Comment on Tim Sweeney says Epic Games Store is open to devs using generative AI
CIWS-30@kbin.social 9 months agoIt'll prevent indie artists from having their work plagiarized over and over without payment from indie "devs" who honestly shouldn't have the right to exist as "developers" if they can't afford to actually hire artists and such.
It'd be one thing if they made an agreement to get assets from artists for cheap or for free as a favor, but just plain putting them all out of business permanently by letting a machine steal their work forever is another thing entirely.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
I disagree, for several reasons. First off, you’you’re trying to paint developers who use generative AI plagiarizing other’s work without supporting that claim with any evidence. Then you go on to further and start insulting indie developers by insinuating they’re not real devs and have no right to exist. These personal attacks conveniently don’t address any merits or drawbacks of using generative AI. You should judge them based on their products, not budget or resources.
You end it all off by arguing a slippery slope of catastrophic consequences without evidence or reasoning for this can even happen. Not only that, but you predict that using generative AI to create content will “put them all out of business permanently by letting a machine steal their work forever”(without a shred of evidence as to how this is even stealing). Without you realizing it, this rule could turn Steam into a corpo-only playground by giving them exclusive use of the most powerful cutting edge tools that can save thousands of staff hours, saving only them wads of cash and a leg up on learning how to use these tools to enhance their work, discover new forms of expression, or to challenge the boundaries of art.
Your comment is elitist and doesn’t reflect the reality or generative AI in game development, and misunderstands our rights to give IP holders more power over creatives than they deserve. I suggest you do some more research and open your mind to the possibilities of generative AI, instead of dismissing it as a threat or a cheat. AI training isn’t and use isn’t only for mega-corporations. We can already train our own open source models, so we should let people put up barriers that will keep out all but the ultra-wealthy.
I recommend reading this article by Kit Walsh, who’s a senior staff attorney at the EFF, a digital rights group, who recently won a historic case: border guards now need a warrant to search your phone. I’d like to hear your thoughts.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Reading it again in context, your response is at best completely misunderstanding what is being said.
They are not “insulting indie developers by insinuating they’re not real devs and have no right to exist.”. They are saying that developers who rely on AI models should compensate the artists whose works trained that model. The model itself can only exist through processing artists’ copyrighted works.
As much as you talk of defending the little guy from corporate dominance, it doesn’t seem like you are considering the position of game artists, or any other small artists.
Just as that article does, frankly. Not only it seems entirely unconcerned with the realities of artists in a world where AI can replace them, its defense of scraping as “analytical” doesn’t seem very sound when the entire purpose is to create derivative works. Lets not forget that law exists, ideally, to protect people. Any argument that alteration to the law would make it worse tends to treat AI as equivalent to human, which it is not and it shouldn’t be treated as such.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
This is what I meant.
Derivative works doesn’t mean what you think it does. You should read the article again because I don’t think you took it all in. These are tools made by humans for humans to use. Restricting these models is restricting the rights of the people that use and train them. Mega-corporations will have their own models, no matter the price. What we say and do here will only affect our ability to catch up and stay competitive. And no one is trying to treat AI as equivalent to humans. Humans using machines have always been the copyright holders of any qualifying work they create. AI works are human works. AI can’t be authors or hold copyright.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 9 months ago
No, our legal definitions simply haven’t been made with a consideration towards advances in technology. It is made for a world that has printing presses and photocopiers, not for one where people can and do selectively feed one artists’ works into AI without their permission to generate works that are non-identical but clearly intended to be equivalent to that artist’s work. There is no other way to call that but derivative.
But while the overall result is more ambiguous as more works are used for training and the prompt doesn’t rely on one particular artist, it’s much in the same way that a large enough tragedy is a statistic. It’s fueled by massive amounts of copyright infringement. The humans who prepared these tools in this way didn’t have the right to do it as they did.
That said, this insistence that the only way to be competitive with corporations using AIs is to use AI is questionable. You said your previous comment responded to me but it didn’t actually. Why is it that AI would make it or break ot for indie developers that can make do without the massive production teams and expensive tools that AAA studios have? Why is this what would drive them out when all the other advantages AAA studios have didn’t? I find it very unlikely that the personal craftsmanship in indie works will cease to be appealing.
Besides, AI could be ethically trained by using works in the Public Domain and Creative Commons. So it’s not even like the only options are being complicit to ripping off artists or being cut off from this tool.