid creators for the rights to their creations. The horror.
VCs have burned oodles of cash on startups. They could do the same to fund artists and photographers to create training images. A company could earn the good will of the community by starting with public domain and CC images. People who support AI image generation could sign over their own photos.
There are options that aren’t as easy and carry more risk than unethically scraping the web. But companies are willing to be unethical until the law catches up, in hopes of cementing their foothold. See Uber and Airbnb for examples.
Getty Images is infamous for adding public domain images to their archives and then sending threatening demands for payment from anyone they subsequently spot using them. They’re a big giant corporation like any other, all they’re interested in is cash flow.
Note that I put “ethical” in quotes because ethics are a subjective matter that can’t be proven one way or another. “Scraping the web” is IMO no different from regular old reading the web, which is what it’s for. If you don’t want your images to be seen then don’t put them online in the first place.
I don’t think anyone is objecting to the things they put online being seen. They’re objecting to companies creating derivatives for commercial purposes.
So the free open-source AIs are fine? I’ve seen plenty of objections to those as well.
I think there is a wording issue going on here, people object to their posts being used in ways they weren’t expecting, in this case people post things for others to see not for use in AI datasets,
whether the AI is open source or not doesn’t effect anything about the training data being used with or without permission
If explicit permission for specifically AI training is required then AI is basically impossible, because nobody gave that permission.
I don’t think such permission should be required, though, either legally or ethically. When you put something up for public viewing you don’t get to retroactively go “but not like that” when something you didn’t expect looks at it. The permission you gave inherently involves flexibility.