Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft, Bans Its Employees (80.lv)
from Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 14:07
https://lemmy.world/post/12881865

According to a recent tweet shared by AI enthusiast Nick St. Pierre, the alleged theft occurred last Saturday. It is claimed that employees from Stability AI infiltrated Midjourney’s database and stole all prompt and image pairs, an action that also caused a 24-hour outage. In response, MJ reportedly banned all Stable Diffusion developers from its services, a move supposedly disclosed internally within the company on Wednesday.

#technology

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TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca on 08 Mar 2024 14:15 next collapse

Lol, after both steal every image on the internet.

No wonder the images look similar.

Fisk400@feddit.nu on 08 Mar 2024 17:40 collapse

Have you seen those images of a bunch of people overlaid on each other so that shared features become clear and outliers become fuzzy. The result is an average human but it doesn’t actually look like anyone in particular because it’s a human with no striving feature or bold choice. Thats why AI look the same, they all have the same dull parts of real art but none of the interesting bits.

hazeebabee@slrpnk.net on 09 Mar 2024 02:32 next collapse

Thats such a good point i hadnt thought about before. Training data helps the ai know what is most common, so its products tend to be tropy, predictable and a bit bland (which is great for some things). They are often lacking that ooomph that makes great works truely unique and fascinating.

tonyn@lemmy.ml on 10 Mar 2024 04:40 collapse

Only if your prompts are boring and dull. The more details I add to my prompts, the more unique of a look I can achieve.

Fisk400@feddit.nu on 10 Mar 2024 09:09 collapse

Yes, some people don’t notice the creative void in AI because they are themselves hollow humunculuses. They crawl at the edge of the human fire of creation and gather stray embers that hit the dead sands they occupy. Once in a while they find an ember with some faded glow left and they hold it up and say “The more details I add to my prompts, the more unique of a look I can achieve.”

I pity them because they will never understand true warmth.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 10 Mar 2024 09:32 collapse

Agree and disagree. You actually can get proper art out of those systems, also novelty, but it usually involves leading the AI onto a gradient you can’t reach with mere text prompts. It’s kinda like with riding horses: As a beginner, the horse will judge you an idiot and follow the horse in front of it and not your commands. You have to have both the intention and the skill to lead the horse onto an untrodden path.

Or, differently put: If a sketch can be art then so can a piece that the AI generated from it, one that was declared adequate by the sketch maker. “Here, machine”, said the human, “I have done my part, I have infused these bits with life, now you do the boring stuff and polish it”.

Fisk400@feddit.nu on 10 Mar 2024 09:58 collapse

I don’t know what part of my answer full of contempt made you think that I am open to the standard tech bro babble?

I think you are disgusting people and charlatans desperately trying to pretend that you know what art is. Is that a clearer response for you. The first response was a bit too creative so I understand why you wouldn’t understand it.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 10 Mar 2024 11:01 collapse

I understood you just fine. What you don’t seem to understand is that art depends not on the medium but the creator. Where do you draw the line? If I throw a sculpt of mine not into SDXL but Cycles to render, does it suddenly become art? Or is it still not art because I’m not using a paintbrush, hell I’m not doing a single bit of shading? Do I need to work with actual clay? That clay also has an undo button (of sorts). Does only marble count? What’s your standard? Can you articulate it?

The vast bulk of AI pictures out there are bland and uninspired because it’s not artists who hit the generate button. It’s as simple as that. There’s also plenty of bland and uninspired oil on canvas out there – not as large a proportion because the craft is not easy to pick up while staying completely artistically illiterate, but it’s still there because artistic expression is not the only reason why people paint. And that’s fine. And so is randos typing “big tiddies” into a prompt box and hitting generate. Noone claims that’s art, but at the utmost that it looks nice.

Fisk400@feddit.nu on 10 Mar 2024 13:08 collapse

You are in no way different from the people typing “big tiddies” into a prompt box and hitting generate. You only sound slightly more intelligent to the other cold husks but to us standing by the bonfire, you look exactly the same. I actually respect the titty people more because they know what they are and dont pretend to care.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 10 Mar 2024 13:17 collapse

Got you. You can’t articulate it.

