While it’s probably true that copyright/patent/IP law generally in effect helps “preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators,” it’s a mistake IMO to see this as more than merely instrumental in preserving incentives for more art/inventions/technology which, but for a temporary monopoly (IP protections), would be financially unprofitable to create.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here! My implication was that we should view the law as instrumental rather than terminally valuing the law as it currently stands. I don’t know much about the law, but I also have the impression that judges will think about it this way when considering how to respond to this new situation.
Additionally, this view ignores art consumers, who out-number artists by several orders of magnitude. It seems unfair to orient so much of the discussion of AI art’s effects on the smaller group of people who currently create art.
True! In the past, protecting the profitability of artists this way was also (for the most part) to the benefit of consumers, since profitability of art determined how much was created and mass-distributed. Especially before the internet.
No. 2 seems pretty clearly true, but I’m struggling to articulate why. No 1. Seems somewhat conditional on No 2, since I suspect there would be less art created if the AI art tools create “worse” art.
AI art generally seems like a lot of #1 and only a little #2, right now. Obviously the quality will keep getting better.
If training on copyrighted work was outlawed tomorrow, then I think we would see less AI art in the very short term (so negative impact to #1 temporarily), and in the medium term, less human artists out of a job (so, somewhat temporary positive impact to #2).
In the longer term, I think it’s not going to matter very much, since the technology will find ways to improve one way or another.
Enforcement Costs
I personally imagine enforcement costs will be low, because training these systems requires large amounts of money and is accomplished by a relatively small number of orgs which will mostly be self-policing once the legal situation is clear (because the risk of investing that much money, and then having a court tell you to throw the result away, is going to be mostly unacceptable).
I’m not sure what you’re saying here! My implication was that we should view the law as instrumental rather than terminally valuing the law as it currently stands. I don’t know much about the law, but I also have the impression that judges will think about it this way when considering how to respond to this new situation.
True! In the past, protecting the profitability of artists this way was also (for the most part) to the benefit of consumers, since profitability of art determined how much was created and mass-distributed. Especially before the internet.
AI art generally seems like a lot of #1 and only a little #2, right now. Obviously the quality will keep getting better.
If training on copyrighted work was outlawed tomorrow, then I think we would see less AI art in the very short term (so negative impact to #1 temporarily), and in the medium term, less human artists out of a job (so, somewhat temporary positive impact to #2).
In the longer term, I think it’s not going to matter very much, since the technology will find ways to improve one way or another.
I personally imagine enforcement costs will be low, because training these systems requires large amounts of money and is accomplished by a relatively small number of orgs which will mostly be self-policing once the legal situation is clear (because the risk of investing that much money, and then having a court tell you to throw the result away, is going to be mostly unacceptable).
But I could easily be incorrect.