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Roll20, Remove AI Art from the Marketplace

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Edited 1671040779
LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
A.I Images are a compound of billions of scraped images from across the web that were used without consent to train the programs that generate these images, it is literally art theft on an unseen scale and to allow people to profit off of it while actual artists that are under your employ suffer because of it is absolutely absurd . Making people add a disclaimer that states their A.I images are what they are does not help when they're still allowed to profit off of the hard work and years of effort it took for artists to get where they are. This is not a natural evolution of art, this is not "the times are changing", this is profiting off of other people's hard work without their consent and it has absolutely no place in a professional environment, it is completely unethical. A.I Image Generation should never be looked at as anything beyond massive art theft, or a toy to play with for personal use.
1671151612
LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
To add to this: I will not be adding anything new to the Roll20 Marketplace until action is taken. If you won't support the artists who are working from your platform then I see no reason to continue supporting your marketplace that promotes art theft. I will also not be renewing my subscriptions for Pro or Plus either, and will simply take my games to other VTTs. I urge anybody who has been affected by the flood of lazily thrown together A.I Image packs to do the same. If words don't cut it, then action and speaking with your wallet always does.
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Andrew R.
Pro
Sheet Author
You have my axe.
1671212046
Gold
Forum Champion
Currently Roll20 has this spot to put a Disclaimer that discloses it: and I believe this disclosure is required for publishers in the Roll20 Marketplace participation policy SCREENSHOT  So the Buyer can look for this phrase: Disclaimer: This product contains assets that were procedurally generated with the aid of creative software(s) powered by machine learning.
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Kraynic
Pro
Sheet Author
I can understand thinking that the ai generating tools as they exist now are here to stay.&nbsp; However, there is already at least one class action lawsuit against ai due to some ai basically stealing code (in the article I will link later, it deals with code hosted on github) with no regard to any applicable licenses that cover the code being used by the ai.&nbsp; This could very well have a spillover effect dealing with artwork being used without permission of the creator/owner. I pity anyone getting served ai regurgitated snippets of any of my character sheet code... <a href="https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2022/11/class-action-against-github-copilot.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://adtmag.com/blogs/watersworks/2022/11/class-action-against-github-copilot.aspx</a>
1671214472
LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
Gold said: Currently Roll20 has this spot to put a Disclaimer that discloses it: and I believe this disclosure is required for publishers in the Roll20 Marketplace participation policy SCREENSHOT&nbsp; So the Buyer can look for this phrase: Disclaimer: This product contains assets that were procedurally generated with the aid of creative software(s) powered by machine learning. I addressed this in the first post: Making people add a disclaimer that states their A.I images are what they are does not help when they're still allowed to profit off of the hard work and years of effort it took for artists to get where they are. Adding a disclaimer so people can filter it out does nothing to actually address the problem. If they weren't actively profiting from it, then the filter would be fine as to avoid having to see the content, but that isn't the case.
1671628143
Pat
Pro
API Scripter
I agree with exclusion for one particular reason: this has not been granted copyright because it is not human-produced, so any inclusion on the marketplace is non-enforceable as far as anyone else *stealing* the *ai generated* art - oddly enough, the art-theft that AI art represents has been recognized by copyright law as non-copyrightable itself. AI art can't be "stolen" itself, regardless of it being the product of theft, because it is not produced by human art.&nbsp; And this is not the place to argue *against* an idea. That's clear in the forum rules.&nbsp;
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Edited 1672587499
LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
Pat said: I agree with exclusion for one particular reason: this has not been granted copyright because it is not human-produced, so any inclusion on the marketplace is non-enforceable as far as anyone else *stealing* the *ai generated* art - oddly enough, the art-theft that AI art represents has been recognized by copyright law as non-copyrightable itself. AI art can't be "stolen" itself, regardless of it being the product of theft, because it is not produced by human art.&nbsp; And this is not the place to argue *against* an idea. That's clear in the forum rules.&nbsp; That was one thing I was going to touch on over the weekend but forgot to; as far as the recognition of copyright for AI generated images goes the only person who could feasibly hold that copyright is the group who made the machine you're getting the art from. Nobody should be under the impression that they hold the copyright to their AI images, and that leads directly into the issue of selling something you don't own. And then we're right back into theft.
