Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda says AI recreations of her dad are ‘personally disturbing’::Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda says AI recreations of her dad are ‘personally disturbing’: ‘The worst bits of everything this industry is’

  • whatwhatwhatwhat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Agreed, we desperately need regulations on who has the right to reproduce another person’s image/voice/likeness. I know that there will always be people on the internet who do it anyway, but international copyright laws still mostly work in spite of that, so I imagine that regulations on this type of AI would mostly work as well.

    We’re really in the Wild West of machine learning right now. It’s beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Copyright IS too strong, but paradoxically artists’ rights are too weak. Everything is aimed to boost the profits of media companies, but not protect the people who make them. Now they are under threat of being replaced by AI trained on their own works, no less. Is it really worth it to defend AI if we end up with less novel human works because of it?

        • lloram239@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Now they are under threat of being replaced by AI trained on their own works, no less.

          And they themselves trained on the work of other artists too. It’s just the circle of life. AI just happens to be better at learning than humans.

          Is it really worth it to defend AI if we end up with less novel human works because of it?

          AI doesn’t need defending, it fill steamroll us all just by itself. We don’t really have a choice in this.

          • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The “circle of life” except that it kills the artists’ careers rather than creating new ones. Even fledgling ones might find that there’s no opportunity for them because AIs are already gearing to take entry-level jobs. However efficient AI may be at replicating the work of artists, the same could be said of a photocopier, and we laws to define how those get to be used so that they don’t undermine creators.

            I get that AI output is not identical and its output doesn’t go foul under existing laws, but the principles behind them are still important. Not only Culture but even AI itself will be lesser for it if human artists are not protected, because art AIs quickly degrade when AI art is fed back into it en masse.

            Don’t forget that the kind of AI we have doesn’t do anything by itself. We don’t have sentient machines, we have very elaborate auto-complete systems. It’s not AI that is steamrolling artists, it’s companies seeking to replace artists with AIs trained on their works that are threatening them. That can’t be allowed.

            • lloram239@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              The “circle of life” except that it kills the artists’ careers rather than creating new ones.

              It will kill all the ones that are stuck on old technology. Those that can make the best use of AI will prevail, at least for a little while, until AI replaces the whole media distribution chain and we’ll just have our own personal Holodeck with whatever content we want, generated on demand.

              However efficient AI may be at replicating the work of artists, the same could be said of a photocopier

              It’s not copying existing works and never did. Even if you explicitly instruct it to copy something existing, it will create its own original spin on the topic. It’s really no different than any artist working on commission.

              Don’t forget that the kind of AI we have doesn’t do anything by itself.

              You are free to ignore the reality of it, but that’s simply not the case. AI systems are getting filled with essentially all of human knowledge and they can remix it freely to create something new. This is the kind of stuff AI can produce just by itself, within seconds, the idea is from AI and so is the actual image. Sentience is not necessary for creativity.

              It’s not AI that is steamrolling artists, it’s companies seeking to replace artists with AIs trained on their works that are threatening them.

              When the artists are that easy to replace, their work can’t have been all that meaningful to begin with.

              • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                It’s sad to see how AI advocates strive to replicate the work of artists all the while being incredibly dismissive of their value. No wonder so many artists are incensed to get rid of everything AI.

                Besides, it’s nothing new that media companies and internet content mills are willing to replace quality with whatever is cheaper and faster. To try to use that as an indictment against those artists’ worth is just… yeesh.

                This is the kind of stuff AI can produce just by itself, within seconds, the idea is from AI and so is the actual image.

                You realize that even this had to be set up by human beings right? Piping random prompts through art AI is impressive, but it’s not intelligent. Don’t let yourself get caught on sci-fi dreams, I made this mistake too. When you say “AI will steamroll humans” you are assigning awareness and volition to it that it doesn’t have. AIs maybe filled with all human knowledge but they don’t know anything. They simply repeat patterns we fed into them. An AI could give you a description of a computer, it could generate a picture of a computer, but it doesn’t have an understanding. Like I said before, it’s like a very elaborate auto-complete. If it could really understand anything, the situation would be very different, but the fact that even its most fierce advocates use it as a tool shows that it’s still lacking capabilities that humans have.

                AI will not steamroll humans. AI-powered corporate industries, owned by flesh and blood people, might steamroll humans, if we let them. If you think that will get to just enjoy a Holodeck you are either very wealthy or you don’t realize that it’s not just artists who are at risk.

                • lloram239@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  while being incredibly dismissive of their value.

                  Values change. Images used to be difficult and time consuming to create, thus they had value. They are trivial to create now, so it becomes worthless. That’s progress. Yet instead of using that new superpower to create bigger projects and doing something still valuable with it, all the artists do is complain.

                  You realize that even this had to be set up by human beings right?

                  You obviously don’t realize that it didn’t. That’s prompts generated by AI put into another AI. There was no human telling it what to draw. The only instruction was to draw something original and than draw something different for the next image.

                  When you say “AI will steamroll humans” you are assigning awareness and volition to it that it doesn’t have.

