It’s so crazy how obvious it was in 2015 too.

It had me wondering one day after hearing the umpteenth Trump supporter sing his praises… Do you think an appreciable number of people like you saw the same obvious things about Mussolini and Hitler before their rises? Do we have some advantage now having seen these people before in the last 100 years? Do we have more casual access to information and history, so it’s more obvious to us now?

Or is it this: They, like us, had simply not done enough to prevent their rise? Is it really “on you” or is it on all of us?

But it’s not reposting copyrighted images. It is analyzing them, possibly a long time ago, then using complex math and statistics to learn how to make new images when requested, on the fly. It’s an automated version of the way humans learn how to make art or take pictures. If it happens to produce Mario very closely it is because it learned very well.

That is why this isn’t cut and dry. And why it might be good to think of it as derivative works. I don’t think you will be able to nail down this idea of imagination and inspiration. It’s just not that straight forward.

Edit: Also, the generator is not pumping out copyrighted images intentionally. It is waiting for a prompt from a user. Who will then go and post it somewhere. If it is too close to Mario, it is that human user who has violated copyrights. They only used the generator as a tool. I feel like that is very relevant.

Very possible people don’t realize. And you know what? We shouldn’t care. But if someone generates a Mario and puts in on their website or makes a fanfic comic, doesn’t matter how they made it… go after that person. Just like you always have, Nintendo…

But I worry for the future of any tool if they win this. Add a feature to a computer art tool that feels too “generatey”, you better watch out… I worry about human artists, having to prove the sources they learned from were not protected copyrights when they lean into a style that feels like Nintendo’s…

I’m not a lawyer either, but I’m fairly sure that every plaintiff thinks they have a case.

I pay OpenAI for a chat and image generation service. If I make Mario or something random, I pay them the same amount. If I go sell those pictures of Mario that I made with the service then I am liable for infringement, not OpenAI. OpenAI is not charging me more for making Mario or anything else.

Same as if I draw Mario to keep privately or draw him and sell the images. Adobe is never mentioned as a liability even though I used that software to infringe and paid Adobe for the ability to do so.

Please tell me how it’s different. Don’t tell me scale because they don’t care if it’s one or 1 million Marios. If someone was making money on a million Marios they would be sued independently, whether or not they used AI.