Hello, Would anyone be able to provide more information to research this by chance?&nbsp; If the a.i. generated images are legit "stolen," then I would like to place a vote here.&nbsp; But in my searching, the best I've been able to find is that some a.i. generated applications allow users to sell the images and others don't.&nbsp; Is there some kind of way to make it so if it is a.i. generated they need to show where it's from and prove they have the right to sell the images?&nbsp; If the main issue is that the a.i. is building art faster than a human can, then I wouldn't spend a vote on this.&nbsp;&nbsp; Thank you.
1672569735
Sr. K
Pro
Sheet Author
Pat said: I agree with exclusion for one particular reason: this has not been granted copyright because it is not human-produced, so any inclusion on the marketplace is non-enforceable as far as anyone else *stealing* the *ai generated* art - oddly enough, the art-theft that AI art represents has been recognized by copyright law as non-copyrightable itself. AI art can't be "stolen" itself, regardless of it being the product of theft, because it is not produced by human art.&nbsp; And this is not the place to argue *against* an idea. That's clear in the forum rules.&nbsp; +1
1672599709
LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
awogg said: Hello, Would anyone be able to provide more information to research this by chance?&nbsp; If the a.i. generated images are legit "stolen," then I would like to place a vote here.&nbsp; But in my searching, the best I've been able to find is that some a.i. generated applications allow users to sell the images and others don't.&nbsp; Is there some kind of way to make it so if it is a.i. generated they need to show where it's from and prove they have the right to sell the images?&nbsp; If the main issue is that the a.i. is building art faster than a human can, then I wouldn't spend a vote on this.&nbsp;&nbsp; Thank you. The AI generators are trained on LAION which is a mass scraping of images done by a german non-profit. LAION holds these images and has a very loose "all copyright is owned by the owners" handwave in their FAQ. The problem is that pretty much nobody consented to having their copyrighted material added to this index, and certainly didn't consent to having it used to mass-train the image generators. <a href="https://laion.ai/faq/" rel="nofollow">https://laion.ai/faq/</a> The problem isn't that AI is making art faster, the problem is that it's using stolen material and making patchwork collages out of them. The AI is not actually drawing anything, it's using samples from LAION to piece together the best interpretation of a prompt it can with the material it works with, which is entirely comprised of copyrighted work. Hope this helps!
I also support the banning of AI art given it is not art, but a collage of images stolen from actual artists and often includes the signatures of artists whose work has been stolen.
I mean it depends on how much of a direct copy it is. Every human artist ever have been inspired and guided by looking at existing art (very often without permission or compensation). You learn by copying someones methods. So the question is: should AI be held to a higher standards than humans?
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Edited 1673447876
Kraynic
Pro
Sheet Author
Jens F. said: So the question is: should AI be held to a higher standards than humans? If the AI can't be, the humans behind it certainly can be.&nbsp; Like I posted above, there is already a class action lawsuit against Microsoft/Github for taking open source code (open source does not mean that there isn't licensing involved) from github to train a coding assistant AI.&nbsp; If that lawsuit succeeds, it will very likely have an impact on the use of protected images, just like the use of protected code.
If that lawsuit succeeds, it will very likely have an impact on the use of protected images, just like the use of protected code How would anyone ever prove that an AI used someone's image. And even if you could, it would be like 1/billionth of the final image. Hardly wholesale theft. AI is just a new tool and, at this point, inevitable. Trying to fight it is like trying to battle the tide with a spoon.