                  I don’t do any of that, I just acknowledge their superior and constantly improving performance. The thing doesn’t need to be self aware to put all the artists, and the other humans, out of a job if it can work 1000x faster than them.

                  Also AI will get awareness and volition real soon anyway, ETA for AGI is around 5 years, at the current pace I wouldn’t even be surprised if it arrives sooner. Human exceptionalism has the tendency to not age very well these days.

                  They simply repeat patterns we fed into them

                  They don’t. See, it would be way easier to lake you Luddites seriously if you at least had any clue what you were talking about. But the whole art world seem to be stuck playing make-believe, just repeating the same nonsense that they heard from other people talking about AI instead just trying it for themselves.

                  Most of that AI stuff is publicly available, lots of it is free, and some can be run on your own PC. Just go and play with it to get a realistic idea of what it is and isn’t capable of. And most important of all: Think about the future. People always talk like issues with current AI systems are some fundamental limit of AI, when in reality most of those problems will be gone within six months.

                  Also it’s just bind boggling how people ignore everything AI can do, just to focus on some minuscule detail it still gets wrong. The fact that it can’t draw hands is not terribly surprising (hard structure to figure out from low res 2D images), meanwhile the fact that it can draw basically everything else, way faster and often better than almost any human, is rather mind boggling, yet somehow ignored.

                  AI-powered corporate industries, owned by flesh and blood people

                  CEOs are target for AI replacement just like everybody else. And AI that pays its own bills and runs on some rented cloud computing won’t be far off either. Either way, you don’t even have to go into doomsday scenarios with evil AI, the fact that AI will outcompete humans at most tasks alone ist enough to drastically reshape the world. If it’s ethically trained Open Source AI or some cooperate run thing really doesn’t matter, since either way, the changes will be huge.

                  If you think that will get to just enjoy a Holodeck you are either very wealthy or you don’t realize that it’s not just artists who are at risk.

                  Well, we are already way closer to that spooky scifi future than you’d think.

                  • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    You obviously don’t realize that it didn’t. That’s prompts generated by AI put into another AI.

                    And you mean to tell me they decided to do it themselves? No, we both know that’s not what happened. That setup was arranged by people. You come with accusations of cluelessness and luddism only to say the exact same thing with different words.

                    You’d rather burst into wild speculation while acting superior rather than acknowledging matters as they are.

                    CEOs are target for AI replacement just like everybody else.

                    Who do you think are making the calls to replace people? Do you seriously believe that executives, who hold the highest power, will decide to replace themselves? They might as well use AIs just fine and reap all the benefits while doing none of the effort. Like many CEOs already do with their human subordinates.

                    As impressive as AIs might be and become, while you get lost on sci-fi fantasies you are losing sight of who is going to decide what they will be used for and how that will affect regular people.

                    Hell, we are already have a glimpse of how that’s going to play out. Most of the internet is molded by algorithms that, however inscrutable they may be, are directed to serve the interests of wealthy business owners. Some decades ago people dreamed of systems that would recommend things for you before you even knew that you wanted it, but some didn’t expect that it would be used to manipulate and advertise to us.

                    This is why keeping human interest in mind is of the utmost important.

                    Values change. Images used to be difficult and time consuming to create, thus they had value. They are trivial to create now, so it becomes worthless. That’s progress.

                    You think oil paintings lost all worth when photography and printing and digital painting came about? That art isn’t worth it if it’s not expressed through the biggest and newest means?

                    That is what you think progress is? Human expression and passion being treated like trash because it’s not as optimal? What a dreary mindset.

                    If not to enable people to dedicate themselves to what they love, what is even the worth of technological advancement?

                    Don’t get mistaken. I love technology, I just can’t get excited about people being crushed by technology that is getting harnessed in the most cynical, greedy way. But you? You just seem to be eagerly praying for the day you will be turned into a paperclip, for “value”.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      yeah i don’t think it should be legislated against, especially for private use [people will always work around it anyway], but using it for profit is really, viscerally wrong

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You know I’m not generally a defender of intellectual property, but I don’t think in this case “not legislating because people will work around it” is a good idea. Or ever, really. It’s because people will try to work around laws to take advantage of people that laws need to be updated.

        It’s not just about celebrities, or even just about respect towards dead people. In this case, what if somebody takes the voice of a family member of yours to scam your family or harass them? This technology can lead to unprecedented forms of abuse.

        In light of that, I can’t even mourn the loss of making an AI Robin Willians talk to you because it’s fun.

    • lloram239@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      but international copyright laws still mostly work in spite of that, so I imagine that regulations on this type of AI would mostly work as well.

      The thing is, people still don’t grasp the ease with which this will be possible and to a large degree already. This doesn’t need hours of training anymore, you can clone voices with three seconds of audio and faces from a single image. Simple images can be clicked together in seconds with zero effort. Give it a few more years and you video can be created with equal ease.

      You can regulate commercial use of somebodies likeness, which it largely already is, but people doing it for fun is unstoppable. This stuff is here today and it will get a whole lot more powerful going forward.