If it has value to them, what do you care? Does the value in your mind of <artpiece> drop when somebody creates <artpiece 2 in the style of artpiece>? If so, you might benefit from focussing more on your own life. I mean this lovingly, as I myself am going through the same thing right now; I realize I'll never be happy if I stay grumpy like this. You can't protect the world from itself.
> If it has value to them, what do you care? Does the value in your mind of <artpiece> drop when somebody creates <artpiece 2 in the style of artpiece>?
> no, you cannot copyright the Studio Ghibli art style itself. Copyright law doesn’t protect styles, techniques, or general aesthetics—like the hand-drawn, watercolor-inspired look with soft colors, detailed natural backgrounds, and whimsical vibes that Studio Ghibli is known for. It only protects specific, original works, like an individual film frame or character design from Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro.
And your answer... Doesn't seem to cover my question, I think. So the point of copyright is that the value of the style doesn't degrade?
Yes, of course! By all means, update the law. I don’t think anyone misses that part of being a human. Any concept we think of is fabricated.
But here’s the real meat of the issue I guess, how far do we wanna go? At what point SHOULD something be un-copyrightable? What describes a certain “style”? My style is black&white, can I copyright that?
Intellectual property is a consequence of capitalism, a sometimes necessary evil that is used to compel the consumers of intellectual output to pay into a system which produces it but which doesn't have any mechanism for compensating people for things that are not scarce in any way.
If we valued and supported artists without just seeing them as laborers, we could have a remix culture where no one really owns anything and no rights are reserved.
Because it discourages people from trying. It's hard enough to survive as an artist, and now there is even less sense in trying to start. This will hurt art, and humanity.
It's like pupils using an LLM to do their homework. They get the grade, but Idiocracy is awaiting.
Disagree. I think many people will actually be encouraged to try as the barrier to creating art has dropped and some of those people will decide to become more proficient at art.
Wow. I've pointed this out before - but this is just a TERRIBLE take.
Comparing systems like DALL-E 3 and Midjourney to modern illustration software is a fool's errand. Even with advanced graphic design tools like Photoshop you still have to employ the same artistic skills that have been handed down for generations: 3-point perspective, shading, basic poses, and sketching, etc.
If you can't draw, the fanciest graphic manipulation software isn't going be of much help to you.
As opposed to some doofus who has the ability to type in the words "3D", "trending on artstation", "hyper-realistic,", and "4K" and then proceed to churn out thousands of images in a single day. Stable diffusion is more like the equivalent of having your own personal artist on permanent retainer.
And photography initially had lower quality and performance ceilings compared to portraitists and artists of the day. And today, photographers win awards for their work.
New tools and techniques that lower the barrier to entry always get over used, over hyped and bring in masses of people making everything from impressive new things to absolute cheap garbage. And then people learn the limitations, the tools get better and a lot of people stop using the tools because they realize there are still skills that go into the process and they aren’t interested in learning those skills. The tools find their place, and new masters rise into the new world. And then a new tool is created and we start the process all over again.
Well, there's less money in it now, since production and consumption of whatever you think you want to see or hear is easier and cheaper than ever. So there will be less attempting. QED, I suppose.
Well, it's a Pandora's Box. It's irreversible, so we as humanity should learn to cope with it. That's just reality. What's the alternative? Banning LLMs? Good luck because I have a few on my hard disk. And even if you make it illegal, how would you detect it? I could've used an LLM to write this comment, would you know?
I agree though that schools are even more in trouble now. But my point still stands: we have NO CHOICE. We must adapt, or Idiocracy awaits ;)
Outlawing LLMs would certainly work. You may have them on your harddrive, but almost nobody else has, and they certainly don't know how to use it, nor do they have the capacity to run anything like it.
Schools definitely have to adapt, but there's so much inertia there, and in many countries, schools have a perverse stimulus to make as many pupils graduate as they can. It'll take another lost generation, I'm afraid. And the makers and exploiters of LLMs can take the blame for that.
It is now possible for people to value "doing the dishes" over "producing art of a high enough quality" and still get results. If people care more about doing the dishes than spending the hours required to make an equivalent piece by hand, then people will choose doing the dishes and leave the rest to AI. Now that the tech is out there, reducing the effort required to a button press, it has become a matter of people's priorities.
In my view, the people who want to be dropped off at the apex of the mountain the most always dreamed of this outcome for a long time, even if only a little bit. They dreamed of the day they would be freed from the toil of having to study for years and years to produce art that satisfied their tastes, because they would not lower their tastes to make the process less stressful, or had other priorities so could not devote time to practice.
Now the market has innovated and their dream has come true. To people not serious about coming manual artists, there is nothing wrong with this picture. The market need is being fulfilled.
We have to ask where this market need to produce art at such a low level of effort comes from.
In your view, these people have always been cheapskates up in their minds, we just didn't realize it until their preferences were revealed by AI becoming available. If it hadn't, they just wouldn't be artists of any kind and we'd never understand they had any artistic ambitions at all.
At the end of the day, for whatever reason, these people want art they can call their own - it's just a matter of how much effort is required to realize their ambitions.
If these people are to reject AI, yet still care enough about creating art of some kind for a sustained period of time, you basically have to convince them that learning a hard artistic skill is more important than "doing the dishes"/whatever else occupies the rest of their time instead. Maybe a grueling 9-5 work schedule, for example. That is simply how the nature of practice/10000 hours-type advice works out.
If people for some reason just don't want to put in the time, but still want to produce quality art, then they'll choose AI. These two desires are no longer contradicting. They would have been 10 years ago, when you could just retort with "you're going to have to put in the effort, there's no other way." It's clear that that virtue of work-ethic being one's only path to results has been obliterated by AI, and to the new converts it sounds like gatekeeping in hindsight.
Cultivating new interest in learning a skill when it doesn't already exist is way harder than it seems. That gets into mental well-being and existentialist issues that many people in today's society find difficult to reflect about deeply.