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LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
Todd said: If that lawsuit succeeds, it will very likely have an impact on the use of protected images, just like the use of protected code How would anyone ever prove that an AI used someone's image. And even if you could, it would be like 1/billionth of the final image. Hardly wholesale theft. AI is just a new tool and, at this point, inevitable. Trying to fight it is like trying to battle the tide with a spoon. We're able to prove it because we can see the repo the ai is trained on so we know the exact contents. It not just a new tool, that take is not only ignorant of the situation but it is a needless post trying to devalue this suggestion and has no place here.
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LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
Jens F. said: I mean it depends on how much of a direct copy it is. Every human artist ever have been inspired and guided by looking at existing art (very often without permission or compensation). You learn by copying someones methods. So the question is: should AI be held to a higher standards than humans? And this is not comparable at all. You're trying to equate the human mind with a machine that collages images together. The difference between human inspiration and a machine ripping images apart to put them back together is comparing apples to clocks, they are entirely different. I see a lot of people trying to defend ai images this way and it falls short every time.
1674604437
LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
To say the stark radio silence on this issue is "disheartening" wouldn't do it justice. I am incredibly disappointed in Roll20 for failing to even acknowledge this problem, let alone give an idea of where they might stand.
+1 in favor of banning AI art from the Marketplace. It is theft, plain and simple.&nbsp;
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LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
Bumping my own thread once again because, by the lack of response, as long as it makes Roll20 more money the morals of how something gets that money is entirely disregarded. How disappointing yet entirely expected from another big company that values their money over their creators that got them to where they are.
+1 to this. A disclaimer is not enough. You can't just sell images you took from pinterest or deviantart with nothing but a disclaimer. AI "art" is little different. And screw this "it's the future!!" mindset. Humans have agency. We can choose not to embrace technologies we recognize as socially harmful.
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Domigorgon
Plus
Marketplace Creator
To the argument of "A.I. is only inspired by the art found online", well, that's like me walking into a store, stealing a bunch of ingredients for cake, going home, making a cake and saying "Well of course the cake is not stolen! I made it!"
Good luck!&nbsp; Every profession, artists, programmers, office clerks, lawyers, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, fighter-pilots are going to be challenged by AI.&nbsp; Artists and their art is no different than a great screenplay, an imaginative legal argument or a well-written piece of software.&nbsp; AI will be frustrating in the near term for many but will make us all better over time.&nbsp;&nbsp; We've been down this path before;&nbsp; Calculators, Digital Cameras, Photoshop are a few examples.&nbsp; Technology once made available will be utilized and advance over time assuming it can produce a desirable product at an economically favorable price.&nbsp; &nbsp;You can't put this toothpaste back in the tube.&nbsp;&nbsp; As a human race, we are better because we have leveraged these technologies.&nbsp; AI will make us even better. Will M.
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LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
Will M. said: Good luck!&nbsp; Every profession, artists, programmers, office clerks, lawyers, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, fighter-pilots are going to be challenged by AI.&nbsp; Artists and their art is no different than a great screenplay, an imaginative legal argument or a well-written piece of software.&nbsp; AI will be frustrating in the near term for many but will make us all better over time.&nbsp;&nbsp; We've been down this path before;&nbsp; Calculators, Digital Cameras, Photoshop are a few examples.&nbsp; Technology once made available will be utilized and advance over time assuming it can produce a desirable product at an economically favorable price.&nbsp; &nbsp;You can't put this toothpaste back in the tube.&nbsp;&nbsp; As a human race, we are better because we have leveraged these technologies.&nbsp; AI will make us even better. Will M. It's ironic that I've heard a hundred people use very similar reasoning and yet none of them ever seem to touch the moral or legal concerns surrounding the art. It's a shame it doesn't fit into your narrative so you can idly brush away any and all concerns in favour of not doing your own research into those specific subjects. Thanks for your wishes of luck, I look forward to bumping this thread for the next seven years and responding to a thousand more comments like this.