Fisk400@feddit.nu on 10 Mar 2024 15:08 collapse

I did articulate it. It is not my fault that inhuman ghouls cant understand the point.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 10 Mar 2024 16:07 collapse

You articulated a judgement. You did not articulate a distinction.

Also your insults aren’t even creative: There’s pathos there, yes, but it’s derivative. Mere intensity does not art make.

Fisk400@feddit.nu on 10 Mar 2024 17:55 collapse

Fedora energy.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 10 Mar 2024 22:41 collapse

Get well soon, then.

art@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 14:46 next collapse

Don’t steal my stolen data.

mp3@lemmy.ca on 08 Mar 2024 15:31 collapse

No honor among thieves.

BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 14:47 next collapse

I don’t think they care about the images being used, just the disruption of service. It’s pretty clear that this wasn’t a coordinated thing from Stability and was at most a lone individual acting in bad faith.

It’s pretty ironic though that the company that practices mass scraping has no rate limits to prevent outages due to mass scraping.

RobotToaster@mander.xyz on 08 Mar 2024 15:13 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/a12889b6-776a-44b3-95b6-09d768d6b059.jpeg">

Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 08 Mar 2024 15:24 next collapse

Infiltrating databases is too fancy a description for what was actually happening. Someone was just scraping the gallery website a little too fast, and that caused a mild DoS attack.

msage@programming.dev on 08 Mar 2024 21:45 collapse

As happens to everyone scraping data. Sometimes you forget the delay and then you wonder why the interface is burning.

Toneswirly@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 17:01 next collapse

Lol its absurd to claim ownership of training data. You didnt create or license it to begin with!

MargotRobbie@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 17:21 next collapse

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

AI generated images are not, and should not be considered copyright able, and they don’t own the right to the image they generated, as I understand it.

Otherwise, Midjourney are certainly very welcome to start paying royalties to certain popular celebrities whose images they are profiting off of. You can’t have it both ways.

JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz on 08 Mar 2024 17:58 next collapse

Iirc the only precedent we have is that the AI algorithm itself cannot hold the copyright to what it creates, as one artist wanted it to be. Basically the same thing as the famous monkey selfie.

If the copyright of a generated image can be claimed by the creator of the algorithm, or the user who wrote the prompt, and how much human effort is required for it is still unknown.

TingoTenga@kbin.social on 08 Mar 2024 17:49 next collapse

The image output themselves might not be protected by copyrights. However, that does not mean that there are no rights over the code (or prompts) used to generate those images or over the database compilations themselves (https://www.copyright.gov/reports/appendix.pdf).

abhibeckert@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 20:33 collapse

The code is obviously protected by copyright. Not sure why anyone would question that?

If the prompt is protected, then the output image will be too (and by the same owner). I suspect it depends on how detailed the prompt is (just like a tweet might not be eligible for copyright, unless it’s a particularly creative joke/haiku/etc).

ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 Mar 2024 13:54 collapse

I agree with you insofar as no image should be copyrightable.

BigMacHole@lemm.ee on 08 Mar 2024 17:55 next collapse

They care about Ownership of data?

casmael@lemm.ee on 08 Mar 2024 19:06 next collapse

No they care about dollar bills

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 23:20 collapse

Only when it’s theirs.

casmael@lemm.ee on 08 Mar 2024 19:05 next collapse

Ironic

gregorum@lemm.ee on 09 Mar 2024 01:14 collapse

While also being completely predictable.

notannpc@lemmy.world on 08 Mar 2024 19:54 next collapse

Oh no…anyway.

Prater@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 2024 13:12 next collapse

Quite possibly the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen.

QuiteQuickQum@lemmy.world on 09 Mar 2024 13:58 next collapse

Begun, the AI Wars have

Wytch@lemmy.zip on 10 Mar 2024 12:10 collapse

JFC this time line is stupid