The World Bank says it is halting new loans to Uganda because a new anti-gay law contradicts its core values.
Homosexual acts were already illegal in Uganda, but anyone now convicted faces life imprisonment under the new law which was enacted in May.
The World Bank said it was committed to helping all Ugandans without exception to “escape poverty, access vital services, and improve their lives”.
In a tweet, Ambassador Adonia Ayebare said it was time to rethink the World Bank’s work methods and the board’s decisions.
As a result, the World Bank said “no new public financing to Uganda will be presented to our Board of Executive Directors” pending a review of the efficacy of new measures put up in the context of the new legislation.
In response to the World Bank’s decision, Uganda’s state minister for foreign affairs Okello Oryem queried the consistency of the move compared to other countries.
I’m absolutely on the side of the artists here, but I do wonder if the AI company’s defense will be that the software is no different than another artists drawing inspiration from earlier works. Every art student studies the masters and has assignments to produce works in their style, and current artists have absolutely been influenced by contemporaries. No one evolves their creative style in a vacuum: that’s impossible, short of living on a deserted island.
But this is a fundamentally different problem since the AI can produce millions of tailored works quickly, replacing vast numbers of creatives, threatening their livelihood. That’s not as much of a concern with one-off artists creating things similar to something they saw earlier (although the individual concept may be the same).
This is going to be a really interesting legal case.
Yes, at best the AI works would still be infringing derivative works. If a human made that art and tried to make money off it, courts would almost assuredly say it lacked “sufficient tranformative creative effort” to allow it to be copyrighted itself or protect it from being considered an infringement. There’s a big difference beween “inspired by” and “trying to copy”.
Further, if all these works were being used for non-commercial purposes, like, just to print and hang up in their homes or something, it would still suck for artists (because they would lose the individual end-sale market) but it wouldn’t be nearly as harmful. The big problem is that people and corporations are currently trying to use AI art to sidestep paying creatives for their work and then using that AI generation for commercial purposes or to loophole the art out of things like Patreon. It’s a deliberate attempt to deprive hardworking creatives of the money they are due for their work.
There's usually nothing left of the original image. But sometimes a specific image pops up in the dataset more often and gets overtrained, which is why you can get a pretty close copy of the Starry Night from vanilla SD. But yeah, it's not tracing.
Those instances are considered a flaw and trainers work hard to prevent them. When they do occur you have to know they're in there in order to dredge them back out.
Legitimately, it’s like these people have no understanding of the actual technology.
The other response you’ve received talked about a very small subset of overtrained images, which makes sense on why they can be replicated. anyone who trained on creating a specific image a million times would be able to replicate that image easily. Even then it takes a lot of luck and effort to accurately replicate the exact image to any degree.
If you are not specifically trying to recreate an overly popular image, then there is practically no element left from any particular image that you can consider represented to any thieving extent.
Considering that it is effectively acting on a pareidolia interpretation of static represented by countless possible prompt and setting combinations, the copyright issue should only really be relevant when people use the tool specifically trying to recreate a particular work. Literally any other paint program would be more effective for that style of theft.
As an artist, in regards to the pareidolia aspect, I do virtually the same thing when illustrating an image. Disney/Warner can already afford as many peasants to learn or recreate whatever styles they want. I can’t afford a team of lackeys. I can however use an open source diffusion model to create entirely unique and personally tailored and designed illustrations that suit my artistic objective.
Existing concept of copywrite does not work for this scenario, and if people should argue anything, it should be that wealthy businesses specifically have much more restriction and responsibility in use of tools and in excessive control of the artistic market.
I’m personally excited for a future where peasant artists can also create complex beautiful works using these tools.
Think about ending up with holodeck level of personal creative freedom, and being able to create things in that experience the you can share with others.
The current system already robs and suppresses actual art.
Just like every other aggressive reaction to AI, the focus is misdirected and not actually helpful for anyone in any way.
My experience with image AI gave me almost the exact opposite feeling, more like it somehow pinpoints important aspects of a certain style or artist and then it can just jam with that limitlessly (Dall-e AI in this case) . How did you find it closer to tracing? Did you play around with any of the image AIs?
Looking at it a bit simplified, ask the AI to produce a number of pictures and videos in the style of Disney and you and the AI builder will get slammed by a lawsuit. Copyright still matters if you’re big enough.
I’m sure they can also develop an AI to analyze the similarities between works and pay a small amount of royalties to the author(s) based on the ratio of that similarly above a certain cutoff but before that happens someone big enough needs to sue first.
I’ve heard that everything the Taliban is doing regarding women is to stop them from being able to communicate with each other and therefore being able to meaningfully organize against their rule
I don’t see how this shames India anymore than it is already. This type of story is way too common out of India, and I won’t accept the population size as the reason. Sadly it’s one of the countries I refuse to visit and know that the culture won’t change in my lifetime
Modi, imo, has no problem with angry religiously motivated mobs, so long as it’s the Hindutva people committing the violence. He’s just making the noises the expected noises for the sake of propriety - don’t expect anything to change markedly.
bbc.co.uk
Top