1676844765
DaveA
Marketplace Creator
Not an argument against, but it's not at all clear to me how you all are getting to copyright infringement from AI assisted art. Fair use would seem to weigh heavily in favor of the people using the AI.&nbsp; The fact that the scraping process draws from millions of images would seem to be on the side of the AI artist since it doesn't challenge the uniqueness of any particular, singular source.&nbsp; The fact that it's quite possibly transformative in nature (the AI generated art is being used for a purpose different than the original image) also seems to go against the argument that it's theft.&nbsp; And then there's the fact that the art actually isn't undercutting the artist's of the original art...unless they were making their living selling pawns to roll20 users. I'm not saying it isn't infringement.&nbsp; I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were that would be for courts to decide.&nbsp; I'm just saying that it's not clear to me what all the ruckus is about. Setting aside the legal issues, just looking at the creative side of things, it's also not clear to me how this isn't just another tool in an artist's palette, as it were.&nbsp; This isn't like going to a store and stealing the ingredients for a cake.&nbsp; It's more like averaging out the recipes of a million different cakes that fall within certain categories in order to make a cake. There's still a human deciding what kind of cake (chocolate, vanilla, tiered, whatever...) to make.&nbsp; There's still a human tasting it at the end and, if desired, taking another pass at it until the result is desired.&nbsp; If they don't have the skill to know what kind of cake will work, or the taste to know whether or not that's been achieved, the AI isn't going to help them make a yummy cake. It's just a tool.&nbsp; A very smart tool, that automates a lot of the technique that traditional artists rely on as the justification for the value of their work, but that's all it is. Much as the camera is a tool that can crate instantly accurate illusions of real things.&nbsp; It's advent in the middle 19th century absolutely rocked the world of fine art, where illusionism had always been the province of painters.&nbsp; The outcome of that?&nbsp; Artists like Matise and VanGogh, who demonstrated what paintings could do that photographs could not...despite cameras being very smart tools for their time. And that's not even coming at the long tradition of appropriation in art, from DuChamp's ready-mades to conceptual art produced by hands other than those of the artist who conceived it to, yes, collage art itself. I'm not saying Roll20 shouldn't ban AI art.&nbsp; I'm not saying the idea shouldn't be considered. I am suggesting that the issue maybe deserves more consideration than an "All AI Art is Theft" blanket condemnation.
I agree! DaveA said: Not an argument against, but it's not at all clear to me how you all are getting to copyright infringement from AI assisted art. Fair use would seem to weigh heavily in favor of the people using the AI.&nbsp; The fact that the scraping process draws from millions of images would seem to be on the side of the AI artist since it doesn't challenge the uniqueness of any particular, singular source.&nbsp; The fact that it's quite possibly transformative in nature (the AI generated art is being used for a purpose different than the original image) also seems to go against the argument that it's theft.&nbsp; And then there's the fact that the art actually isn't undercutting the artist's of the original art...unless they were making their living selling pawns to roll20 users. I'm not saying it isn't infringement.&nbsp; I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were that would be for courts to decide.&nbsp; I'm just saying that it's not clear to me what all the ruckus is about. Setting aside the legal issues, just looking at the creative side of things, it's also not clear to me how this isn't just another tool in an artist's palette, as it were.&nbsp; This isn't like going to a store and stealing the ingredients for a cake.&nbsp; It's more like averaging out the recipes of a million different cakes that fall within certain categories in order to make a cake. There's still a human deciding what kind of cake (chocolate, vanilla, tiered, whatever...) to make.&nbsp; There's still a human tasting it at the end and, if desired, taking another pass at it until the result is desired.&nbsp; If they don't have the skill to know what kind of cake will work, or the taste to know whether or not that's been achieved, the AI isn't going to help them make a yummy cake. It's just a tool.&nbsp; A very smart tool, that automates a lot of the technique that traditional artists rely on as the justification for the value of their work, but that's all it is. Much as the camera is a tool that can crate instantly accurate illusions of real things.&nbsp; It's advent in the middle 19th century absolutely rocked the world of fine art, where illusionism had always been the province of painters.&nbsp; The outcome of that?&nbsp; Artists like Matise and VanGogh, who demonstrated what paintings could do that photographs could not...despite cameras being very smart tools for their time. And that's not even coming at the long tradition of appropriation in art, from DuChamp's ready-mades to conceptual art produced by hands other than those of the artist who conceived it to, yes, collage art itself. I'm not saying Roll20 shouldn't ban AI art.&nbsp; I'm not saying the idea shouldn't be considered. I am suggesting that the issue maybe deserves more consideration than an "All AI Art is Theft" blanket condemnation.
Chaosium is banning AI Art starting March 31 2023. (Source:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.chaosium.com/blogai-art-and-chaosium-community-content-programs-miskatonic-repositoryjonstown-compendiumexplorers-society/" rel="nofollow">https://www.chaosium.com/blogai-art-and-chaosium-community-content-programs-miskatonic-repositoryjonstown-compendiumexplorers-society/</a>) I expect many others to follow and also ban AI generated Art for their publications.
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I'm of the opinion that it's sometimes &nbsp;"theft".&nbsp;&nbsp; If I ask Midjourney to make an anime catgirl, it gives me one of the most generic images ever conceived. If it's an infringing derivative, then every anime catgirl is an infringing derivative and we may as well just treat the whole concept as illegal. To me, if it could have been by any anime artist, then it was by no anime artist. However, if I ask Midjourney to make an anime catgirl in the style of larry elmore .&nbsp; OOOoooh dear . It literally gives me a bunch of stuff that passes for Larry Elmore pieces. If I didn't tell people it was AI, people would be all "Oh hey! New Larry Elmore stuff! Neat!"&nbsp; For me, the difference is that a generic prompt was probably never going to be a commission worth anything. The person writing the prompt is going to accept anything. They don't care. They'll hunt down an artist who will do the work for "exposure". In practice among the multiverse, there's no damage to the artist community. Nobody's bank account was going to increase by blocking that option. If an artist doesn't have a distinct style that they would be named in a prompt, their art style is probably common and has no meaningful impact on the data set since so many people use the style. They aren't an aggrieved party anywhere other than in their own head. That's their ego telling them AI is taking their work. The supply already exceeds the demand even before AI. However, if someone is naming an artist in their prompt, in my opinion, they're basically counterfeiting (rather than theft). For me, that's the test. If you can look at a piece and say "This one is Sakimi-chan. This one is Luis Royo. This one is Boris Vallejo." That is a problem. If you want something in their style, and you don't have the AI option, you have to buy a commission. You're not getting that art anywhere other than the artist. In practice among the multiverse, money would change hands if AI was blocked. There is high demand and limited supply for that kind of art. I have a feeling that in the near future we're going to see something akin to a sort of Spotify set up where artists can upload their art to the data set and get paid a proportional share of the revenue. It's a legally grey industry right now, but so far the phrasing and flow of the subject reminds me a lot of the arguments around p2p sharing (Napster) and how that led to DMCA/Content ID type things. Just as how that basically was treated as resolved and settled once Viacom was happy, we'll probably see the legal community treat the issue as over once Getty Images is happy.
1676951957
Pat
Pro
API Scripter
It is aggregate theft, stealing a tenth of a penny from a hundred thousand accounts each is still theft. It is not remotely "fair use" which applies to excerpts for the purpose of critique or analysis.&nbsp; And the product is disgorged by an algorithm, so it is not original art/product, so it cannot benefit from copyright, which is reserved to people, even if a person prodded the algorithm with a stick.&nbsp; Any other arguments are attempts to justify theft or declare a machine a person.&nbsp;
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Picking up a penny off the ground is "theft by finding". Western law has a lot of very broad definitions of theft than can be applied in a lot of cases which are considered a normal, mundane part of an average person's day. But anyways, this is why I'm saying it reminds me of the Napster drama. Calling it theft is really reminiscent to me of the "You wouldn't download a car" philosophy the media publishers were putting forward, conflating laws of real property with laws of licensing in order to appeal to emotions rather than rationality or actual legal doctrine.&nbsp; I know we aren't specifically talking about the US here, but their Supreme Court has previously ruled that a similar situation of copied media was not theft, and the US (Disney) often dictates the international rules on copyright, so it could be considered to be global law.&nbsp; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#%22Theft%22" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#%22Theft%22</a> &nbsp;&nbsp; I do agree though, that it is likely an infringement depending how the AI companies did their web scraping, and that AI generated content does not technically have a copyright at this time with how copyright laws currently are with non-human creators. I feel it would make sense if Roll20 were to suspend it due to the content creators not being able to prove ownership of the content they're selling, rather than "because it's theft".&nbsp;
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LazyTrain
Marketplace Creator
DaveA said: Not an argument against, but it's not at all clear to me how you all are getting to copyright infringement from AI assisted art. Fair use would seem to weigh heavily in favor of the people using the AI.&nbsp; The fact that the scraping process draws from millions of images would seem to be on the side of the AI artist since it doesn't challenge the uniqueness of any particular, singular source.&nbsp; The fact that it's quite possibly transformative in nature (the AI generated art is being used for a purpose different than the original image) also seems to go against the argument that it's theft.&nbsp; And then there's the fact that the art actually isn't undercutting the artist's of the original art...unless they were making their living selling pawns to roll20 users. I'm not saying it isn't infringement.&nbsp; I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were that would be for courts to decide.&nbsp; I'm just saying that it's not clear to me what all the ruckus is about. Setting aside the legal issues, just looking at the creative side of things, it's also not clear to me how this isn't just another tool in an artist's palette, as it were.&nbsp; This isn't like going to a store and stealing the ingredients for a cake.&nbsp; It's more like averaging out the recipes of a million different cakes that fall within certain categories in order to make a cake. There's still a human deciding what kind of cake (chocolate, vanilla, tiered, whatever...) to make.&nbsp; There's still a human tasting it at the end and, if desired, taking another pass at it until the result is desired.&nbsp; If they don't have the skill to know what kind of cake will work, or the taste to know whether or not that's been achieved, the AI isn't going to help them make a yummy cake. It's just a tool.&nbsp; A very smart tool, that automates a lot of the technique that traditional artists rely on as the justification for the value of their work, but that's all it is. Much as the camera is a tool that can crate instantly accurate illusions of real things.&nbsp; It's advent in the middle 19th century absolutely rocked the world of fine art, where illusionism had always been the province of painters.&nbsp; The outcome of that?&nbsp; Artists like Matise and VanGogh, who demonstrated what paintings could do that photographs could not...despite cameras being very smart tools for their time. And that's not even coming at the long tradition of appropriation in art, from DuChamp's ready-mades to conceptual art produced by hands other than those of the artist who conceived it to, yes, collage art itself. I'm not saying Roll20 shouldn't ban AI art.&nbsp; I'm not saying the idea shouldn't be considered. I am suggesting that the issue maybe deserves more consideration than an "All AI Art is Theft" blanket condemnation. If you are, as you say, not a lawyer and entirely unsure of all these things you are claiming, then why are you jumping into the defense of these things that you don't actually know for sure? Your entire multi-paragraph post does not actually say anything besides you might be against labelling theft as theft. Which it is, by the way. Another user made a perfect example earlier: Pat said: It is aggregate theft, stealing a tenth of a penny from a hundred thousand accounts each is still theft. It is not remotely "fair use" which applies to excerpts for the purpose of critique or analysis.&nbsp; And the product is disgorged by an algorithm, so it is not original art/product, so it cannot benefit from copyright, which is reserved to people, even if a person prodded the algorithm with a stick.&nbsp; Any other arguments are attempts to justify theft or declare a machine a person.&nbsp;
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Edited 1677065280
DaveA
Marketplace Creator
Well, I know for sure that you are mistaken on a few counts.&nbsp; I don't know if those...misunderstandings...mean that Roll20 shouldn't ban AI generated images.&nbsp; But you (and Pat) are certainly off base with some of your statements: There's no reason to think that AI assisted art can't be copyrighted.&nbsp; The nature of the tool doesn't change that.&nbsp; Yes, it does matter whether a human poked it with a stick.&nbsp; Don't believe me?&nbsp; Ask Ansel Adams. There's no reason to assume that all AI assisted (or generated, for that matter) art is made using stolen images:&nbsp; There are generators (Shutterstock AI, for example) that use 100% licensed libraries.&nbsp; There's no reason to assume that a given AI assisted image depends to any huge degree on the AI and isn't just a massaging of the artist's own, original image provided as a visual prompt. I'm all for calling theft what it is.&nbsp; I'm not defending it.&nbsp; I think that the libraries that use unlicensed images have stolen them.&nbsp; That's theft and those folks should be gone after... ...but not, perhaps, to the extent of zealously categorizing an entire, emerging class of art as theft and artists who may be innocent bystanders as thieves, in the course of that righteous crusade.
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Sr. K
Pro
Sheet Author
This is not the place to argue about "all AIs are not bad". If you don´t like the suggestion, don´t vote. Please follow the rules.
DaveA said: Much as the camera is a tool that can crate instantly accurate illusions of real things.&nbsp; It's advent in the middle 19th century absolutely rocked the world of fine art, where illusionism had always been the province of painters.&nbsp; The outcome of that?&nbsp; Artists like Matise and VanGogh, who demonstrated what paintings could do that photographs could not...despite cameras being very smart tools for their time. The camera is an interesting example. This naturally varies from one country to another, but photos are not always considered to have copyright, as they are considered to simply copy reality as it is. At the other end of this, there are examples of photos of artwork (even statues in public places) that are violating copyright.
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It's a no to AI assets from me. I have no qualms if AI 'helps' in creation (say, serves as inspiration, or a base image that is modified substantially), but there must be some material human artistry other than the work the AI did cribbing other art, or the crafting of the prompt to the AI. I look at the current state of AI art as a remix tool and feel it is (albeit loosely) a form of theft, and AI arguments aside regarding legality/rightness/wrongness, will ultimately serve to damage innovation within the industry over the long term, which is my larger concern. That may change some day as AI advances, and then the argument would become about personage.
1679109690
Oosh
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Sr. K said: This is not the place to argue about "all AIs are not bad". If you don´t like the suggestion, don´t vote. Please follow the rules. Calling all artists who use any ML-powered tools "thieves" is also against the rules, both of the forum and general human decency.
1679133724
Sr. K
Pro
Sheet Author
Oosh said: Calling all artists who use any ML-powered tools "thieves" is also against the rules, both of the forum and general human decency. AFAIK the only theft pointed here is the one perpetrated by AI, not artist. There is a specific disclaimer in the marketplace about AI content, I don't think that people using this kind of tools are thieves but at least they should consider the ethics behind it. I belive that it would be more productive for AI enthusiasts to try to improve this kind of tools in a way that any shadow of doubt about theft is dissipated, instead of trying to justify the actual panorama.
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Edited 1679669789
Villagelder
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Kraynic said: Like I posted above, there is already a class action lawsuit against Microsoft/Github for taking open source code (open source does not mean that there isn't licensing involved) from github to train a coding assistant AI.&nbsp; If that lawsuit succeeds, it will very likely have an impact on the use of protected images, just like the use of protected code. Open source. I am a software developer. If I develop open source code and put it out on GitHub for free, I am literally giving it away. Open Source is a purposeful gift to the community, much like Creative Commons or other like resources and does not require&nbsp; paid licensing - just attribution . Except a very small percentage, most open source libraries do not require paid licensing. If you want to protect any intellectual property, you put it behind a paywall. The same can be said of art. AI generated images are facsimiles (impressions) of the original creation, or impressions of mundane objects, but they are not the original creation. If I want the original artistic creation, then I buy the original artistic creation. If I want adequate substitutes for an adventure I write, and I use AI-generated art to decorate here and there, it is simply the same as open source. I am not using the artists original work any more than as a software developer making new functional software using myriad open source libraries. Open source and AI just make it easier for creators to produce faster and focus on the things they are good at. If I write a novel and AI rewrites the exact same thing but in different words, there is literally nothing I can do about it.&nbsp; Because it has taken my story, and made a collage of my ideas with different words. &nbsp; But my work is the original work and I have confidence that people will want to read my book (or my other creations). I understand the need to protect one's livelihood, like artists and authors and other creators, but if I want the original, I go to the original. Like an Oreo cookie. If I want an Oreo, I go get an Oreo, but if I'm happy with a subpar facsimile of an Oreo, well that works too. In addition, Roll20 (like 99.9% of Web Development), the platform that all of our creators here are posting their creations on, uses open source libraries to produce a different end product. Yet, Roll20, as an end-product, is its own intellectual property. If they had to take the time to write every piece of frontend and backend framework code, there would be no free accounts, and subscriptions would cost way more than $10/mth. Not to mention the many products here that use the ruleset of D&amp;D 5e, which in itself borrows heavily from Tolkien. At some point, the creator has to value their own originality and work enough to not be intimidated by reasonable facsimiles. Oh, and all those memes that we post? Can we say burrowed images? Many don't make money off memes but attract people to their channel to make money from. The real question is how close to the original do the AI facsimiles come? From what I have seen (and I use AI a lot), it doesn't come anywhere close to original creations - just different. IMO, We have to be confident in our own creations and our own originality.&nbsp; AI will only make&nbsp; original&nbsp; works of artists and creators more valuable, as we can focus on what we are good at and our new final products, and use AI for things that we a) can't afford, or b) don't have the time to invest. P.S. Internet scraping is only the first step of AI art. The next step in AI art will be to mimic the artistic motions of a pencil, a paintbrush, an artistic style, and draw their own images without scraping. I also foresee a whole new artform arising as people use AI art to make their own original artistic pieces.
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A prompt writer is not an artist and only can own the IP of the text used. The I in IP only applies to human beings, at least in Europe, AIs don´t have ownership rights. There are a lot of legal issues behind this, not just ethical. News about this kind of tools are going faster and faster every day, but sooner or later regulators will regulate because capitalism, free market an that stuff...
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Kraynic
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Villagelder said: Open source. I am a software developer. If I develop open source code and put it out on GitHub for free, I am literally giving it away. No, you are not, depending on the license used.&nbsp; At the very least, some open source licenses require attribution.&nbsp; Just because a certain chunk of code is open source does not mean there are absolutely no strings attached.&nbsp; Which is the whole point of the law suit that I mentioned previously.
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Kraynic
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Villagelder said: There are little thousands upon thousands of code libraries and source code packages that do not require license attribution. Which means exactly nothing.&nbsp; If the AI is being trained with, and uses in answers, code that does require attribution, then that is a problem.&nbsp; And it is a problem with some current AI projects. And you an believe what you want about the art side.&nbsp; That will be decided in court, and cases that will end up determining that have already begun though they will likely take quite a while for a decision.&nbsp; Unfortunately, Roll20 (and other online marketplaces) are in a position where upcoming court cases have the potential to impact what sort of content they are hosting.&nbsp; Limiting it as they have is probably a smart business move until there is more clarity on what rules will be moving forward.&nbsp; They really don't need the negativity it would generate if they have to remove any content in the future.